From paradise to prison: The disrupted spatial imaginaries of victimised female British migrants in Australia

Abstract

AbstractBritish migration to Australia may be motivated by the paradisiacal glow in which the country is framed, but personal lives after arrival can upset these pre‐migratory spatial imaginaries, evoking feelings of darkness, doom, horror, isolation, and imprisonment. This article uses two concepts—that of spatial imaginaries and that of biographical disruptions—to unpack the stories of three British migrant women whose idealised expectations of Australia are overturned after each enters a violent marriage with an Australian man. By exploring the similarities of these women's tumultuous marital lives, I reveal how spatial imaginaries can be drastically altered by biographical disruptions that occur within intimate settings, particularly events that are violent in nature. This article highlights the unsolidified, contingent, and relational nature of migrant spatial imaginaries with an emphasis on how the startling, biographically disruptive, and emotionally unsettling nature of intimate partner violence fundamentally shapes the way spaces are viewed.