Is migration a ticket to freedom?

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, several Indian women novelists have enriched mainstream English literature with stories of young, educated, middle-class, professional Indian women migrating to and settling in North America – a predominantly white patriarchal landscape. Through their portrayals the novelists have sculpted a specific image of these women, for whom migration has been a ticket to ‘freedom’. This is because coming to North America enabled them to challenge various aspects of ‘race’ and gender-related subjugations back home and ultimately walk the path of ‘freedom’. Questioning whether international migration necessarily leads to ‘freedom’ for this cohort of immigrant women, this paper seeks to understand three interrelated issues: (1) How do these Indian women conceptualise ‘freedom’ in the migrant country? (2) To what extent has the act of migration led to their ‘freedom’? and (3) In this regard, what role does transnationalism play to modulate their ‘freedom’? Following Bergson’s ideas of freedom and Guarnizo’s concept of the transnational habitus, I attempt to demonstrate that perhaps such assumed causal associations between migration and freedom need to be further explored. As the analysis of the focus groups and in-depth interviews reveal, freedom is not only about ‘freedom from’ the norms of the home and the host societies but also involves ‘freedom to’ act in both locations.