When migration is a necessity: Negotiating womanhood and abandonment in the transnational marriages of Ethiopians in the Amhara Region

ABSTRACT Transnational marriages involving wives mainly from the Amhara Region, Ethiopia, and migrant husbands from abroad have been common in the region ever since the 1990s, resulting in compound effects on the socio-economic order in Amhara. The article analyses how transnational marriage is envisaged by women in Amhara and has a negative affect on their lives. The analysis is based on triangulated data collected through interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and document analysis. It has been consistently theorised that transnational marriages and the opening up of the marriage market for women has created a scarcity of wives that negatively affects the lives of men in migrants’ origin countries. The study reveals the broad effects of transnational marriages on the gender dynamics in Amhara. The author concludes that the success related to transnational marriages and subsequent remittances creates a fragile negotiation power among women seeking migrant husbands and abandons many women as singletons and single mothers, thereby contributing to the social ethos of unmarried women and of single-parent families. Given the patriarchal conventions in Amhara, abandonment constitutes much more complicated psychosocial effects. Abandoned women suffer stigma and neglect, another constituent characterising the social ills created by transnational marriages.