Split-Households: Indian Wives, Cape Town Husbands and Immigration Laws, 1900s to 1940s

AbstractThis study of gendered migration from the Indian subcontinent to Cape Town focuses on women who did travel and those who did not. It identifies the split-household as being the dominant household formation in the first half of the twentieth century, a matter of preference of Indian male migrants. Some women also displayed resistance to leaving India. Women nonetheless suffered long periods of separation from husbands; sometimes they were abandoned once men set up alternate households in Cape Town with women of other races and ethnicities. This article also assesses the influence of immigration laws on female mobility. The provision in 1927 that minor children from India had to be accompanied by their mothers did lead to increased female migration…