Indian Wives of Incarcerated Men Tell Their Stories: An Intersectional Narrative Analysis of Disenfranchisement and Resilience

When a family member is incarcerated, the task of emotionally and financially supporting the remaining family members and the incarcerated loved one often falls upon women, who are likely to be under-resourced and overwhelmed. Women whose husbands are incarcerated in India are likely to possess multiple marginalized identities, increasing their vulnerability to intersecting forms of oppression. Empirical research is lacking on wives of incarcerated men in India, contributing to their invisibility in policy-making and programmatic interventions. Guided by intersectional feminism and symbolic interactionism, the purpose of this study was to document the stories of women who had experienced spousal incarceration in the Indian context. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 wives of prison inmates who resided in or around the National Capital Territory of Delhi, all of whom either held a lower caste identity or a Muslim religious identity. Transcribed interviews were analyzed following the steps of narrative analysis. Results illustrate the diversity of storied experiences of wives of incarcerated husbands in India. First, by grouping narratives that conveyed the same overall storyline into the same cluster, I identified three story clusters: Ambivalent but Hanging On, Unconditionally Devoted, and Independent and Disillusioned. Second, by attending to how women's day-to-day lives are shaped by intersecting systems of privilege and oppression, particularly those tied to gender and class, I identified three overarching themes that spanned women's narratives: (a) a complicated relationship with patriarchy, (b) the weight of socioeconomic disenfranchisement, and (c) when resilience is not a choice. The results of this study emphasize the need to distinguish between feminist agency and welfare agency, to recognize women's experiences of ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief, and to critique the systemic injustices that forced women to be resilient. Documenting their stories is instrumental in bringing attention to the needs, challenges, and triumphs of this underserved and overlooked population.