ABSTRACT

The current pattern of enforced expatriation of the temporary contract labourers from India to the Gulf region reveals certain new social issues in the neoliberal era. The plights of this lower-class labour force and their transnational families at their home in Kerala offer a different ‘socio-spatial spectacle’. These emigrant households are mostly left isolated with only their wife and children without any social support. Further studies show that, on the one hand, the neoliberal subjectivity penetrates deep into the traditional family values, and on the other, the migrant labourers have hardly any laid-out social security system even in the Gulf. They live under severe labour conditions and insecure job prospects, changing their class position back to the same povertystricken stage when they left. This chapter, therefore, concentrates on these dual economic and social impacts on transnational migrant families.