Relational logics of child maintenance and post-separation economic abuse in minoritized British South Asian Muslim post-divorce families

This paper furthers understandings of post-separation economic abuse in minoritised British South Asian Muslim post-divorce/separated families. We explore the relational logics of child maintenance payment, and propensities to post-separation economic abuse which are especially egregious for British South Asian Muslim women due interlinked factors: economic marginalisation, feminised poverty, gendered asymmetries in domestic finance, socioculturally distinct forms of economic restrictions, legal non-recognition of certain abuses, structural and institutional racialisation precipitating financial exclusion, and harmful immigration rules. We highlight the potential for child maintenance payment to become a means for perpetuating economic abuse post-separation, the state agency’s support to norms of male financial discretion enabling abuse, as well the necessity of the agency in checking economic exploitation where post-separation abuse remains inadequately addressed. We call for further intersectional research into the impact of recent legal developments in this area.