Leveraging Liminality, Mobilising Śaktī: Nepali Women, Migration and Feminism in Australia

This thesis is based on research with middle-class Nepali migrant women in Melbourne, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I examine how my participants’ motivations to migrate and their feminist activism are informed by ideologies of development (bikās), and radical care, and the mobilisation of feminine power (śaktī). I show how Nepali migrant women organise collectively around these ideas in their efforts to support each other, forming the base of their care activism.