In recent years, interest in the large group of skilled immigrants coming from India to the United States has soared. However, this immigration is seen as being overwhelmingly male. Female migrants are depicted either as family migrants following in the path chosen by men, or as victims of desperation, forced into the migrant path due to economic exigencies. This book investigates the work trajectories and related assimilation experiences of independent Indian women who have chosen their own migratory pathways in the United States. The links between individual experiences and the macro trends of women, work, immigration and feminism are explored. The authors use historical records, previously unpublished gender disaggregate immigration data, and interviews with Indian women who have migrated to the US in every decade since the 1960s to demonstrate that independent migration among Indian women has a long and substantial history. Their status as skilled independent migrants can represent a relatively privileged and empowered choice. However, their working lives intersect with the gender constraints of labor markets in both India and the US. Vijaya and Biswas argue that their experiences of being relatively empowered, yet pushing against gender constraints in two different environments, can provide a unique perspective to the immigrant assimilation narrative and comparative gender dynamics in the global political economy. Casting light on a hidden, but steady, stream within the large group of skilled immigrants to the United States from India, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of political economy, anthropology, and sociology, including migration, race, class, ethnic and gender studies, as well as Asian studies.

Desi Dreams focuses on the construction of self and identity by Indian immigrant professional and semi-professional women who live and work in the US. The focus in this anthropological fieldwork is on Indian immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have often been defined as a model minority. Indian immigrant women who have achieved entry into the current technology based economy in the Silicon Valley value the capital-accumulation, status-transformation, socio-economic autonomy, and renegotiation of familial gender relations that are made possible by their employment. However, this quintessential American success story conceals the psychic costs of uneasy Americanization, long drawn out gender battles, and incessant cross-cultural journeys of selves and identities. The outcome is a diasporic identity through the recomposition of Indian culture in the diaspora and strengthening of transnational ties to India.

In recent years, interest in the large group of skilled immigrants coming from India to the United States has soared. However, this immigration is seen as being overwhelmingly male. Female migrants are depicted either as family migrants following in the path chosen by men, or as victims of desperation, forced into the migrant path due to economic exigencies. This book investigates the work trajectories and related assimilation experiences of independent Indian women who have chosen their own migratory pathways in the United States. The links between individual experiences and the macro trends of women, work, immigration and feminism are explored. The authors use historical records, previously unpublished gender disaggregate immigration data, and interviews with Indian women who have migrated to the US in every decade since the 1960s to demonstrate that independent migration among Indian women has a long and substantial history. Their status as skilled independent migrants can represent a relatively privileged and empowered choice. However, their working lives intersect with the gender constraints of labor markets in both India and the US. Vijaya and Biswas argue that their experiences of being relatively empowered, yet pushing against gender constraints in two different environments, can provide a unique perspective to the immigrant assimilation narrative and comparative gender dynamics in the global political economy. Casting light on a hidden, but steady, stream within the large group of skilled immigrants to the United States from India, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of political economy, anthropology, and sociology, including migration, race, class, ethnic and gender studies, as well as Asian studies.

How does an extended stay in Japan influence Indian migrants’ sense of their identity as they adapt to a country very different from their own? The number of Indians in Japan is increasing. The links between Japan and India go back a long way in history, and the intricacy of their cultures is one of the many factors they have in common. Japanese culture and customs are among the most distinctive and complex in the world, and it is often difficult for foreigners to get used to them. Wadhwa focuses on the Indian Diaspora in Tokyo, analysing their lives there by drawing on a wealth of interviews and extensive participant observation. She examines their lifestyles, fears, problems, relations and expectations as foreigners in Tokyo and their efforts to create a 'home away from home' in Japan. This book will be of great interest to anthropologists and sociologists concerned with the impact of migration on diaspora communities, especially those focused on Japan, India or both.

Tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft promote the free flow of data worldwide, while relying on foreign temporary IT workers to build, deliver, and support their products. However, even as IT companies use technology and commerce to transcend national barriers, their transnational employees face significant migration and visa constraints. In this revealing ethnography, Amy Bhatt shines a spotlight on Indian IT migrants and their struggles to navigate career paths, citizenship, and belonging as they move between South Asia and the United States. Through in-depth interviews, Bhatt explores the complex factors that shape IT transmigration and settlement, looking at Indian cultural norms, kinship obligations, friendship networks, gendered and racialized discrimination in the workplace, and inflexible and unstable visa regimes that create worker vulnerability. In particular, Bhatt highlights women’s experiences as workers and dependent spouses who move as part of temporary worker programs. Many of the women interviewed were professional peers to their husbands in India but found themselves “housewives” stateside, unable to secure employment because of visa restrictions. Through her focus on the unpaid and feminized placemaking and caregiving labor these women provide, Bhatt shows how women’s labor within the household is vital to the functioning of the flexible and transnational system of IT itself.

In The Other One Percent, Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh provide the first authoritative and systematic overview of South Asians living in the United States.

The author examines the paths South Asian immigrants in Chicago take toward assimilation in the late 20th century United States. She examines two ethnic institutions to show how immigrant activism ironically abets these immigrants' assimilation.