High-Tech Housewives: Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor, and Transmigration

218 Pages·2018·1.946 MB·English

by  Amy Bhatt

Padma Kaimal
K. Sivaramakrishnan
Anand A. Yang
Series Editors

High-Tech
Housewives
Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor,
and Transmigration
Amy Bhatt
University of Washington Press
Seattle
Copyright © 2018 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Portions of chapter 4 were published previously as Amy Bhatt, Madhavi Murty, and
Priti Ramamurthy, “Hegemonic Developments: The New Indian Middle Class, Gendered
Subalterns, and Diasporic Returnees in the Event of Neoliberalism,” Signs: A Journal of
Women in Culture and Society 36, no. 1 (2010): 127–52, www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/
signs; and Amy Bhatt, “Resident ‘Non-resident’ Indians: Gender, Labor and the Return to
India,” in Transnational Migration to Asia: The Question of Return, ed. Michiel Baas, 55–72
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), reprinted with permission of Amsterdam
University Press.
University of Washington Press
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
isbn 978-0-295-74354-7 (Hardcover)
isbn 978-0-295-74355-4 (Paperback)
isbn 978-0-295-74356-1 (Ebook)
To my favorites, Kevin Bromer and Anika Bromer
To my eternal supporters, Ranjana and Pradip Bhatt

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Gender, Transmigration, and Citizenship ............ 3
1 Transmigrants: Identity, Nationalism, and Bridge Building ........ 18
2 Engineer Brides and H-1B Grooms: Visas, Marriage,
and Family Formation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3 Transnational Housewives: Work Restrictions
and the Gendered Division of Labor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4 Returnees: “R2I,” Citizenship, and the Domestic Sphere ...........96
5 Re-migrants: Challenges, Repatriation,
and Future Migrations ....................................... 124
Conclusion: Circulations ..................................... 141
Notes 149
Bibliography 177
Index 197

Acknowledgments
When I first moved to Seattle in 2004, I became involved with Chaya Seattle
(now API Chaya), an advocacy organization aimed at ending family-based
violence and creating community among South Asian women in the region.
As the tech industries in the Pacific Northwest exploded, so too did the
South Asian population. In particular, the arrival of new temporary workers
from India, along with women coming on family reunification visas, were
a vital part of this IT boom. Some of these women came to the attention of
Chaya staff as they faced isolation and sometimes violence in their home
lives. Although not all H-4 holders experienced abuse, many were stuck in
remote suburbs and were largely absent from the larger South Asian com-
munity institutions in the area. I began volunteering on a small project
aimed at reaching out to those women, which ultimately brought me into
contact with some of the participants of this study. While the issue of H-4
vulnerability was still my foremost concern, I grew interested in a larger
question: what role does the family play in sustaining and promoting trans-
national migration and how do women fare as a result of that movement?
To answer that question and others, I tapped into a rich network of
Indian information technology (IT) workers, thanks to introductions from
colleagues such as Tapoja Chaudhuri, Sharmistha Ghosh, and Bill Nord-
wall. Through those introductions, I met nearly a hundred current and
former H-1B and H-4 visa holders who were willing to share their stories
and experiences with me. It is their stories that drive this study; they are the
embodied subjects of transnationalism whose labor is a major force in the
IT industry globally. While my focus was predominantly on the Pacific
Northwest, it quickly became clear to me that their stories did not end with
their arrival to the United States. Instead, their initial migration on the H-1B
or H-4 visa was a stepping-stone along a circuitous journey that often
included moving back and forth between India and the United States. In
order to trace the consequences of these repeated migrations, I traveled to
Bangalore and Hyderabad, India, to visit some of the former H-1B and H-4
visa holders I had met in Seattle and to meet others like them who had
moved back after living in the United States for long stretches. Even though
ix