High-Tech Housewives

Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor, and Transmigration

Nonfiction, History, Asian, India, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies
Cover of the book High-Tech Housewives by Amy Bhatt, University of Washington Press
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Author: Amy Bhatt ISBN: 9780295743561
Publisher: University of Washington Press Publication: June 12, 2018
Imprint: University of Washington Press Language: English
Author: Amy Bhatt
ISBN: 9780295743561
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publication: June 12, 2018
Imprint: University of Washington Press
Language: English

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.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

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.

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