Beyond Diasporic Constraints: A Neoliberal IT Approach to Technocratic Citizenship

• In Event: 4151 - International Migration Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 3: Citizenship, Multiculturalism, and Nationalism

Abstract

Using Bloemraad et. al’s (2008) conceptualization of citizenship as a concept that encompasses access to rights, participation and a sense of belonging, we discuss the experiences that lead migrant tech workers to endorse notions of technocratic citizenship. Using the case of Indian and Colombian migrant tech workers in the U.S., we reveal that the perceived universality of tech work and the high skills associated with it lead these workers to suggest notions of citizenship that: a. reject the idea of citizenship as bound to a nation-state; b. View U.S. American citizenship as a ticket to global citizenship; and c. center science, technology and technical expertise as universal grantors of rights, participation and belonging that “everyone can access.” We find that these workers device these notions of citizenship as a response to personal and professional barriers they face due to their immigrant legal status, as well as experiences of racial discrimination. We suggest that these migrant workers endorse a model of neoliberal technocratic citizenship that advertises access to rights, participation and a sense of belonging through “universalized” principles promoted by global capitalism and market-based governance (e.g. high tech skills, a profit focus, a desire to work in epicenters of global digitized markets). We expand Ong’s model of flexible citizenship (2004) by revealing how tech workers negotiate the ambivalence and constraints presented by the stipulations and social structure of nation-states to propose that the endorsement of technocratic citizenship presents itself as a perceived way of solving such ambivalence.

Authors

• Pallavi Banerjee, University of Calgary

• Lina Rincón