Inclusion/exclusion: The case of dependent Indian immigrant women in the American knowledge economy

• In Event: Understanding factors and processes of educational inclusion and exclusion: Gender, geographic location and immigration

Abstract

Objectives
Each year, significant numbers of women migrate from India to the US with their spouses as part of high-skilled imported labor in the global knowledge economy. But the women themselves are largely excluded from this economy. Unlike their spouses, they cannot work on arrival and reside as “dependents” for an uncertain period of time. This paper examines the role of education in the subjective negotiations of a group of immigrant women located within local, national and global systems of power. The specific nature of their dependent status – possessing tertiary education, yet mandated not to work post-migration – raises questions about the mutual imbrication of gender, migration and education.

Main perspective
The case of dependent Indian immigrant women runs counter to linear narratives about the benefits of education and migration for women. Despite skills to be productive citizens in the global economy, these women are accorded a legal dependent status that makes them socially and economically dependent on their partners. Recent immigration regulatory reform in the US, through presidential executive action, may give some of these women the right to work. But, newcomer dependent Indian immigrant women are still excluded from this reform. In the midst of this dependent condition, they are allowed to pursue an education or volunteer. So what do Indian immigrant women make of this dependent status? How do they negotiate their dual status of being included and excluded in the knowledge economy? And where does education fit into it all?
To explore the role of education in the migratory trajectories of dependent Indian immigrant women, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that draws from poststructuralist notions of agential subject-making, but also considers the material and social context of their experiences as educated subjects. This approach draws attention to the creative self-making processes of these women. Additionally, these subject-making processes should be seen as located in transnational spaces, where the women mobilize and enact wider social change as educated subjects.

Modes of inquiry and data sources
After a brief description of high-skilled immigration in the US, the paper considers the gendered nature of dependence in the context of US social policy. It draws from a mix of data sources including an analysis of literature on gender and migration that considers the role of education in this research, as well as initial fieldwork from an ethnographic study on the population of dependent Indian immigrant women based in Atlanta.

Conclusions
Dependent Indian immigrant women arrive in the US on a restrictive legal status. This leads to a period of unemployment despite their former education and work skills. This period of deemed social and economic dependence can be seen as a feminizing condition, and education as 'knowledge' that shapes these gendered transnational subjects.

Significance
Within the field of comparative or international education, this study contributes to an understanding of the ways in which ideas of being educated may be contested by marginalized groups, especially women and/or immigrant groups, particularly in the context of the knowledge economy.

Author

• Himabindu Timiri, University of Minnesota