From India to USA: Engineering as an Aspirational Project

• In Event: International Students in Different Disciplines

Proposal

This paper traces the educational and career trajectories of Indian engineers migrating to the U.S. from the 1980s to the present. A key backdrop to this phenomenon is the growing digital capacity of the Global North, which supposedly positions the U.S. as the ultimate destination for livelihood and upward mobility for young engineers from India.
This paper conducts an intergenerational analysis of nine life history interviews with Indian engineers in the U.S. The conceptual entry point of this paper is aspiration, the dual aspiration of pursuing an engineering degree and a career in the U.S., while harboring hopes of one day returning to India. This focus on aspiration sheds light on questions of labor, alongside conventional concerns about migrant identity. While much of the current migration literature focuses on cultural identity and belonging, this paper distinguishes between “enduring” and “intensified” aspiration, tracing how these forms shape educational migration flows and their evolution over the past four decades. Drawing on Leya Mathew and Ritty Lukose’s (2020) work on "pedagogies of aspiration,” the paper connects everyday narratives to landscapes of educational opportunity and sociopolitical dynamics in both India and the U.S.
The paper then addresses how engineers engage in acts of self-fashioning as they navigate these various terrains and lifeworlds. This question is explored through the methodology of life history interviews, which encompass histories of class and social mobility within them. The interviews, conducted with engineers who migrated during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, are complemented by a yearlong ethnographic study of three current computer science students from India at the University of Chicago. This combined approach demonstrates how the migration to the US has become a more established and normalized path, even as certain discourses surrounding this educational migration have become entrenched.
This paper, through its ethnography and narratives spanning generations, offers an in-depth engagement with political economy and migration literatures, guided by the theme of educational aspiration. It highlights the critical issue of digital inequalities between the global south and north, which is crucial for understanding how notions of class and social mobility are redefined in the expanding digital world and its globalization. By integrating diverse situated and generational perspectives, the paper provides sociological coherence. It contributes to the understanding of postcoloniality, post-liberalization India, and globalization, focusing on the role of educational and professional trajectories to the US in shaping the dynamics of the growing digital world.

Author

• Sai Shankara Sumukhi Marupaka, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO