Locational Precarity: H-1B Visa and Spatial Uncertainty Among Indian Migrants in the U.S.

• In Event: South Asia and the Diaspora

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of locational precarity to theorize the spatial and emotional vulnerabilities experienced by highly skilled Indian migrants on temporary employment-based H-1B visas in the United States. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with Indian-born professionals, the study examines how immigration policies tether legal status in the U.S. to continuous employment and a fixed temporal horizon, producing persistent uncertainty over migrants’ ability to remain in place.
While Indian migrants are often characterized as hyper-selected and economically successful, this paper demonstrates that their temporary legal status generates structural constraints that extend beyond the labor market. I argue that legal status functions as a master status, frequently superseding ethno-racial identity and shaping migrants’ access to employment, housing, relationships, and long-term planning. Locational precarity emerges at the intersection of legal dependency and the temporal limits of visa regimes, embedding insecurity not only in work but in everyday life and emotional well-being.
The analysis further identifies how migrants navigate these constraints through strategies of endurance and flexibility. Comparing themselves with peers in India allows migrants to reinterpret their circumstances as relatively advantageous. At the same time, transnational mobility—particularly toward countries with more stable immigration pathways—emerges as a key strategy for mitigating uncertainty.
By focusing on lawfully admitted, highly skilled migrants, this paper complicates dominant narratives that associate precarity primarily with low-wage or undocumented populations. Conceptually, locational precarity extends existing frameworks of legal stratification and the precariat by foregrounding how legal temporariness spatializes insecurity. The findings call for rethinking immigration policy to address the hidden yet profound forms of marginalization experienced by temporary high-skilled workers.

Author

• Upama Bhattacharya, University of Texas-Austin