Caste, kinship and the realisation of ‘American Dream’: high-skilled Telugu migrants in the U.S.A.
Literature on the Indian diaspora domiciled in the U.S.A. largely portrays the group as educated, highly skilled migrants in pursuit of theirAmerican Dream, without critically engaging with the regionally particularised migration trajectories that predispose only certain groups to become skilled mig...
| Published in: | Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies Vol. 43; no. 16; pp. 2756 - 2771 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dec2017
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=126248235&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 126248235 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 1369183X 56F jtl: Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies issn: 1369183X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2017 vid: 43 iid: 16 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 126248235 10.1080/1369183X.2017.1314598 ppf: 2756 ppct: 15 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1MB tig: atl: Caste, kinship and the realisation of ‘American Dream’: high-skilled Telugu migrants in the U.S.A. aug: au: Roohi, Sanam affil: Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India su: Skilled labor Migrant labor Kinship Engineers United States emigration & immigration Teenagers United States sug: subj: United States Skilled labor Migrant labor Kinship Engineers United States emigration & immigration Teenagers keyword: American Dream caste capital Coastal Andhra High-skilled migrants Telugu transnational habitus ab: Literature on the Indian diaspora domiciled in the U.S.A. largely portrays the group as educated, highly skilled migrants in pursuit of theirAmerican Dream, without critically engaging with the regionally particularised migration trajectories that predispose only certain groups to become skilled migrants from the global South to the North. Migration studies bracket skilled migrants as those who make rational choices and choose formal routes to migrate whereas unskilled migrants often rely on informal channels of kinship or ethnicity to migrate. Unsettling this proposition, in this article, based on an ethnographic study of the high-skilled Telugu professionals in the U.S.A. and their families living in Coastal Andhra, India, I show how aspirational and topographical migration pathways from Coastal Andhra to the U.S.A. are created and sustained through networks of kinship, caste and endogamous transnational marriage alliances. These high-skilled migrants (doctors, engineers and scientists) from the dominant castes have successfully manoeuvred spatial mobility and social upward mobility by utilising ‘caste capital’ within a transnational social field. Moreover, decades of migration from the dominant castes have shaped a caste-inflected transnational habitus among its members who see migration of their youth to the U.S.A. as desirable, and at times, also inevitable. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2017 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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