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Timiri Umn 0130E 18141.Pdf Producing Educated Selves: Gender, Migration and Subjectivity on the Edge of Transnational High-Tech Labor Arbitrage A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Himabindu Timiri IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Joan DeJaeghere, Advisor May 2017 © Himabindu Timiri 2017 i Acknowledgements True research nourishes us. It gives us a chance to be truth-seekers. A PhD is the culmination of a long journey and the beginning of a new one, to be and become such a truth-seeker. For me, it has been a circuitous but fortuitous journey, filled with people who knew and trusted that I would get here even before I did. I owe much to my dissertation committee who individually and together helped me through this journey. I am especially grateful to my advisor, Joan DeJaeghere, whose trust and belief in me has sustained me through this doctoral program. I have relied greatly on her steady support and appreciate her presence in my progress ever more with each passing year. I have gained immensely too from classes, assistantships and research projects with Fran Vavrus, Roozbeh Shirazi, Annie Hill and Michael Goh, where they taught not just by content but by example. I owe thanks to Mary Hermes as well for teaching me to be comfortable with my realities and to engage in deep reflexivity while studying them. Special thanks go to Cynthia Lewis for a class on discourse analysis that sparked my interest in this method. The dissertation was funded by a generous and timely grant from the Women’s Philanthropic Leadership Circle at the College of Education. I am thankful to the WPLC for their support through this award. I learned through this study that fieldwork is first and foremost about people and relationships. I had set out in search of participants and found mentors, akkas/didis and thangachchis/behenas – older and younger sisters. Each of them has deepened my faith in sisterhood a little more. I owe special thanks to Priya for her generosity and for opening ii her home and friends network to me. I owe thanks to Nandini too whose passion for debate challenged my opinions and gave me food for thought, especially about feminism in India. Over the years, I have grown to increasingly appreciate one particular faculty in India whose support and encouragement led me to pursue higher education and research. This is my former professor in Hyderabad, Monsieur Jean-Charles Pochard. His bonhomie and deep affection for his students are inspirational to me. “Pochard sir” saw in me the promise of a future scholar and knew how to encourage and nurture this spark. I am similarly grateful for my school teachers at the Union Christian School in Chennai – Padma miss, Saraswati miss, Deepika miss – I learned how teachers are both parents and guides as I sat in their classes. My friends have always been my extended family. Friends at the University of Minnesota – Lisa, Aditi, Rachel, Anne, Frida and Sandy in particular have been reliable fellow-travellers on the PhD path. My friends from India too have supported me on this journey despite our distance – Dhriti with her effervescent friendship since college in Bangalore, Madhura whose long discussions of exams and fieldwork helped nurture both our passion for research, Dilnavaz and Aurora in Pondicherry. I owe much to friends in Montreal too – Gaetan and Collette, whose home and office supported the writing of my master’s thesis; my friends and neighbors at the Sri Aurobindo Center whose love and encouragement motivated me to complete the master’s program; Sucharitha and family for being “home” to me all the years I could not travel back to India; and Kangmi for sharing her joyful take on the trials of migration. iii I must thank my family who have been patient with my meanderings over the years. I owe special thanks to my in-laws for their unconditional encouragement during the PhD. I thank my dear aunt Santhoshi whose friendship from childhood has sustained me through some tough times, my uncle Ravi whose help and guidance are more than I can ever repay, my brother Madhu to whom I can always turn, and my father who has passed his love of knowledge, books and all things erudite to his daughter. My late mother has watched over me on this journey, and taught me to embrace life and learning at every turn. And for my dear daughter, who is not out in this world yet but has kept me company through the writing of this dissertation, I hope she will one day be proud of her mother. Most importantly, I am grateful for my best friend and partner, Babu, whose love and encouragement sustain me day in and day out. Our drives between Tifton and Atlanta, his trips to Minneapolis, our skype dinners, his enthusiasm for my classes and research, his cooking as I sat at my desk, and countless little gestures and shared thoughts have made this dissertation possible. Thank you. iv Dedication To SriMa v Abstract This study examines the transnational movement of high-tech labor from the perspective of techmigrant families. It highlights the issue of dependent immigrant women, spouses of guestworkers who perform high-skilled jobs in the United States. As dependents, these immigrant women are subject to a restrictive immigration status that mandates years of unemployment, while permitting limited pathways to pursue higher education. The study poses the issue of dependent migration as a feminized construct at the intersection of the fields of gender, migration and educational studies. Data were collected through an ethnographic study of the Indian techmigrant community in and around Atlanta over a period of eighteen months. In-depth interviews with techmigrant spouses generated narratives on migration and education. The study framework accounted for the simultaneous subjection and self-making of gendered and dependent immigrant subjectivities. Using a blend of discourse and narrative analyses, a contextual reading of subject-making processes saw immigrant women as located on the edge of transnational labor arbitrage and within overlapping state, market and familial discourses. While the narratives of dependent immigrant women showed evidence of interwoven subjection discourses, they also exemplified moments of awareness of subjection processes and the appropriation of these same discourses into self-making processes. Ultimately, in the navigation of macro institutional forces, educated subjectivities, also referred to as “educated selves” in this study, played a significant role in offering these immigrant women room to leverage these subject-making processes. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ i Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iv Abstract .............................................................................................................................. v List of Tables .................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1: Dependent Migration .................................................................................... 1 The Indian Diaspora .................................................................................................................... 2 India and its Tech Labor .............................................................................................................. 3 The Highly Skilled and the Dependent ....................................................................................... 4 Feminized Dependence and Educated Subjects .......................................................................... 7 Research Questions ................................................................................................................... 10 Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................................. 10 Key Terms ................................................................................................................................. 18 Study Significance ..................................................................................................................... 19 Positionality ............................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter Summary ...................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 2: Gender, Migration and Education ............................................................. 23 Pieces to the Puzzle ................................................................................................................... 23 Global Capital and Labor .......................................................................................................... 25 The Transnational and the Translocal ....................................................................................... 29 Gender and “Skilled” Migration ................................................................................................ 33 Gender and the Immigrant Subject ............................................................................................ 38 Synthesis of Research ................................................................................................................ 41 Chapter 3: Making
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