High-Tech Housewives and H-4 “Dreamers”: South Asian

Tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft promote the free flow of data worldwide, while relying on foreign, temporary IT workers to build, deliver, and support their products. However, even as IT companies use technology and commerce to transcend national barriers, their transnational employees and their families face significant migration and visa constraints. In this talk based on her ethnographic research, Amy Bhatt shines a spotlight on Indian IT migrants and their struggles to navigate family obligations, career paths, citizenship, and belonging as they move between South Asia and the United States.

A book signing and reception to follow

Bio: Amy Bhatt is Associate Professor of Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies, Affiliate Associate Professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program and the Asian Studies Program at UMBC. Her research focuses on the effects of migration on gender and families, social reproduction, and South Asian community formation. In addition to her research on transnational migration, she is also interested in South Asian community formation and activism. She is the author of High-Tech Housewives: Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor, and Transmigration (University of Washington Press, 2018), the co-author of the book Roots and Reflections: South Asians in the Pacific Northwest (University of Washington Press, 2013) with Nalini Iyer, the former oral historian for the South Asian Oral History Project, and the co-chair of the South Asian American Digital Archive’s Academic Council.