Symbolic analysts or indentured servants? Indian high-tech migrants in America’s information economy.

Paula Chakravartty contrasts the everyday experiences of Indian entrepreneurs from Bangalore, who are very successfully developing that region as a high-tech global metropolis, with the often unhappy, mid-level educated Indian migrants to the U.S. who now come to the U.S. on H-1B visas because they were not “good enough” to break into the elite schools and best high-tech operations in India. Because of foreign status, Indian migrants often face “glass ceilings” in professional advancement not commensurate with education, experience or professional attainment, as Chakravartty points out. She maintains that due to the precariousness of the H-1B type immigration status, it can be argued skilled migrants to the U.S. have frequently been exploited by employers, having become the equivalent of “high-tech braceros.” Chakravartty also explores the evolving ties of international students in the U.S. and high-tech workers from India in Silicon Valley that have led to kinds of globally circulating currents of hi-tech labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]