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TRANSCENDING NATIONAL BORDERS TO EMBRACE THE
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TRANSCENDING NATIONAL BORDERS TO EMBRACE THE BEYOND: A
STUDY OF TRANSNATIONAL ASIAN INDIAN ENTREPRENEURS IN THE
UNITED STATES AND INDIA
BY

MANASHI RAY

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Sociology

2010

UMI Number: 3417812

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ABSTRACT

TRANSCENDING NATIONAL BORDERS TO EMBRACE THE BEYOND: A STUDY
OF TRANSNATIONAL ASIAN INDIAN ENTREPRENEURS IN THE UNITED STATES
AND INDIA.

BY
MANASHI RAY

The main objective of this dissertation is to understand how and why Asian Indians
maintain transnational business enterprises between the United States and India.
Migration scholars now recognize that many contemporary migrants maintain various
kinds of ties to their homelands while adapting to the countries that receive them. This
makes transnationalism a phenomenon where social, economic, political, religious, and
cultural lives of migrants span national boundaries, even as the political and cultural
salience of nation-states remains strong.

I direct my investigation on three sub-groups of the Indian population: Indian
immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States, Indian entrepreneurs who have returned to
India from the United States (returnees); and non-migrant Indian entrepreneurs in India
engaged in transnational business. In each sub-category of Asian Indian respondents, I
examine their social and economic status, level and type of education in India and the
United States, work experiences, migratory networks, and ethnic group characteristics as
pre-disposing factors for the formation of entrepreneurial networks. These play a critical
role in determining the social capital available to them for their business endeavors. I also
pay attention to the changing global economic environment and Indian policy changes
that affected the ease with which transnational business can be started.

Data was collected primarily through 42 in-depth interviews in the United States and

in India between May 2007 and December 2007. The ﬁndings show that ﬁnancial,

cultural, human, and social capital shape the types of networks transnational
entrepreneurs use, and how they act as sources and determinants at both the individual
and collective levels. Also, I establish the fundamental importance of the relational
(norms and ties) and structural (size, diversity and connectivity) aspects of social
networks, along with investment policies and market opportunities in the host and home
country. The ﬁndings conﬁrm that conﬁgurations of transnational networking affect
business performance and survival, an area that has received scant attention because
ethnicity has been considered the main actor in the networking-performance relationship.

Prior immigration research on transnational practices has largely been directed
towards a single physical location (mainly the United States) resulting in an incomplete
and fragmented view of transnational experiences. My research on Indians addresses this
shortcoming in the immigration literature by analyzing the process in social, economic,
and political contexts along with differences in business opportunities in two territorial
locations. Second, scholars tend to study transnational entrepreneurship by focusing on
marginalized and resource-deprived migrant populations, neglecting the potential for
study involving transnational entrepreneurship among a highly skilled migrant
population. My research on educated and ﬁnancially well-endowed Indian transnational
entrepreneurs is a contribution to ﬁlling this lacuna in transnational literature. Finally, the
dissertation makes a contribution to sociological knowledge of ethnicity and area studies,
as the elements of Indian transnational entrepreneurship possess unique characteristics

that make them distinctive, as it is true of various ethnic populations in the US.

Copyright by
MANASHI RAY
2010

I dedicate this dissertation to my parents
Dr. Deba Brata Ray and Mrs. Jayanti Ray,

and to my adorable sister, Tapasi Ray.

Acknowledgements

Like everything in my life, I would not have reached this point in my academic career
nor would I have completed my dissertation without the freedom of thought and action,
support, and enduring love of my parents and my younger sister. My sister, whom I
consider to be my gift from heaven, has been my guiding spirit, steadying hand, and
“conscience keeper” through the entire process. She and her husband Sarada Namhata
welcomed me into their home and into their lives, cared for me, and provided solace and
the inspiration to ﬁght a personal battle to health and recovery after a life transforming
auto accident. My family and my closest friends: Jackie Miller, Amy Jones, and Cheryl
Danley helped me learn to walk again as a below-knee amputee. Dr. Steven J. Gold and
Dr. Ruben G. Rumbaut encouraged me to persevere in those difﬁcult circumstances and
made it possible for me to pursue my scholastic goals.

I offer my sincere and deepest thanks for the valuable guidance and encouragement
provided by my dissertation committee: Dr. Steven J. Gold, Dr. Michael Schechter, Dr.
Alesia Montgomery, and Dr. Xuefei Ren. I remain particularly indebted to my chair, Dr.
Steven J. Gold, whom I regard as my guru. An excellent mentor and teacher, who with
his patience, kindness, and knowledge provided me the intellectual space to develop
independent and critical thinking, but never compromised the high standards he set for
me. In so many ways, as the song goes, Dr. Gold “taught me right from wrong, and weak
from strong . . .” in the world of academia, while always directing me towards achieving
excellence in thought and action.

Dr. Michael Schechter opened the dynamic universe of international relations and

political economy to me. With his witty sense of humor, he helped me to understand the

vi

complexity of the transformation taking place around the world brought on by the process
of globalization. He made me aware that, within a world that appears to be so familiar,
there are signiﬁcant political, economic, and cultural changes taking place—that the
world is a very different place than what often meets the eye. He reviewed each draft of
my dissertation chapters and provided critical comments and helpful advice. I remain
grateful to his mentoring, support, encouragement to see the brighter and comical side of
life. Dr Alesia Montgomery joined my committee when I was gathering my thoughts for
the research proposal. Over many lengthy conversations at her ofﬁce, cafés, and
restaurants, she gave me sound, thoughtful suggestions and advice about theoretical and
methodological issues. I remain indebted to her for invaluable support and
encouragement when everything seemed a blur and I was lost and disheartened. Dr.
Xuefei Ren kindly joined my committee at the ﬁnal stages of my dissertation writing
stage, yet provided many useful suggestions.

This dissertation would not have seen the light of day without the cooperation and
generosity of the forty two participants of the study and the spontaneous assistance of
other key people: Mr. Avinash Raghava, Regional Director, Northern Region at
NASSCOM (India); my ﬁrst cousin Subhabrata Roy of Cognizant Technology Solutions
(India): J iten Apte, CEO, Wizarth Advisors (India); J eetendra (Jeetu) Jangle, VP
Engineering/ Co-founder, Wellcore Corporation (USA). I also want to acknowledge the
help and support of my sister’s friends Varsha Mainkar Apte, Vaishali Khandekar, and
Sonali Gogate, as well as my ﬁ'iends Deepa Handu, Mr. T.K. Das, and Sumita Sen, to
name a few of them. I shall always remember with the great joy and happiness the 10

months of my ﬁeld work in 2007, when I traveled to numerous new destinations to

vii

conduct interviews with the respondents of this research—posh ofﬁces, factories and
industrial complexes, country clubs, coffeehouses, book stores, hotel and airport lobbies,
and conference and trade venues— in metropolises of India and the United States. Losing
myself in the individual narratives of the interviewees were, for me, moments stolen from
time. These conversations shone a light on their genius, on their acquired talent in
winning people over to promote worldwide enterprise, and how the migratory experience
was a powerful mobilizer of emotions and shaper of perceptions. I remain grateful to
them. I can only hope my study conveys the richness and complexity of their
transnational business experience in the United States and India.

To my close groups of friends I owe my deepest gratitude for having made my years
of doctoral study at Michigan State University one of the happiest periods of my life.
They have been a source of happiness, comfort, and strength during my PhD program.
My friend, Cheryl Danley, discussed and debated at length the merits and demerits of my
research proposal, and later the ﬁndings of my dissertation while we did our workout at
the gyms in the evenings. Her lively intellectual curiosity and probing questions
motivated me to examine knotty issues of the dissertation chapters from multiple
perspectives. These discussions (sometimes heated!) always added value. I shall always
remain thankful to her for being my sounding board. Her husband Richard F otsin
generously gave his time in designing the computer generated schematic diagram of the
research framework, and spontaneously shared his technical expertise and assistance for
making optimum use of the latest innovations in soﬁware programs and electronic

equipments. All along I was deeply touched by his altruistic spirit in helping me present

viii

 

 

 

my research in a captivating manner. I also remain appreciative of his efforts in
grounding me.

My friends from the Department of Sociology—Chien—J uh Gu, Pauline Acosta,
Tomiko Yamaguchi, Tammy Spangler—were a constant source of intellectual and
personal support. Meenal Rana from the Department of Human Ecology helped me make
sense of statistics and the qualitative software program Nvivo. I thank my dissertation
writing buddies Olga Santiago from Kinesiology, Leslie Hadﬁeld from History,

Kanchanakesi Wamapala from English, and Tama Hamilton-Wray from American
Studies. We worked on different ﬂoors of the Main Library on campus, as the sun moved

during the two or three years when we made the library our home.

I am thankful to Catherine Williamson, who copy edited and proofed the dissertation;
the staff of the Main library of Michigan State University; Saginaw Valley State
University; and the Resource Center for Persons with Disability (RCPD) at MSU for their
assistance during my graduate years at MSU. I also thank the Graduate School at MSU
and the RCPD for their generous ﬁnancial support for this dissertation.

Above all, my mother’s and sister’s unqualiﬁed love and my sister’s belief in “Climb
every mountain, search high and low . . . F allow every rainbow, ’til you ﬁnd your

"9

dream proved to be the eternal source of positive energy that sustained me through the

ups and downs of my PhD program.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................. xii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................. xiii
LIST OF DIAGRAMS ............................................................................. xiv
CHAPTER-l:

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
Intellectual Merit of the Research .................................................................. 1
The Context of the Study Population and Filling the Gaps in Transnational Research ..... 6
India begins to play ‘Catch Up’ for re-integrating into the Global Economy ............... 16
Research Question .................................................................................... 25
Research Methods ..................................................................................... 28
Why Study the Indian Case? ........................................................................ 30
Organization of the Study .......................................................................... 31
CHAPTER-2:

LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................... 33
Network perspective for explaining transnational practices ................................... 33
Forms of Capital ..................................................................................... 42
Cultural Capital ...................................................................................... 45
Human Capital ........................................................................................ 50
Social Capital and Networks ...................................................................... 53
Conceptual Framework ............................................................................ 68
CHAPTER-3:

METHODOLOGY and DATA .................................................................. 70
Deﬁnitions of Key Terms for this Research ....................................................... 73

Choice fora Multi-sited Ethnography77
Data Sources and Collection Procedure81

Gaining Access ..................................................................................... 85
The Sample ............................................................................................. 90
The Study Site ....................................................................................... 97
DataAnaly51s98
CHAPTER- 4:

WHEN IMAGINATION BECOMES REALITY ........................................... 102
Distribution of Pre-migratory Cultural, Human and Social Capital ....................... 103
The Human Capital ofRespondents’ Birth Famrly104
Cultural Capital of the Respondents ........................................................... 110
Human Capital of the Respondents ........................................................... 116
Time to ‘Go West’119
The Structure of Migration Networks ......................................................... 124

Capital and Networks among Immigrant Transnational Indian Entrepreneurs ......... 131

Senior Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the United States ..................... 133
Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Senior Transnationals. ..........l41
Present Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the United States .................... 151
Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Younger Transnationals. . l 54
Summary and Conclusions ..................................................................... 163
CHAPTER-5:

THE GAME CHANGERS ................................................................... 171
Time to ‘Come home . . .’ ...................................................................... 174
Capital and Networks among Retumee and Non-migrant Transnational Indian
Entrepreneurs .................................................................................... 1 86
Younger Transnational Entrepreneurs in India ............................................. 189
Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Younger Transnationals. ....197
Senior Transnational Nonmigrant Entrepreneurs in India ............................... 208
Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Senior Transnationals. ........213
The Role of Place within Transnational Space .......................................................... 219
Summary and Conclusion .................................................................... 224
CHAPTER- 6:

LIFE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS—RE-ARTICULATIN G IDENTITY AS
TRANSNATIONAL ENTREPRENEURS .................................................. 229

“To give something back to India. . . an act of social entrepreneurship”. . . . . . . ......234
“Enormous opportunities had opened up in India . . . I wanted to be part of that

action” .......................................................................................... 243
“We would like to introduce our children to Indian culture and heritage. . .”..... . ...253
“I have become a potpourri of cultures . . .” ................................................ 263
Summary and Conclusions .................................................................. 267
CHAPTER-7:

CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 270
A Review of Chapter Findings ............................................................. 275
Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research .......................... 284
APPENDICES

APPENDIX - 1: Letter of Invitation to the Respondents ............................... 287
APPENDIX - 2: Letter of support from Academic Advisor ............................. 288
APPENDIX - 3: Interview Schedule for Data Collection .............................. 289
APPENDIX - 4: Consent Form ............................................................ 294
APPENDD( - 5: Software Technology Parks of India and National Association of
Software and Service Companies .......................................................... 296
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................... 298

xi

LIST OF TABLES

Table No. 1-1: Entry of Indians as International Students in the

United States, 2000-09 .............................................................................. 8
Table No. 1-2: Occupation proﬁle of Indian workers in the US. Civilian Labor Force
Age 16 and older, 2006 ............................................................................ 14
Table No. 3-1: Distribution of Respondents by Age, Entrepreneurial Sector

and Gender .......................................................................................... 92
Table No. 4-1: Level of Education among Fathers of Respondents ......................... 105
Table No. 4—2: Respondent’s Father’s Education and Vocation ...................................... 106
Table No. 4-3: Type of school attended by respondents with father education ............ 1 10
Table No. 4-4: The Type of school attended in India by Respondents... ... ... ... . . ........1 12
Table No. 4-5: Motives for Emigration to the United States ................................. 120
Table No. 4-6: Contacts for Migration to the United States ................................... 124
Table No. 4-7: Migration History of the Respondents ........................................ 128

Table No. 4-8: Source of Financial Capital for Senior Transnational Entrepreneurs.....148

Table No. 4-9: Source of Financial Capital for Younger Transnational Entrepreneurs in

the Technology Sector ............................................................................. 162
Table No. 5-1: Distribution of Transnational Entrepreneurs in India by Sector .......... 186
Table No. 6-1: Choice of Food/Music/Dress ................................................... 262
Table No. 6-2: Self-deﬁnition based on Citizenship .......................................... 263

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure No: 1-1: Admission of Indians as Workers with Specialty Occupation and as

International Students in the US Universities, 1989 — 2008 ................................... 11
Figure No: 2-1: Structural Holes and Weak Ties ................................................ 62
Figure No. 3-1: Distribution of Respondents by Age and Country ........................... 92
Figure No. 3-2: Transnational Respondents in the US and India by Sector ................ 95
Figure No. 3-3: Migration Status of Respondents by Country .................................. 96
Figure No. 4-1: The Economic/Financial Status of Respondents’ Birth Family ............. 108
Figure No. 4-2: Distribution of type of schools attended in India ........................... l 17
Figure No. 4-3: Distribution of higher educational institutions attended in India .......... 1 17

Figure No. 44: Distribution of Immigrant Transnational Entrepreneurs in the U. S by
Age and Sector ...................................................................................... 132

Figure No. 4-5: The context of entering the US. among senior immigrant
Entrepreneurs ....................................................................................... l 34

Figure No. 4-6: The context of entering the US. for younger immigrant
Entrepreneurs ......................................................................................... 152

Figure No. 5-1: Length of Stay of Retumee Transnational Entrepreneurs in the US ..... 175
Figure No. 5-2: Year of Starting Entrepreneurship in India Relative to Return ....... 181

Figure No. 5-3: Distribution of US. Graduate Education among Technology
Entrepreneurs in India ............................................................................... 191

Figure No. 5-4: Distribution of undergraduate educational institutions attended by
Retumees & Nonmigrant Technology Transnational Entrepreneurs in India ............ 192

Figure No. 6-1: Distribution of Citizenship and OCI/PIO card of India among the
Respondents ...................................................................................... 265

xiii

LIST OF DIAGRAMS

Diagram No: 2-1: Framework of Transnational Networks between the United States and

India used by Indian Entrepreneurs .............................................................. 69
Diagram No: 3-l(a) Interview Locations in the United State. . 100
Diagram No: 3-1(b) Interview Locations in India ............................................. 101

xiv

Chapter — 1
Introduction

“T ranscending National Borders to Embrace the Beyond ”—A Study of Transnational
Asian Indian Entrepreneurs in the United States and India.

The deﬁning metaphor of India today is ‘churning, ’ as entrenched interests lose
power, as new jobs are created, as people move across states, as yesterday ’3
Bharat becomes today’s India, which becomes tomorrow ’s Bharat again.

(Raghuram Rajan, Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance
at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. India Today Dec. 26th

2005)‘
Intellectual Merit of the Research

The main objective of this research is to understand how and why Asian Indians2

maintain transnational business enterprises between the United States and India. In order

to explain transnational business practices by Indian entrepreneurs3 in a holistic and
comprehensive manner, my study focuses on three subgroups of the Indian population in
the United States and India: Indian immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States,

returning U.S. migrant entrepreneurs of Indian origin in India, popularly known as

 

I Bharat (Sanskrit) The ancient and original name of India and the constitutional name of independent
India. In Hindu mythology the churning of the ocean of milk is one of the most famous episodes, where the
ocean of milk is the mind or the human consciousness. The churning produces ‘Amrit’- the nectar of
immortality, which symbolizes the ultimate achievement of the goal of self-realization.

The term Asian Indian refers to those individuals who are from the subcontinent of India and are of
Indian background and ancestry. For the ﬁrst time in the history of the US. Census, Asian Indians were
listed as a separate ethnic group in 1980 (Leonard 1997). According to the US. Census Bureau’s 2006
American Community Survey (ACS) and 2000 Decennial Census, and the Department of Homeland
Security’s Ofﬁce of Immigration Statistics (018) for 2006-07, there were 1.5 million foreign born from
India residing in the United States in 2006 who made up slightly over 4% of all immigrants in 2006. In
2006, the Indian born were the fourth-largest foreign-bom group in the United States after immigrants ﬁom
Mexico, the Philippines, and China (Migration Information Source, July 11‘“. 2008). Henceforth the term
‘Asian Indian’ will be referred to as ‘lndian’ in the study.

3 For this study I have deﬁned transnational Indian entrepreneurs to be (a) entrepreneurs who own their
business enterprise between India and the United States for more than 5 years and receive 50% or more of
their proﬁt! income from business activities between these two countries and (b) travel more than once to
India or to the US. on business annually.

retumees4, and non-migrant Indian entrepreneurs in India. My desire to examine
transnational entrepreneurship among Indians was inspired primarily by the lack of
research studies that take into consideration the heterogeneity of transnational businesses
engaged in by Indian entrepreneurs in both countries. The very few existing studies on
transnational entrepreneurship among Indians have dealt solely with Indian soﬁware
engineers (Biradavolu 2008; Saxenian 2006), where the overwhelming concern has been
with entrepreneurship between narrowly conceived regions in India and the United
States, i.e. between Silicon Valley and Bangalore. My research ﬁlls this gap in research
on transnational entrepreneurship among Indians by widening and diversifying to
incorporate many more urban locations in both countries that can now be said to be truly
global in extent, as well as by including Indian entrepreneurs in the non-technology
business sectors, along with ones in the technology sector.

In migration literature transnational practices are conceptualized as a “multi-Ievel
process (demographic, political, economic, cultural, familial, and religious) that involves
various links between two or more settings rather than a discrete event constituted by a

permanent move from one nation to another” (Gold 2001 :57). While this position

challenges the long standing settler-sojoumer model5 that frames migration between
nations exclusively in terms of its domestic impact and the incorporation of immigrants
to receiving countries, migration scholars like Waldinger & Fitzgerald (2004) and Foner
(1997; 2007) have argued it is not a new phenomenon and had existed even in the earlier

waves of migration to the United States.

 

Henceforth, the returning Immigrant Indian entrepreneurs who are at present lrvmg in India Will be
referred as retumee entrepreneurs in the research.

5 The “sojourner” model is a utilitarian conception of migrants as economic beings divorced from social
settings and working exclusively for money. It ignores the social context of migration (Massey 1986).

2

Nonetheless, there is a shared consensus among migration scholars that despite the
long history of transnational patterns in previous waves of immigration, the distinctive
feature of contemporary transnational practices is its location in a different period of time
in the world economy. Therefore, it is inﬂuenced by a different set of socio-economic
forces, making it more common yet dynamic than before among migrants and non-
migrants. Migration scholars like Gold (2002), Portes (1999; 2000; 2001), Portes &
Borocz (1989), Portes et a1. (1999), Levitt & Jaworsky (2007), and Fong & Luk (2007)
contend that the present form of transnational practices stems from the accelerating
globalization of the world economy, an increase in the ﬂow of international capital, and
the constant international migration of workers meeting the demands of emerging global
markets. As a result of these macrostructural changes in the past three decades, many
more immigrants are able to carry out transnational economic practices by making use of
time-space compression resulting from varied and avid use of technological and
communication options. Moreover, the transportation and communication revolution has
made transnational back-and-forth travels much easier, quicker, and more affordable
(Portes et al. 1999:227; Vertovec 2004; F oner 2000). Additionally, the tolerance for
ethnic pluralism and multiculturism in the late 20th century in the United States has
allowed transnationalism to ﬂourish in the immigrant population. All these aspects
together have impacted the perception of immigration scholars, who now view the
process in a more positive light (Foner 1997:362).

By viewing migration not as a one-way process of movement or simple assimilation
into the host country’s melting pot or multicultural salad bowl, but as a process in which

migrants are simultaneously embedded in multiple sites, they create ‘transnational social

ﬁelds’6. These are “set[s] of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships
through which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and
transformed”(Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004: 1009). By conceptualizing migration
experiences taking place in the ‘social ﬁelds,’ the analysis is led beyond those who
migrate to include those who do not actually migrate but are connected to migrants
through the networks of social relations that are maintained across national borders. The
social ﬁeld perspective therefore includes multiple layers of transnational social ﬁelds, in
addition to multiple sites. These transnational connections are integrated both vertically
and horizontally like a grid that crosses country borders, which reinforces the sites and
also produces tension between them (Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004). These ﬂuid
transnational social ﬁelds or spaces are shared by return migrants, non-immigrants and
immobile residents whose lives are transformed by a steady back-and-forth ﬂow of social
remittances (norms, ideas, practices, and identities), money, and people from numerous
territorial locations (Levitt 2001; Faist 2000).

Interestingly, the sea change in migration scholarship in the past three decades has
been based primarily on the experiences of Latin American and Caribbean migrants in
the United States, who have a particular historical and social relationship to the United
States. This body of empirical work has served as the context for many conceptual
conclusions on migrant transnational business practices. One example of such research is
Portes & Gaurnizo’s (1991) study on 113 Dominican ﬁrms that prospered because of a
cyclical back-and-forth movement through which the transnational entrepreneur made

use of the differential economic opportunities in the United States and the Dominican

 

6 . . . . . .
Transnational socral ﬁelds have been vanously called as transnational socral spaces or transnational
communities (Gold 2002: l 3).

Republic. Similarly, Landolt et al. (1999) documents how the Salvadorian expatriate
community has driven the growth of package delivery ﬁrms that service the manifold
needs of the Salvadorian immigrants in major cities of the United States and their
counterparts in El Salvador.

These grassroots transnational enterprises are made possible by the same
technological innovations in communication and transportation that have fueled large-
scale industrial restructuring (Portes 2000:25 8). Some studies have framed this informal
economy of small-scale enterprises that depend on webs of social networks as a form of
resistance to the conditions of global capitalism. This assertion is based largely on the
resources of the migrants to the United States from Latin American and Caribbean
nations. They are mainly of working class origins and migrate with low levels of human
and cultural capital and poor English language skills. The claim that migrant economic
transnationalism is closely associated to a working class response to global capitalism
overlooks the experience of educated, skilled, middle- or upper-class migrants who
constitute a substantial and increasing share of migrants to the United States. Therefore,
an analysis of transnational entrepreneurship that looks beyond working class migration
will add complexity and depth to the scholarship on transnational entrepreneurship.

Further, transnational practices and entrepreneurship have been portrayed as
‘deterritorialized’ or as ‘boundless’ and for that reason as a liberatory process. In this
framework, the local is often seen as backward, communitarian, closed, and static, while
the transnational (as part of global) is a space that is dynamic, open, rational, and
cosmopolitan (Appadurai 1996:179 cited in Guarnizo and Smith 1998211). In this

conception of transnational business as demonstrated by Ong’s (1999) research on

Chinese entrepreneurs, it is asserted that the erosion to transaction costs and increasing
ﬂexibility of citizenship provisions have created a class of entrepreneurs that occupy
undifferentiated spaces, which allows for contesting the authority and inﬂuence of nation,
class, ethnicity, and race, while permitting the use of these transnational sites for capital
accumulation. Little attention is paid to the fact that transnational entrepreneurial
competency has been much sought by states that want to engage neo-liberal global forces
by looking outside their national borders for entrepreneurs with signiﬁcant human and
ﬁnancial capital who could assist in fulﬁlling their national objectives (Ley 2004; Levitt
& Jaworsky 2007). Therefore an examination of how ungrounded and unfettered is the
world work of transnational entrepreneurs would be an important line of inquiry in a
different Asian sub-population in the United States, as each ethnic group possesses
characteristics that make them unique. In addition, a country’s position in the geo-
political global order, and its distinctive culture and history can considerably inﬂuence
how its emigrants are received in the host country. This also affects emigrants’ chances
of transnational entrepreneurship within both the receiving society and at the broader
global system (Patterson 2006; Glick-Schiller & Levitt 2006), to which I turn next.
The Context of the Study Population and Filling the Gaps in Transnational Research
This study aims to ﬁll the lacunae mentioned above in the existing literature by
empirically analyzing the case of Indian transnational entrepreneurs in the United States
and India. To analyze the investment capital that facilitates transnational connections and
entrepreneurship among Indians, I pay attention to the many resources that Indians use
for their adaptation to the American society. Thus I adopt the migration studies approach

that tends to be economic in focus. I further assume that migrants are motivated by better

career options, education, and improvement in lifestyle or increased income (Massey et
a1. 1993). I state below the context of Indian immigration from the home country, the
characteristics of Indian immigrants as an ethnic group in the United States, and the
Indian government’s state policies that determine the political, social, and economic
contexts of both sending and receiving communities for subsequent return migration
among Indian immigrants.

Contemporary migration from India to the United States began in the mid-19605 and
has accelerated in the four subsequent decades. The Indian migration can be interpreted
from the perspective of a much larger trend of global migration in the wake of the
restructuring of the global capitalist economy and a changing world order (Massey et al.
1998; Portes 1999; Zolberg 1989). The perceived shortage of highly skilled workers—
business professionals, scientists, and medical personnel in the United States—as well as
rapidly expanding US. economic and political interests in the Asia-Paciﬁc region lay
behind the 1965 revision of the US. immigration laws. This was the ﬁrst time the United
States admitted a large number of skilled professionals from India. Twenty-ﬁve years
later, the revision of the Immigration Act in 1990 again substantially increased the
number of technical and specialty temporary workers arriving in the United States under
the temporary H-lB visa program. The Hl-B program became the primary channel for
the arrival of huge numbers of Indian skilled professional migrants in the past thirty years

(Portes & Rumbaut 2006:80; Khadria 2001 :49). Consequently, migration of highly

skilled Indians to the United States and the ensuing “core”7 transnational economic

 

Guarnizo (2000) descrrbes “core” transnationalism as those actrvrtres that “(a) form an integral part of

individual’s habitual life (b) are undertaken on a regular basis and (c) are patterned and therefore somewhat
predictable.” In contrast, “expanded” transnationalism includes migrants who engage in occasional
transnational practices, such as response to natural disasters (Levitt 2001:198).

7

activities by Indians can be understood as an outcome of ongoing and increasing global
integration.

In addition, global articulations of higher education along with global economic
inequality between south and north countries can be perceived to be the major
components of global integration and transformation. Especially after World War II, the
United States emerged as the major destination of higher education for international
students. This has not abated among Indian students. India has remained the leading
country of origin for international students in the United States for the eighth consecutive
year. In 2008—2009, 15.4% (103,260 of 671 ,616) of all international students in the
United States came from India, with China and South Korea being the second and third

largest countries of origin for international students in the United States (Opendoors:

 

 

 

2009)
Table No.1-1:Entry of Indians as International Students in the United States, 2000 -09.
Year 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007- 2008-
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
India 54,664 66,836 74, 603 79,736 80, 466 76,503 83,833 94,563 103,260
(10.0%) (11.5%) (12.7%) (13.9%) (14.2%) (13.5%) (14.4%) (15.2%) (15.4%
of Ian of Ian of lnt'l of Int'l of Int’l of Int’l of lnt’l of Int’l of lnt’l
Total Total Total Total Total Total Total Total Total)
World 547,867 582,996 586,323 572,509 565,039 564,766 582,984 623,805 671,616
Total

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: 'Opendoors': Report on lntemational Student Exchange 20/01; 20/02; 20/03; 20/04; 20/05; 20/06; 20/07,
20/08, 20/09. Institute of lntemational Education; New York; USA.

To become globally competitive, emerging economies like India recognize the

urgency to further train the well educated, and therefore continue to be in a dependent

relationship with western countries. The global articulation of higher education in India—

 

a former British colony—has a long history with the establishment of schools and
universities based on a western style educational system and professional practices.
English is also the ofﬁcial language of higher education in India. With the emergence of
the United States as a dominant economic power since the middle of last century, the
process of internationalization of academic and research personnel has continued.
Examples are foreign aid grants, inter-university programs sponsored by American
universities, and community development efforts in developing countries ﬁnanced by
private foundations, such as the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and others
(Ong et al. 1992:552—53). Thus, the United States was able to exercise considerable
inﬂuence through these economic and community development initiatives. These long-
tenn institutional relationships contributed towards a favorable perception of American
expertise and scholarship. American universities came to be regarded as the best place for
technical training for Indian nationalss.

Meanwhile many highly trained Indians migrated to the United States before the
revision of Immigration Act in 1990 by taking advantage of the VISA allocation system
that was reserved for ‘priority workers; professionals with advanced degrees, or aliens of
exceptional ability’ (Portes & Rumbaut 2006). These “persons of extra-ordinary ability”

or “outstanding researchers” were alleged to have played a role in the “brain drain” from

 

8 Of late, building on the positive and favorable image of American education among Indians, many top
US. universities and institutions are opting to join hands with existing Indian institutions of higher
education and research. Columbia Business School, for instance, has started a student exchange program in
2007 with the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmcdabad. The institutions teamed up to write case
material devised to teach American students about doing business in India. Another example is Carnegie
Mellon, which offers a degree in partnership with a small private institution in India, Sri Sivasubramaniya
Nadar School of Advanced Software Engineering. In this case, most of the course work is done at relatively
inexpensive rates in India, followed by six months in Pittsburg at the end of which, students graduate with a
degree from Carnegie Mellon. The connections with Indian teaching and research institutions are different
from what has been done in China, Singapore, or Quatar, where satellite campuses of US. universities have
been set up (Sengupta 2007).

India at that time. This movement of Indian immigrants corresponded to a signiﬁcant
gain for the United States in highly trained and skilled personnel-(Portes & Rumbaut
2006)

While there has been a steady increase in Indian students migrating to the United
States for graduate education over the past four decades, a much higher proportion and
number of Indians have entered the United States temporarily as technical and temporary
specialty workers on H1 B visas (see ﬁgure 1). The minimum requirement to obtain an
HIB visa is a four year undergraduate degree. So, whether Indians entered the United
States to study or directly to work, a bachelor’s degree would be the minimum
qualiﬁcation possessed. Out of a total of 409,619 HIB workers admitted to the United
States in 2008, 38 percent (154,726) were temporary professional workers from India.
India has been the primary source of professional/technical immigration to the United
States since 1990. Figure 1-1 compares the two major routes of entrance among Indian

immigrants to the United States.

10

Figure No. 1-1: Admission of Indians as Workers with Specialty Occupation and as
International Students in (LS. Universities, 1989 — 2008.

+ Speciality Workers (H1-B)
+ Indian Int'l Students . '

 

1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007

Source: 'Opendoors': Report on International Student Exchange 89/90; 90/91; 90/92; 90/93; 90/94; 90/95; 90/96;
90/97; 90/98; 90/99; 00/20; 20/01; 20I02; 20/03; 20/04; 20/05; 20/06; 20/07; 20/08, 20/09. Institute
of Inbmational Education; New York; USA and Year Book of Immigration Statistics 1992-2008.

As a group, temporary Indian professional workers on HI-B visas are truly
transnational in orientation, with a constant ﬂow of information about immigration
strategies and job opportunities ﬁom successful migrants back to friends, peers, and
relatives in India. They maintain their extensive ties with India because of their short-
terrn stay in the United States and expected return. For the same reason they are less
likely to establish permanent residency in the cities where they work in high tech
industries. However, because of their high numbers, they are not as inconspicuous as the
permanent professional Indian migrants. Sometimes they become the targets of anger and
bitterness of native workers, who complain of unfair competition (Portes & Rumbaut
2006227). Very often the employers of HIB professional Indian workers change their visa

status to permanent residents of the United States.

The ready availability of a sizable pool of technical workers becomes necessary in the
United States and in other developed western nations as modern technology
advancements transform a secondary (industrial) economy into a tertiary economy
(information and knowledge management, administration of capitalist enterprises and
services). This critical shift in advanced economies generates a huge demand for highly
trained professionals. This exceeds the supply of such professionals that developed
countries can effectively produce.

Consequently, the ongoing development of advanced capitalism from innovation and
science and technology strategies that has emerged in the past few years in northern
countries requires attracting and retaining highly trained professionals from all over the
world. This is true of the United States and other western nations like Germany, U.K.,
Denmark, Canada, and Australia. It has to do with the actual international transference
and utilization of human capital resources required to stay ahead in competition, and the
economic growth curve. Attention on the issue of skill shortage is forcefully advocated
by industrial and business associations and technology companies like Microsoft, Google,
and IBM in changing the migration legislation to help companies meet skill demand from
overseas professionals. The hunger for trained labor in the high-tech and other expanding
sectors of the US. economy does not seem to be inﬂuenced by recent business downturns
(Mahroum 2005; Cheng & Yang 1998; Portes & Rumbaut 2006).

In summary, funding and granting institutions, special visa allocations, multinational
organizations, universities, and other knowledge production organizations have come to
play a very crucial role in shaping international mobility from India (Mahroum

2005:220). At the personal level, the attraction of higher education, better working

12

conditions, relatively higher earnings, and occupational opportunities in the United States
have a great effect on emigration from India, where similar opportunities are scarce and
where the highly educated did not have many alternatives during the decades of the 19705
and the 19805. (Cheng & Yang 1998:630).

This mode of entry of the highly skilled Indian immigrants to the United States
therefore creates a positive image for this ethnic group. They join the US labor market,
which is favorable, and beneﬁt from the afﬁrmative characteristics of the resident ethnic
Indian community in the United States. All these factors contribute to a positive context
of reception for Indians in the United States, which has been reﬂected in the highest
proportion (51.3 percent) of Indians being employed in professional specialty
occupations in the US. labor force in 2000. The occupation proﬁle of the Indians in the
United States bears out the close association between high levels of education and being
employed in professional and managerial occupations suggested by Portes & Rumbaut
(2006:77). Out of 629,21 8 Indian-born male workers age 16 and older employed in the
civilian labor force in 2006, 27.4 percent worked in the Information Technology (IT)

sector, where as 20 percent worked in management, business, and ﬁnance, see Table 1-2.

13

Table No. 1-2: Occupation proﬁle of Indian workers in the (LS. Civilian Labor Force

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AgLI 6 and older, 2006.

Indian foreigi born All forei n born

Male Female Male Female
Persons age 16 and older
employed in the Civilian labor 629,218 346,733 13,285,912 8,921,521
force
Total percent 100 1 00 1 00 1 00
Information Technology 27.4% 13.1% 3.9% 1.9%
Management, Business and 20.0% 15.3% 10.2% 9.8%
Finance
Sales 11.4% 11.1% 7.8% 10.9%
Other Sciences and 11.2% 6.2% 4.1% 2.3%
Engineering
Construction, Extraction, and 5.4% 1.5% 26.8% 3.4%
Transportation
Physicians 4.8% 5.8% 1.3% 1%
Education/T raining and 4.7% 8.7% 3.3% 6.9%
Media/Entertainment
Manufacturing, Installation, 4.4% 4.7% 15% 9.4%
and Repair
Administrative Support 4.3% 1 1.9% 5.5% 15.1%
Services 3.3% 5.8% 16.9% 25%
Other Health Care 1.8% 6.1% 0.9% 3%
practitioners
Social Services and Legal 0.8% 1.2% 1% 1.9%
Health Care support 0.3% 2.7% 0.6% 5.2%
Registered Nurses 0.2% 5.9% 0.3% 3.3%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: 2006 American Community Survey in Indian Immigrants in the United States; Migration Information Source;

July 11th. 2008.

Indian immigrants are likely to come from urban centers—which in the Indian

 

context indicate a certain modernity, western orientation, and familiarity with English—
and also from middle and upper classes and castes. Although India is a low-income and
mainly rural, agrarian country, where 27.8 percent of the population lived in poverty in
2004—059, it is not the poorest citizens who migrate to the United States. Rather the most
erudite and sophisticated migrate: people trained in medicine, economics, nursing,
engineering, or management. The ambitious young people endowed with cultural, human,

and social capital are those that leave for the United States, in an attempt to reduce “the

 

9
According to Planning Commission, Government of India (2006, Table 2), the all India consumption

poverty head count ratio of 27.8 percent is reported based on the 2004-05 National Sample Survey, with
poverty in the worst state rising to 46.5 percent.

14

gap between available salaries and work conditions in their own countries and those
regarded there as acceptable for people with their education” (Portes & Rumbaut 1996).
This makes the contemporary Indian migration a selective process.

Another signiﬁcant impact of the rapid technological advancement and economic
growth in the northern countries has been the outﬂow of capital (e. g. Foreign Direct
Investments (FDI), loans, and equity) and technologies (e. g. equipment, machinery, and
technology patents) into countries like China, Mexico, India, and Brazil for proﬁts since
labor costs in developing nations are low. Since the 19705 this has become an
increasingly viable option because of industrial techniques that greatly reduced the
turnover time of ﬁxed capital. Additionally, investors could avoid risks associated with
changing wage levels and political instability in their home countries.

The penetration of ﬁnancial resources and technical know-how in the last decades of
the 20th century placed the transnational companies in contact with a large number of
professionals in sending countries. For the professional who worked in these multi-
national corporations (MN C), they had opportunities to travel to advanced countries for
skill upgrading and technical training, exposure to western life style and work ethics.
These in turn encouraged many professionals to emigrate from countries in the south in
pursuit of greater material enjoyment and the higher standard of living in northern
countries (Ong et al. 1992; Cheng & Yang 1998; Gold 2002). It can be argued that an
international difference in occupational speciﬁc earnings rather than aggregate per capita

income explains the propensity for migration among professionals.

15

In the Indian context, the inﬂow of foreign capital and technical knowledge from
western and richer nations could be considered a major harbinger of Indian economic
transnational activities in the 19805, which gathered strength in the 19905 and since.
However, to appreciate the ripple effect of MNCs and the motives for individual
transnational entrepreneurship between India and the United States, one must recognize
the changes in Indian state policies since the mid 19805. These provided an enabling
macro environment, ﬁrst for the MN C5 to complement the growth of indigenous Indian
industries by making them more competitive, and second by encouraging private export
businesses. Thus, the motives for emigration by Indians to the United States and their
transnational entrepreneurship can be understood as being context-based interpretations
that correspond to a community’s understanding of itself, both in the United States and in
India (Mills 1940 cited in Gold 1997:412; Gold 2002).

India begins to play ‘Catch Up ’ for re-integrating into the Global Economy

Ironically, developing nations can experience enormous economic growth even when
there is a substantial emigration of highly educated labor, which has been true in the
cases of Taiwan and Singapore in the late 19705 and 19805. The process of catch up is a
self-accelerating process. As low and middle income nations successfully integrate
technology and expand economies, they increase the capacity to absorb highly skilled
workers, thus retaining a greater proportion of this class of labor, while simultaneously
attracting returning migrants to their home countries. The returning migrants play a
crucial role in the transfer of technology as well as social and ﬁnancial remittances in the
process of global integration (Saxenian 2006; 2008; Gold 2007; Cheng 1999; Lowell &

Gerova 2004).

16

To a great extent, India’s emergence as a top global innovator for high-tech products
and services in recent years has much to do with the importation of technological skills of
overseas Indians, which is perceived as important to building India’s national capacity
(Saxenian 2006:281—286). India aspires to maximize on ‘brain gain/circulation/ return’
and make effective use of foreign-trained Indian immigrants and nationals to act as a
magnet for foreign and diasporic investments in knowledge-based industries (Saxenian
2006; 2008; Kapur & Ramamurti 2001).

Complementing the above reasoning and to provide opportunities for domestic and

foreign investments, there have been steady but dramatic shifts in Indian state policies
since the 1980510, prioritizing economic growth by embracing Indian capital as the main

ruling ally. India adopted the ‘pro-business’ 11 development strategy, similar to South

Korea and Brazil (during some time periods), where the Indian state gradually became

highly interventionistl2 by giving precedence to economic growth as a national goal. But,
unlike much of high economic growth in East Asian countries, the Indian economy has
grown within the framework of a democracy.

The pro-business development strategy during the 19805 somewhat opened up the
Indian economy to both foreign investors and foreign goods. Import liberalization in

1981 was signiﬁcant but short lived as Indian businessmen demanded protection from

 

10 From 1950 to 1980, Indian political and policy orientations were left leaning and more redistributive. It
followed the import-substitution model of development.

11 . . . . . .

There 15 a distinction between pro-busmess and pro-market strategies. A pro-market strategy supports
new entrants and consumers, whereas a pro-business strategy mainly supports established producers. A pro-
market rests on the idea that free play of the market will lead to efﬁcient allocation of resources, as well as
promote competitiveness, hence boosting production and growth. This was the thinking and inspiration
behind the ‘Washington Consensus’ on development during the 19805 and 19905 (Kohli 2007290).

12 . . . . . . . .

Kohlr (2007:89) deﬁnes an mterventromst state to be one that prioritizes economic growth as a state
goal, which ruthlessly supports capitalists, represses labor, mobilizes economic nationalism to provide
social glue, and channels ﬁrm activities to produce both for protected domestic markets and for exports.

17

cheaper imports. The Indian government’s primary commitment during the 19805 was to
achieve economic grth by establishing Indian businesses, and only secondarily to
adopt an abstract notion of “openness” or “laissez faire.” While Indian business groups
received signiﬁcant concessions on corporate and personal taxes, what was more
signiﬁcant—and has had a lasting impact—was the state’s active participation in

promoting the growth of industries like computers and electronics. The state provided

supply-sidel3 support to these industries, but also maintained pressure on them to stay
competitive by minimizing protection. Summarily, the major economic policy changes
during the 19805 created a new pro-business, growth-oriented model of development in
India. India’s nationalist-capitalist model shared many traits with East Asian countries,
and partnered with established, pro-indigenous businesses and against labor and only
selectively linked the Indian economy to the world, often through trade rather than
capital.

The state’s pro-business attitude in the 19805 yielded a rise in private investment and
an enhanced role of the private sector in the Indian economy. The import of technology
became easier and foreign exchange was available. This allowed for the accessibility of a
variety of scarce inputs and helped make use of industrial capacity at a high level. As a
result, a segment of Indian capital became more efﬁcient and patterns of business

organization and lobbying underwent signiﬁcant changes, which prepared them to deal

 

l3Supply side economics is a macroeconomic school of thought, where it is believed that economic growth
can be most effectively created using incentives like adjusting income or the capital gains tax, etc. for
production of (supply) goods and services that people value (Source: The Concise Encyclopedia of
Economics).

18

with foreign competition in the 19905. These internal changes in the private sector of

India set the stage for further reforms in the state policies of 199014.
A signiﬁcant departure in the reforms of the 19905 from those in the 19805 was in the

area of India’s external economic relations, including trade, foreign investment, and

ﬁnancial relations”. Starting in 1991 import quotas were lifted—even if fully in 2001—
tariffs declined steadily, the currency was devalued, the foreign investment regime was
liberalized, and restrictions on external ﬁnancial transactions were made easier by
removing various restrictions. Some of these reforms helped Indian businesses, while
others exerted enormous competitive pressure on them. In implementing the external
economic reforms in 1990, the Indian state entered into a new social contract with Indian
businesses, putting the full weight of the state behind them with an understanding that
Indian businesses had to become more competitive in the international arena.

To put it differently, with further changes in the economic reforms in the 19905, the
Indian state responded to a sharply changed world and hitched its wagon to the global
economy (Kohli 2007; Krueger & Chinoy 2002). The impact of opening up the Indian

economy has been signiﬁcant, with structural increase in India’s potential growth to

 

14On the political economy from, India could never fully replicate the state-capital alliance for the rapid
grth model of development of East Asian countries because of the nature of power in the Indian state
and fragmented authority structure. Besides, within the framework of democracy with the underlying class
basis of state power, it was impossible to completely adopt the pro-business growth model. The clearest
economic manifestation of these political upheavals was the gradual increase of ﬁscal pressures. Most
noteworthy were the inability to limit a variety of public expenditures and the inability to collect more
revenues (Kohli 2007:103). As a result, India‘s deﬁcit on the current account increased throughout the
eighties. From the mid-eighties it was pushed into greater reliance on high interest commercial loans from
international banks to ﬁnance the deﬁcits. The net outcome was that her external debt tripled during this
decade of high growth. The above scenario set the stage in the 19905 for adopting the structural adjustment
rogram advocated by the IMF and WB.

The variety of India’s industrial reforms was well under way during the 19805. The reforms in the 19905
can be perceived as a continuation of those reforms, that is, further delicensing, tax concessions, opening of

newer areas to private business which were previously reserved for the public sector, and controlling labor
(Kohli 2007: 104).

19

nearly 8 percent since 2003, compared to 5 percent to 6 percent in the previous two

decades”. Productivity growth has been the major component behind the increase in
GDP growth, contributing nearly half of overall growth since 2003, compared with a
contribution of roughly one-quarter in the 19805 and 19905. The productivity estimate is
useful as it provides a benchmark with which to assess actual growth outcomes (Poddar
& Yi 2007z6).

The opening up of the Indian economy to the global markets by way of reforms in the
19805 and more so in the 19905 presented a unique opportunity to the overseas Indian
immigrant community and Indian immigrants in the United States to invest and establish
business with India. Around 200,000 Indian-American families are headed by
millionaires, and the median household annual income of US. residents of Indian origin
is $70,002, much higher than the median US. national income of $49,000 in 2000
(Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India 2004 in Goel et al. 2007:91; Portes &
Rumbaut 2006:89). In addition, more than 20 percent of US. technology ﬁrms were
started by Indian immigrants, and about 44 percent of Indian immigrants hold managerial
positions (Goel et al. 2007:91). Given the professional proﬁle and success of the Indian
community in the United States as well as their social and ﬁnancial position in American
society, some Indian immigrants were inspired to participate and become active in the
process of economic grth and development of their home country. Their involvement
in India’s progress has been through social and ﬁnancial remittances, networks, and
access to knowledge and markets. Thus, this process has transformed the process of

‘brain drain’ and has created a great ‘brain gain/circulation’ opportunity.

 

l6India’s growth rate for the year 2007-08 was 6.7% at constant (1999-2000) price in the year 2008-09
(Source: Press Information Bureau; Government of India, 29th May 2009).

20

The Non-resident Indians (NR1) from the United States have had signiﬁcant impact as
mentors, investors, catalysts for policy changes, and direct sources of returning talent.
Above all, the Indian expatriate community in the United States played a critical role in
promoting India’s software and business process outsourcing boom. As Indians became
senior executives at many of the major US. corporations such as IBM, General Electric,
Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, and American Express they inﬂuenced the companies’ decisions
to invest in or outsource work to India. In part, the individuals’ own success supported
the emerging positive reputation of Indian engineers. Also, Indian executives—like
Khailash J oshi of IBM, Ranga Puranik of Motorola, and Radha Basu of HP-India—had
direct experience with India that lent credibility to their assurances that India’s
infrastructure and bureaucratic problems could be overcome. Additionally, the above
mentioned Indian immigrants in the United States and others like them had chosen to
return to India for a few years to supervise U.S. investments or outsourcing contracts, and
to assist in training manpower to match U.S. performance standards (Saxenian 2000;
2006; Goel et al. 2007). By 2002, the combination of recession in Silicon Valley and
growing professional and entrepreneurial opportunities in India prompted for the ﬁrst
time a sustained interest among US. educated Indian engineers to return to India
(Saxenain 2008).

From the 19805 onward, there were other compelling reasons for Indian immigrants
to pursue economic transnational activities in India. The technology sector had produced
a shift in the global alignment of capital and labor, and tolerance in the United States for
ethnic pluralism and multiculturalism had been growing since the 19605. Also, effortless

accessibility to the immense potential of communication technology to compress distance

21

and space, and increasingly cheaper options for travels to India were important. All these
factors provided for new possibilities of creating nationalities, identities, and a sense of
homeland among the dispersed Indian population in the United States (Gold 2007; Foner
2007). Contemporary Indian migrants, who are highly skilled, possess competency in the
English language, and who are familiar with both Indian and American cultures and
peoples, have the ability to control the outcomes of their investment (Dossani 2002).
Taken together, transnational Indian immigrants are in a position to choose among
countries of settlement to realize the full potential of their transnational lives, just as other
groups of highly skilled transnational entrepreneurs among Israeli or Taiwanese or
Chinese immigrants in the United States (Gold 2007; Saxenian 2006).

Since the mid 19805 an important macro factor has been the dependence of India’s IT
sector on US. investment, research and development (R&D), technology transfer, labor
off shoring and export markets. In fact, the United States accounted for about two-thirds
of all exports in 2003—04, with all of Europe accounting for about 23 percent. Earnings

from India’s IT sector have been decisive in attaining the balance of payment surplus and

the building of India’s sizable foreign exchange reserves in recent years (NASSCOMl7
Strategic Review 2005 in Sen & Frankel 2005).

Further, the expansion of foreign direct investments (FDIs) in India’s IT and
electronics industries has attracted Indian technology professionals to return to India.
More than 30,000 technology professionals have been estimated to return to India since

2004 (Rai 2005 in Goel et al 2007). For the returning migrant the main attractions are

 

17 National Association of Software and Services Companies. NASSCOM’s members are primarily
companies nm by Indian nationals in the business of software development, software services, and IT-
enabled/BPO services.

22

western style of management practices and work cultures, competitive global pay
packages, and encouraging career prospects reinforced by a weak IT job market in the
United States in 2003—04. For example, out of the total 2,300 employees at General
Electric’s John F Welch R & D Center at Bangalore, 700 had returned from the United
States in recent years. Notably, returning migrants from the United States—particularly
in the technology sector—usually establish their own companies and transnational
businesses, rather than work for big multinational corporations or local ﬁrms. A category
of returning migrant transnational entrepreneurs located in India is thereby constituted
(Goel et al. 2007).

Similar to the governments of many countries of emigration, (e. g. China, Israel,
Brazil, etc.), the Indian state plays a catalyzing role by strengthening the support

infrastructure to tap into the knowledge base of transnational entrepreneurs. Recently,

India has passed legislation18 that advances an accommodating notion of Indian
citizenship as a strategy to accumulate capital, power, and social prestige in the global
arena (F aist(a) 2000:201—204; Levitt(b) 2001:204; Ong 1999z6). The Indian government
is highly responsive to the challenges faced by economic transnational actors and for that
reason established policies of tax exemptions for soliciting remittances. For instance, for
non-resident Indians the savings accounts and annuities with the State Bank of India earn
interest rates higher than those available to Indians in the country. Similarly, by granting

“Overseas Citizenship of India” cards the Indian state facilitates the economic and

 

‘8 The constitution of India does NOT allow dual citizenship, i.e. holding Indian citizenship and
citizenship of a foreign country simultaneously. The government of India grants Overseas Citizenship of
India (OCI) often mistakenly referred to as ‘dual citizenship.’ People who migrated from India and
acquired citizenship in a foreign country other than Pakistan or Bangladesh are eligible for the granting of
DC] as long as their home countries allow dual citizenship in some form under their local laws (Ministry of
Home Affairs; Government of India; 2006).

23

political incorporation of their expatriate communities, irrespective of their place of
residence (Portes & Rumbaut 2006; Gold 2000; Levitt 2007; Portes 2001; Faist(b) 2000).
The public policy rationale for these initiatives is based on information asymmetries
between the two countries and the previously uncaptured synergies from activities whose
beneﬁts exceed their private ones. Thus, the Indian state plays a crucial role in shaping
economic transnational practices.

The success in India’s IT sector and grth of software exports through the 19805
and 19905 positively affected India’s capitalism as well as the general business climate in
India. As a result, ﬁrst time entrepreneurs and family owned businesses by non-migrant
Indians were persuaded to engage in export businesses with the United States in non-
traditional sectors. The change in Indian state policies along with the participation of US.
transnational entrepreneurs as a business community of practice facilitated an atmosphere
in India in which non-migrant entrepreneurial spirit has ﬂourished and succeeded in the
last two decades.

In addition, the economic boom has triggered market reforms in other knowledge-
based sectors—including health care services, engineering, ﬁnancial and accounting
services, and media and entertainment—as well as in land-based industries dealing with
tangible goods like agro products, textiles, and high fashion to enhance India’s role in the
global economy (Lessinger 1999:76; Kapur & Ramamurti 2001 :23).

It is in this present global, political, and economic context that the emergence and
continuity of transnational business activities as a source of income and capital
accumulation across national boundaries among Indian immigrants in the United States,

retumee and non-migrants entrepreneurs in India must be understood.

24

Research Question:

As discussed in the earlier section, Indian immigrants in the United States possess a
high volume of human capital. By human capital, I mean an individual’s investment in
personal productivity, where productivity is understood to mean person’s ability to add
value by doing work. Formal education and work experience are the essential forms of
human capital (Light & Gold 2000:87). The voltune of human capital embedded in this
ethnic group also becomes evident from the two most favored US. immigration
legislative provisions used by Indians for entering the United States, i.e. as foreign
students for graduate education in American university or as technical and temporary
specialty workers on an Hl-B visa.

This has led scholars studying Indian technology entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley
(Saxenian 2002 and 2006; Dossani 2002; Biradavolu 2008) and highly skilled migrant
Indian professionals and engineers in the United States (Chakravartty 2006; Bagchi 2001;
Harvey 2008; Radhakrishnan 2008) to use the variable of ‘htunan capital’ as the most
important explanatory factor in their respective investigations on immigration and
employment networks and occupational integration in American economy. Similarly, the
few existing empirical research studies on other highly skilled transnational
entrepreneurs—including Israeli, Chinese and Taiwanese by Gold (2002), Saxenian
(2006), and Li (1998)—have employed the inherent human capital in these ethnic groups
as one of the aspects to explain the transnational entrepreneurship between their
homeland and the United States.

Nonetheless, the lack of coverage of what and how pre-migratory social and

economic conditions inﬂuence decisions among the highly skilled Indian to migrate to

25

the United States leaves major gaps in understanding the close association of human

capital as a class-based resource, particularly from a country that has the largest number

of illiterates in the world ”(Rediff November 21St 2007). The studies on Indian
technology entrepreneurs have neglected to examine how human capital as a form of
class resource, like ﬁnancial capital, offers the added potential for private enterprise and
capital accumulation, besides the rewards that come from group membership. The
advantages from having human capital in addition to cultural and social capital have been
demonstrated to be vital for business success in numerous studies on entrepreneurship
among different ethno-racial groups and categories (Light & Gold 2000:88; Valdez
2008).

Therefore the linkage between cultural and human capital of highly skilled Indian
transnational entrepreneurs merits close examination. By cultural capital, which is
normally possessed by members of higher classes, I mean the ‘culture of
entrepreneurship’, of skills, knowledge, competencies, tastes, attitude, and values
transmitted in the course of socialization at home as well as in school to be successful in
the market economy. Bourdieu (1986 cited in Light and Gold 2000:91) asserts that this
non-material cultural knowledge can be used to owners’ ﬁnancial advantage in numerous
ways in various circumstances in ones’ life span. My study addresses this gap in
transnational entrepreneurship among Indians.

Finally, class-based resources and cultural capital also determine social relationships

that facilitate entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs of all socio-economic class backgrounds

 

‘9 India’s national literacy rate grew to 66% in 2007 from 12% at the end of the British rule in 1947, which

is well below the world average literacy rate of 84% (UNICEF 2009: India Statistics; Crossette, B. in New
York Times, Dec. 9‘" 1998).

26

extensively use social networks and the social capital embedded in them for starting and
sustaining their transnational business enterprises. However, the vast majority of research
on transnational entrepreneurial networks in the United States has been focused on the
extraordinary resilience and beneﬁts to be gotten from networks used by resource-poor
Latin American and Caribbean migrant groups to compensate for their lack of human and
cultural capital (Portes 2000:258; Guarnizo & Smith 1998). This includes research on
Dominican entrepreneurs in the informal economy by Itzigsohn (1994); Salvadorian
transnational entrepreneurs by Landolt et al. (1999), and Otavalan entrepreneurs of
Ecuador by Kyle (1994). This predisposition to study migrant groups from contiguous
countries of the United States has been to the detriment of a better understanding of
transnational immigrant entrepreneurs, who might use very different type of networks
either because of their middle or upper class upbringing or by virtue of profession. Lin
(1998) studied Chinese entrepreneurship in New York’s Chinatown where he observed
that foreign investments such as in shops and branches of foreign banks had transformed
the character of ethnic businesses from previously small family oriented businesses.
Likewise Zhou’s (1992 cited in Fong & Luk 2007:9) study notes that many professional
ﬁrms of New York’s Chinatown were supported by ﬁnances from Taiwan and Hong
Kong. My study on highly skilled Indian entrepreneurs will provide insights into the
relationship between cultural and social capital, and how they reinforce each other, even
though these are distinctive forms of capital that entrepreneurs strategically employ for
their transnational business.

The research that follows attempts to address these issues in the transnational

literature dealing with highly skilled Indian entrepreneurs, as well as to ﬁll the lacunae

27

noted in the earlier section of this chapter. In order to address the central research
objective of how and why Indians maintain transnational business enterprises between
the United States and India, I have formulated two issue or procedural subquestions
(Creswell 2007:109). Issue-oriented sub-questions will help in breaking down the
explanations of the phenomenon of economic transnational practices among Indians into
subtopics for examination. They are as follows:
(a) How do Indian immigrant entrepreneurs use their class-based cultural capital, their
Indian and American college/university education and skills (human capital), and social
capital for their transnational business?
(b) What are the pro-business Indian policies that have created an enabling macro
environment for transnational activities between the United States and India?
Research Methods

The research is a multi-sited and bi-national ethnographic study on the theme of
economic transnationalism among Indians in the United States and India, within the
broader ﬁeld of contemporary lntemational Migration and Globalization. The study is not
dictated by conducting comparative research to establish differences and similarities
between two locations. Rather, it is directed towards understanding economic
transnationalism as a process, and how Indian entrepreneurs as global agents20 employ

their class-based cultural, human and social capital for conducting their businesses

worldwide.

 

20 Transnational agents are those whose practices are regularly developed across international borders.
Global agents are a subclass of transnational agents whose practices are regulme developed not just
transnationally but at worldwide levels. Local agents are those individuals and organizations whose social
practices are mainly concentrated in the same locality in which they are based. National agents are those
whose practices are regularly developed at a national level (Mato (1997) in Gille &O’ Riain 2002:273).

28

In order to avoid a one-sided inquiry that focuses exclusively on the transnational
economic activities from one country, I chose home and the host countries (India and the
United States) as major sites for the research. Within these two countries, I have selected
a few urban centers as “places” in which my respondents have decided to live. One of my
objectives as a researcher was also to analyze these “places” as projects of capitalist
forces and modernity. The selection of urban centers in both countries was guided by the
perspective of how transnational Indians understand the place of their locality in the
global scheme of things, and the transnational actions they take to transform and shape
that “place” (Gille & O’Riain 2002).

My dissertation uses data from in-depth interviews with 42 transnational
entrepreneurs. I adopted a stratiﬁed purposive sampling technique in the selection of the
respondents in both countries that had particular characteristics. This sampling technique
allowed for a comprehensive understanding of the experiences of transnational Indians
who are very similar to each other and yet differed in age, class, type and level of
education, and physical location.

I interviewed three categories of transnational respondents, which included Indian
immigrants in the United States, retumee migrants from the United States in India, and
non-migrant Indians. All of the 42 respondents were owners and founders or partners of
private transnational business for a minimum of 5 to 6 years. To build variation in the
data set, I included two age cohorts of entrepreneurs, that is above the age of 50 years or
who have migrated to the United States between 1970—79, and those below the age of 50
years or who have migrated to the United States between 1980—99. In addition, my data

set included entrepreneurs from two different business sectors: those whose transnational

29

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businesses dealt with tangible material goods, mainly luxury goods (e. g. handmade
textiles, fashion and costume jewelry) and agro products (e. g. canned fruits or organic
food items etc.) and others who were in the technology (e. g. IT, IT enabled solutions,
Financial services, or Biotechnology) businesses. All the respondents frequently traveled
to India or to the United States (4 to 6 times either way) for business activities and
maintained a high intensity of exchange and contacts with people associated with their
business, class mates, friends, family members, work and professional colleagues on a
regular basis in both countries.

Why Study the Indian Case?

A major contribution of this research on transnational Indians, like any study of
global migration of a population with high levels of education and skill, like the
Taiwanese, Canadians, Chinese, Israelis, is also a study of how these immigrants use
their reservoir of resources to become transnationals. This process is believed to be
distinctive to each migrant population and different from members of the native
population who are endowed with the same resources. The challenge, then, is to explain
the variation in the ways that economic transnational migrants (and non-migrants)
manage to rotate between host country and homeland or how other transnational ties
mutually inﬂuence each other. Therefore, the study of transnational Indians can be
perceived as an attempt to give voice to a group of new migrants who have contributed
disproportionately in the most dynamic part of the US. and Indian economy—the high
tech sector—in the recent past, in addition to restoring balance in immigration and

transnational literature. I consider this aspect of the research to be a timely contribution.

30

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Second, the study will highlight how the power dynamics of class resources (cultural,
human, and social) and nationality intersect within social ﬁelds or spaces, as different
social groups have distinct relationships to mobility and to the resource ﬂows of capital,
commodities, knowledge, and information. The research will conﬁrm empirically how
global macro-level processes interact with local lived experiences, which are increasingly
perceived as important avenues for socio-economic development in emigrating countries.
The study is intended to contribute to debates on national development in the context of
transnational activities.

Finally, a transnational approach for this research allows for studying economic
practices as a dynamic cross-border network process, and to explore how state’s policies
combine forces or resist such entrepreneurship by migrants and non-migrants. It helps us
to understand economic transnational experiences of constituents both in the home and
host country.

Organization of the Study

The ﬁrst three chapters of this dissertation set the stage for the analysis that follows.
Chapter One primarily provides the rationale for the study by presenting the main foci of
the research as well as offering an introduction to research questions. Chapter Two
reviews the literature on the structure and function of networks that allows for analyzing
transnational social ﬁeld(s) or spaces between the non-contiguous nations of India and
the United States. By underscoring the signiﬁcance of a variety of networks ties,
contexts, and values, I discuss the impact of the societal structural as well as the agency
of the transnational entrepreneurs in fulﬁlling the goals of transnational business. Chapter

Three elaborates on the research design and methods utilized in the study, data collection

31

 

 

 

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process, sample characteristics, and analysis procedures. Chapter Four describes the
economic transnational activities initiated from the United States by Indian entrepreneurs
in the technology domain, as well as in the tangible material goods sector like chemicals,
fashion and designer jewelry, and agro products. The chapter is intended to give readers
an idea of the diverse use of cultural, human and social capital and heterogeneity of
networks dictated by the nature of transnational business and also by unevenness in the
forms of capital among migrant cohorts from India to the United States. Chapter Five
reports on how the economic transnational process unfolds in India, primarily led by
retumee entrepreneurs from the United States mainly in the technology sector, and non-
migrant transnational Indian entrepreneurs in businesses dealing with material goods such
as processed food, tea, spices, and luxury goods like handmade textiles and herbal
medicine. This chapter highlights the extraordinary power of transnational networks,
which are utilized by entrepreneurs as a source of social capital to advance their global
enterprise. Chapter Six discusses how immigrant, retumee entrepreneurs in particular re-
articulate their identity from the meaning they derive from their transnational enterprise
and cross-border cultural experiences. This has been enabled by recent changes in the
Indian citizenship laws and policies. The concluding chapter summarizes the key ﬁndings
of the research and utilizes these conclusions to make recommendations for future

research on transnational practices among high skilled entrepreneurs.

32

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Chapter - 2
Literature Review

The main objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of the interrelated
networks of power that effect the success of Indian transnational entrepreneurs in the
United States and India. I use a network-based transnational perspective as an
explanatory framework. In this chapter I detail my reasons for this approach and then
review the sociological literature on three forms of capital—cultural, human, and social. I
argue that the strategic use of these forms of capital generates and motivates transnational
networks. As status resources, they support the transnational business actions and
practices of highly skilled entrepreneurs. This notion hitherto has received scant attention
in transnational entrepreneurship discourse. I end by providing a conceptual explanatory
framework for this research.

Network perspective for explaining transnational practices:

The transnational paradigm emphasizes the ability of migrants to combine resources,
connections, and identities available from multiple locations so as to maximize their
freedom and independence from restrictions imposed by any one nation state, and to
minimize obligations and drawbacks associated with societal hierarchies, gender
ideologies, patriotism, and citizenship (Gold 2002213). This vision, which generally
emphasizes potential gain over immeasurable loss, is based on networks as the essential
foundation for social organization and resource mobilization.

For the purpose of this research, I use the deﬁnition of network offered by Gold
(2005), “[as an] approach [that] emphasizes that migration is embedded in a series

political, ethnic, familial, and communal relationships and environments, including some

33

that cross borders. Through it, we see that migrating populations remain connected to
more than one national context. A network approach understands migration as a
collective process shaped by both agency and structure (p. 259).” For this reason, the
network perspective is a useﬁrl strategy to study how resources, capital, knowledge,
information, goods, and ideas ﬂow through particular conﬁgurations of social and
symbolic patterns of ties or bonds (F aist(a) 2000). The approach establishes a socio-
historical perspective, showing the weight of previous migratory events on the course of
those occurring at a given time. It shows the shaping of migration systems linking
particular countries in precise relationships through connections and ties developed as a
result of continuous human inﬂows (Meyer 2001 :93).

In recent times the network approach has become popular among migration scholars
because of its emphasis on the relational aspect, which allows for a broader examination
of the contextual aspects for transnational actions—i.e. kinship groups, economic
activities, communities, and nation states—both in the countries of origin and settlement
(Gold 2005). Further, Waldinger (2008) and Waldinger and Fitzgerald (2004) state that
the multiplicity of involvement that migrants are able to sustain both in the home and
host societies is due to state and citizenship policies, which act as powerful conditioning
factors. This makes transnational actions and practices both social and political
phenomenon that transform the notion of home and host into transnational and global
spaces. It frames migration not as a one-way path but as a dynamic process of networking
and linkages (Mahroum et al. 2006).

Thus, the network approach has considerably enriched the understanding of migration

processes in various ways. It challenges the neo-classical economic idea that depicts

34

wage differentials to be the primary determining factor for migration. This theoretical
framework perceives migration as a result of geographical differences in the availability
of and demand for labor, such that workers will leave countries with large supplies of
labor and less capital (the push factor) for a destination where economic opportrmities
and wages are greater because of short supply of labor (the pull factor). This model sees
migration as an individual’s undertaking to optimize expected income (Massey et al.
1993; Portes & Borocz 1989). The critics of the neo-classical explanation point out that
profound transformations in social and economic institutions mobilize labor for reasons
beyond individual utility maximization (Massey 1990). The neo-classical model, thus,
fails to incorporate the larger structural aspects of migration.

On the other hand, the macro theoretical framework of the World-system understands
that migration has little to do with wage rates or employment differences between
countries. It makes the case that contemporary immigration waves are a consequence of
socio-economic, political, and cultural transformation that go along with the penetration
of capitalist markets into noncapitalist or precapitalist societies and the incorporation of
these societies into the global world-economy. Therefore, rather than attributing
migration exclusively to economic factors or individual agency, World-system theorists
argue that actions carried out by capitalists and states acting on their behalf in peripheral
countries lead to disruption of existing economic, social, and institutional arrangements.
This results in massive dislocation of people from traditional ways of life (Portes &
Borocz 1989; Gold 2005), thereby acting as a driving force of migration.

Therefore, choice-based micro-neoclassical theory—which emphasizes individual

agency rather than the impact of societal structures—and World-system macro-structural

35

 

 

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theory—which sees migration as structurally-determined without individual agency—
have several divergent assumptions. However, they each attempt to explain migration at a
single level of analysis—micro or macro—rather than accommodating multiple factors
and relationships. By engaging on a single-level analysis, these analytical frameworks
minimize the inﬂuence on migration of human groups and relations as sources of
motivation, support, and meaning (Castles & Miller 1998; Faist(a) 2000; Zelizer 2002
cited in Gold 2005:258). Both models also disregard issues of power—inequalities in
categories including class, gender, ethnicity, and legal status—and their effects on
resources, responsibilities, and decision-making power. These are major considerations of
social stratiﬁcation in all migrant population and social groups (Gold 2005:25 8).

Finally, the disproportionate emphasis on labor migration in both neo-classical and
World-systems theory conceals identity-based and collective motives for migration,
including military conﬂict, forced migration, religiously-motivated travel, family
uniﬁcation, and cultural links between peoples. Basch et al. (1997:12 cited in Gold
2005:25 8) state “World-system theorist[s] have tended to reduce migration to labor
migration and immigrants to workers, eliminating all discussions of the many different
racial, ethnic or national identities which shape people’s actions and consciousness.”

In sharp contrast to the micro-neo-classical theory and the macro-structural theory of
World-system, the new paradigm of transnationalism takes into account major concerns
of both micro and macro perspectives. Hence it can be deemed as a meso-level middle
range theory. Similar to micro tradition, it afﬁrms the importance of networks, contexts,
and local value and also pays attention to the macro approaches of immigration, large

scale economic, political, and legal structures within which immigrants organize their

36

lives. To cite Gold (19972410), “it offers an approach for synthesizing structural and
personal reasons for migration.” Transnational networks are therefore governed by a
dense network of social relations. It offers an alternative explanation to permanent
immigration by emphasizing the ﬂuid and ongoing nature of the process, as a result of
which ideas, resources, and people change locations and migrants and nonmigrants
develop meanings to multiple settings. That is why personalized transnational networks
now command a new respect to understand the conditions of ﬂexible capital
accumulation and of late capitalism in the 21St century (Tseng 1995; Zhou & Tseng 2001;
Gold 1997). A case in point is that of the Indian and Chinese professionals in Silicon
Valley who became key intermediaries linking US. businesses to low-cost software
expertise in India and Taiwan, by constructing a strong two-way relationship between
technology communities in Silicon Valley, Taiwan and India respectively. In these cases,
entrepreneurial networks provided the Valley’s skilled immigrants with resources
unavailable to mainstream competitors—cultural know how, language skills, and contacts
to build business relationships in Asia (Saxenian 2000:258). Likewise, Gold (1997:419)
mentions diasporic groups like Jews, Armenians, Parsis, and Overseas Chinese who are
especially active in transnational economic activities, indicating a clear relationship
between their ethnicity and global involvement.

Furthermore, unlike World-system or neo-classical theory, the network-based
transnational perspective makes provision for explaining the reverse migration of highly
skilled and talented people—usually former expatriates—from developed countries of the
West to their home countries. This is particularly true in the case of Asian countries like

China, Taiwan, Korea, and India that have experienced a rising economic growth in the

37

recent decades. Of late, many rapidly growing economies of the global “South” have
embraced policies similar to those of the developed countries in order to compete for
talent, including among their expatriates, as these countries make technological progress
and transform to become knowledge-based economies. To quote Mahroum, “the motion
of brain drain and brain gain might be going in all directions: north-north, north-south,
south-north, and south-south (2000223).” The netwOrk perspective allows for
understanding the connection between sending and receiving countries not as a
relationship of losers and winners, but as a global circulation of population and labor,
which in turn has contributed to changing the proﬁle, perceptions, and actions of
contemporary migrants. The dramatic changes in economic globalization and
restructuring pose new opportunities as well as challenges for all the countries that can be
reasoned from a transnational point of view (Wadhwa et.al. 2009; Chacko 2007; Rarnji
2006; Saxenian 2008; 2006, 2005).

Waldinger (2008), Fitzgerald (2008), Faist (2000; 2008), Levitt & de la Dehesa
(2003), Goldring (2002), F avell et al. (2006), and Smith (1998) point out that the
transformation in the mobility of migrants has to be seen in the context of intentionally-
directed state policies, which allow it to happen (explicitly or implicitly). As stated
earlier, nations’ migration and citizenship politics and policies play a signiﬁcant role that
is “largely affected by conditions internal to receiving states, [that] exercise the crucial
inﬂuence on the “here”-“there” activities of international migrants (Waldinger 2008:8;
italics in the original)” For instance, many emigrating countries like the Philippines,
Mexico, and countries in Central America beneﬁt in a variety of ways from their overseas

populations, most obviously in social and ﬁnancial remittances. While it is true that

38

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remittances can be spent on purchasing medicine, food, health care, other consumer
durables and luxury goods, more importantly remittances introduce more money into the
economy and create jobs. The multiplier effects of foreign remittances have been known
to be considerable and can partially provide a safety network from absolute poverty
(Lowell 2001 cited in Mahroum et al. 2006). In fact many developing nations are known

to have a high level of dependency on remittances and perceive them as a source of

revenue (Ratha 2003)‘.

Other illustrations of macro-structural state policies that enable the agency of
transnational actors, with regard to cross-border entrepreneurial and employment
opportunities, expressions of patriotic feelings, scientiﬁc curiosity, family reuniﬁcation,
escape ﬁom persecution, and safety considerations are those of multi-state membership
of states, favorable emigrating and immigrating laws, the legal permission for community
and ethnic organizations that facilitate remittances and travel between home and host
countries, and celebrating multiculturalism as an official policy (Waldinger & Fitzgerald
2004; Bloemraad 2007; 2008, Mahroum 2005; 2006).

In many instances, the state governments’ policies make certain locations attractive
for migrants by providing tax incentives, superior research infrastructure, and preferred
wages that encourage return or circulatory migration, for example the “Software
Technology Parks of India” or the “Hsinchu” science-based industrial park in Taiwan

(Sexenian 2005). A study of transnational actors’ experiences would be incomplete

 

I According to World Bank’s Economic Prospects (GEP) for 2006, India received 10% (S 21.7 billion) of
the ofﬁcially recorded remittances worldwide, which exceeded $232 billion in 2005. NR1 (Nonresident

Indians) remittance in India was nearly four times more than FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), which is
estimated to be around 3 5 billion in 2006 (Maimbo and Ratha 2005).

39

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without considering the ways in which a nation is embedded in transnational economic,
political, and socio-cultural networks (Levitt 2008).

In this new paradigm the transnational actors’ experiences and activities are grounded
in an environment variously described as transnational space, transnational social ﬁeld, or
transnational communities (Gold 2002:13). Such a domain is not deﬁned by geographical
boundaries of nations and yet links countries of origin and settlement (ibid). The process
of building a social ﬁeld is described by Levitt & Glick Schiller (2004:1011) as “where
migrant experience can be thought of as a kind of gauge which, while anchored, pivots
between a new land and a transnational incorporation. Movements and attachment is not
linear or sequential but capable of rotating back and forth and changing direction over
time. The median point on this gauge is not full incorporation but rather simultaneity of
connections.” For example, in this study the retumee transnational Indian entrepreneurs
living in India at present have retained their American citizenship and cast their votes in
US. presidential elections. Similarly, studies by Levitt (2001) on Dominicans and by
Smith (1998) on Mexicans show how migrants and nonmigrants in both countries of
origin and the United States share common styles of consumptions and political agendas.
The transnational social ﬁeld includes people, their array of activities, and networks in
both point of origin and settlement where resources, ideas, agendas, and expectations are
regularly exchanged. Gold (2002:13) states that “the transnational ﬁelds include people
who have never traveled because these network members are immersed in social and
economic environments and forms of subjectivity that are produced by migration.”

Perceiving the transnational ﬁeld to be a thick web of networks of social relations

between those who move (migrants) and those who do not move (nonmigrants)—and

40

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privileging neither environment—becomes a powerful tool for conceptualizing
transnational business practices for this research. It broadens the scope of examining
transnational actions beyond the direct experiences of migrants to include interactions of
people who are stationary themselves but establish regular connectivity and social
relations across boundaries using diverse forms of communication. For example, a
“father-manager” who resides in Mumbai may control the business strategies of an Indian
transnational businessman selling handcrafted costume jewelry in New York. The
transnational business functions as a decentralized organization—the ﬁnancial and
human resources and skills of nonmigrants constitute a major source of value for the
organization.

The transnational social ﬁeld can be understood from the perspective of Bourdieu’s
(1992) notion of ﬁeld, which he describes as a social arena in which people strategize,
maneuver, and struggle in pursuit of desirable resources. It is a domain of practices or
array of activities that have their own logic and are constituted by a unique combination
of various kinds of capital—social (connections), symbolic (prestige, renown), cultural
(tastes, habits, skills, way of life)—and other resources that allow for the transfer and
recombination of information and assets across national borders (Postill 2008; Schatzki
2001)

For Bourdieu (1992; 1997) and Giddens (1979; 1984), a discussion of actual practices
serves to ﬂee activity from the determining grasp of obj ectiﬁed social structures and
systems (Schatzki 2001). This practice approach liberates individual agency from the
constrictions of structuralists, while avoiding methodological individualism, which

claims that social phenomena must be explained from the results of individual actions

41

(Postill 2008). To that effect, Bourdieu (I 997) used the concept habitus to capture “the
permanent internalization of the social order in the human body” (Eriksen & Neilsen
20002130 cited by Postill 2008) while recognizing “the agents practice, his or her
capacity for invention and improvisation” (Bourdieu 1990213). It is the habitus of the
transnational entrepreneurs that produces the strategies and practices found in the
transnational ﬁelds of business networks linking India and the United States.

The practice approach to social theory takes the human body to be the nexus of “array
of activities” (i.e. practices) that agents carry outwith lesser or greater mastery, grace,
and commitment (Postill 2008). Habitus is the by product and functions within social
structures determined by forms of capital. These forms of capital both enable and
constrain individuals and also act as resources that entrepreneurs use to operate at a
global level, making relevant Bourdieu’s theory of practice that goes beyond the usual
dichotomous agency-structure framework (Terjesen & Elam 2009).

Forms of Capital:

Transnational networks made up of a web of interpersonal ties—friendship, kinship,
fellowship, comradeship or memberships in organizations—become extremely important
in cross cultural and national entrepreneurship. They are greatly conditioned in often-
unconscious ways by previous experiences and learning, cultural legacies, and current
realities that are part of a certain habitus of entrepreneurs (Drori et. a1 2009:1011).
Signiﬁcant socio-economic consequences follow from these connections and bonds that
migrants (and nonmigrants) have with one another. The complex of beneﬁts gained from
group or network membership is called “social capital.” Conceptualizations of social

capital are manifold and diverse. For this project, I ﬁnd it useful to follow the deﬁnition

42

that articulates social capital as “the ability of actors to secure beneﬁts by virtue of
membership in social networks or other social structures” (Portes 1998z6). Social capital
is here an intangible universal resource inherent in relationships between network
members and presents itself as information (potential or real) or linkages to other network
members, who may be sources of beneﬁts, support or control (Portes 1998 cited in Bashi
2007220).

Scholars like Portes (1998), Light (2004), Kadushin (2004), and Gold (2005; 2000)
point out that what is best known and discussed about social capital in the literature are
the consequences of social capital: economic mobility and growth; good health;
democratic governance; and to a lesser extent the negative outcomes like social exclusion
or intolerance. Little attention is paid to the causes of social capital. To cite Daly & Silver
(2008:558), “We know who has the social capital . . . but not how they came to have it or
where it comes from in the ﬁrst place.” Scholarship on social capital needs to be
substantiated with information and research about: how social capital is generated,
transmitted, and reproduced; who possesses social capital; and how societal structural
shifts—for instance Indian policy changes regarding corporate and personal taxes—affect
the social capital of whom (Comwell et al. 20082856-57; Light 2004).

One of the ways to overcome the assumption of universality of social capital is by
examining the context in which it is situated and under what circumstances it is generated
(Light 2004). One must examine the social structures that mediate the entrepreneurial
practices that provide access to networks and the resources they deliver. These vary

according to the characteristics of migrants, conditions of the country of origin, sector of

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business and entrepreneurship, and other factors (Gold 2005). Circmnstances that
contribute to social capital are also important (Kadushin 2004:14).

The context is not limited to the spatial location within which networks carry out
exchanges, but extends to economic and social locations such as hierarchy among
members or deﬁnitions of membership and social distance. For example, the sole
condition for membership in the alumni organizations of IIT was to have attended any
one of these institutions in India. This social boundary gave the insiders advantages,
including help relocating businesses and procuring transnational business contracts with
Fortune 500 companies. Dense network connections within this group capture
information and resources that circulate only among the members of this alumni
organization.

To consider how the “context” affects “meaning” and “functioning” of social capital
that relies on social and historical circumstances, I turn to Bourdieu’s (1986; 1990)
description of three forms of capital (cultural, human, and social). The close relationship
between them shows how three forms of capital are fungible or convertible. This is
another major component of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, which allows me to examine
how transnational entrepreneurs use their knowledge, perceptions, skill, network
membership, wealth, and other psychological measures in a reﬂexive and strategic
manner to navigate complex social structures of opportunity and constraint (Elam 2008).
To fully appreciate the value of social capital employed by the skilled transnational

entrepreneurs of this research, it needs to be studied in tandem with neighboring concepts

of cultural and human capitalz (Valdez 2008; Light 2004; Nee & Sanders 2001).

 

l have consrdered the role of ﬁnancral capital In conjunction to my dlscussron of these three varlables.

44

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Cultural Capital:

Bourdieu and his associates, in their studies of the educational system, used the
concept of cultural capital to explain the higher success rates for the children of educated
parents. These scholars argued that the children not only had beneﬁts of their
education and the help they received from their parents, but also enjoyed rewards from
their familiarity with the elitist culture, such as knowledge of ﬁne arts and classical
music. According to Bourdieu & Passeron (1979:17 cited in Prieur et al. 2008:47),

“Not only do the more privileged students derive from their background of origin habits,
skills, and attitudes which serve them directly in their scholastic tasks, but they also
inherit from it knowledge and know-how, tastes, and ‘good-taste’ whose scholastic
proﬁtability is no less certain for being indirect.” These habits, mental dispositions, skills,
and way of life have since become known as cultural capital. The right kind of cultural
knowledge beneﬁts the owner by providing socio-economic advantage. An example
would be to know how to dress appropriately for success. Light (2004) states that Fortune
500 companies hire executives who dress appropriately. The executives’ familiarity with
cultural knowledge such as table manners, ﬁgures of speech, and dress styles is a capital
resource that commands a high salary based on more than productivity. Cultural capital
becomes part of an individual’s lifestyle and personality as they are socialized in afﬂuent
arenas.

In “F orms of Capital,” Bourdieu (1986) further articulates meanings of cultural
capital. According to him, cultural capital exists in three forms: First is the embodied
state—“long lasting dispositions of the mind and the body” (Bourdieu 19862243), which

he refers to as habitus. Habitus exempliﬁes habituated and transposable dispositions,

45

 

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mental structures, judgmental competencies, or cognitive schema that guides the thoughts
and actions of an actor in a given social ﬁeld, where ﬁeld in the strict Bourdieuian view is
a subjectively deﬁned social space (Emirbayer & Johnston 2008). Habitus is commonly
referred to as the world view of the actor (Dobbin 2008; Elam 2008 cited in Terjesen &
Elam 2009:1104). This form of cultural capital to a great extent is inherited or acquired
through an upbringing in a “cultivated home.” It can be assessed as attitudes,
competencies, and preferences. Second is the objectiﬁed state, which takes the form of
cultural goods of a material type—pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines
and the like. The cultural goods in the material form are a reﬂection of the habitus. Third
is the institutionalized state, by which Bourdieu primarily means educational certiﬁcates
and credentials (ibid).

Light & Gold (2000:84) assert that cultural capital can be regarded as a “class

resource” of the afﬂuent entrepreneurial community. They deﬁne it to be “vocationally

relevant cultural and material endowment of bourgeoisies”3. These scholars contend that
this form of class-based cultural capital enables entrepreneurs to initiate and run
businesses in the formal sector. This capital includes occupationally relevant skills and
supportive values, tastes, knowledge, and attitudes. To be successful in the market place,
business owners who possess the expertise of business culture and the entrepreneurial
skills necessary to be successful pass it on to their children in the course of socialization.
Cultural capital points to a resource that has a market value in the struggle for privilege,

or as stated by Lareau & Weininger (2003:567 cited in Prieur et al 2008:49), “one that

 

3 In Marxism, bourgeoisie refers to those who control the means of production and distribution within
market economies. It includes all employers in an economy’s formal sector. Marxists typically do not
include those in the illegal or informal sectors. Light & Gold (2000:84) expand the deﬁnition to include all
business owners in the formal, informal, and illegal sectors. Light & Gold (2000) have called this ‘the class
of business owners’ to distinguish it from the Marxist concept of bourgeoisie.

46

 

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provides access to scarce rewards, is subject to monopolization, and, under certain
conditions, may be transmitted from one generation to the next.” For instance,
entrepreneurs in my study possessed class-derived proﬁciency in English language.
Respondents attended private English medium schools in India where they became
acquainted with western culture and acquired English language skills. This is an
invaluable cultural asset for Indian transnational entrepreneurs, as English is the lingua
franca for international business. Light & Gold (2000) explain that members of the
affluent class have the cultural capital required to start and run businesses in the formal
economy. As a result, transnational entrepreneurs’ competence and success is to a great
extent inﬂuenced by their economic and socio-cultural characteristics, which are context
bound.

A number of scholars have expanded on Bourdieu’s work in order to make it more
adequately suited to examining transnational networks. Light & Gold (2000:92) include
the notion of occupational competency in their deﬁnition of cultural capital—going
beyond Bourdieu’s (1986) limited deﬁnition of cultural capital, where he stressed
aesthetic values and judgment in deﬁning cultural capital of the Parisian academic and
artistic society. This reiterates Farkas’ (1996 cited in Light & Gold 2000:92) claim that in
the entrepreneurs’ world cultural capital means “tool kit,” which confers competency in
running business effectively—what Berger (1991) has called “the culture of
entrepreneurship,” which is an occupational culture and not quite an aesthetic benchmark.
Bourdieu’s (1986; 1992) description of individual habitus, when applied to the context of
transnational entrepreneurship, falls short in explaining how various types of capital

(cultural, human and social) provide a competitive advantage to the actor engaged in

47

 

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transnational ﬁelds. Bourdieu (1977, 1998) does not address how cultural sensibilities
shift as actors migrate or move across geographic spaces for managing transnational
business. In other words Bourdieu’s afﬁrmation of the adequacy of habitus does not
completely explain the array of activity of transnational entrepreneurs. Speciﬁcally
addressing these activities, Giddens (1979) and other practice theorists insist that skills be
supplemented by some combination of perception, propositional knowledge, reason, and
goals (Schatzki 2001 :8). For that reason I draw on Swidler’s (1986) and Drori et al.’s
(2009 :1008) deliberations on how cultural orientations shape a repertoire or “tool kit” of
habits, skills, and styles from which people construct strategies or build lines of action.
These scholars justify how culture actually works, or transform the notion of “culture as
practice.” It means that cultural repertoires of entrepreneurial actions are not necessarily
tied to, or restricted by, cultures. To cite Swidler (2001 :23) “there are not simply different
cultures: there are different ways of mobilizing and using culture, different ways of
linking culture to action.”

Participants in this research considered their sophisticated awareness of cultural
nuances to be central to the success of their transnational businesses. They acquired these
reﬁned understandings of culture, along with strong communication and interpersonal
skills, while living or studying abroad or pursuing early careers at multinational
enterprises. In their business enterprises they had introduced novel hybrid management
models and implemented new ways of doing business--outcomes of their familiarity with
different cultures across multiple countries. Similarly, nonmigrant transnational
entrepreneurs saw global travel and varied cultural and business experience—beneﬁts of

their class status—as important to their success. Both migrant and nonmigrant

48

 

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transnational entrepreneurs beneﬁted signiﬁcantly from abilities and skills gained from
experiences that provided ﬂexible world views. This distinguishing ability to transcend
local cultures and utilize multiple cultural toolkits in different settings enabled the
entrepreneurs to operate in the global arena. Thus, I contend that the cultural tool kit for
entrepreneurial action is not a static conception comprising of ﬁxed cultural codes and
modes of behavior from which the transnational businessperson makes a selection, but a
cultural code that “means more than being able to apply it mechanically in stereotyped
situations—it also means having the ability to elaborate it, to modify, or adapt its rules to
novel circumstances” (Sewell 1999:51 cited in Drori 2009:1008). Cultural repertoires for
entrepreneurial practices are therefore constantly rearranged through human action and
attuned to particular social contexts and to actors’ social skills and habits (Drori et al.
2009)

Closely associated to this argument for the action-oriented role of culture is the fact
that cultural boundaries are permeable, ﬂuid and implicit (Lamont & Molnar 2002).
Transnational entrepreneurs must negotiate a variety of schemas, strategize within varied
symbolic orders, and develop “a ‘repertoire’ which offers various options of how to act
and to which agents can have reﬂexive access” (Putz 2003:557 cited in Drori et al.
2009:1009). This repertoire allows them to redraw cultural boundaries and create action
paths, habitual behaviors, and routines in a diverse symbolic order. For instance, women
in this study mentioned dressing in western clothes for meetings or enjoying multi-
cuisine food—attributes they shared with non-Indian businesswomen. As Portes et al.
(2002) and Light & Gold (2002) state, transnational entrepreneurs made it a point to

cultivate broad cultural tools in order to beneﬁt from their social presence in both home

49

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and host countries. So they nurtured cultural traits that are enthno-cultural in origin, like
communicating in Hindi with the co-ethnic workers and employees. Having the
competency in code switching and multi-linguistic abilities increased the entrepreneurs’
latitude in negotiation and their ability to recognize and control business outcomes in
different cultures. Their cross-cultural awareness had profound implications with respect
to developing a critical awareness of social relationships, and in understanding the
diversity which underlies ways of constructing and organizing knowledge in different
realities. In sum, the cultural capital—the habitus—of the transnational entrepreneur
uniquely positions them to use knowledge spill-overs from multiple social contexts in
transnational social ﬁelds.

Human Capital:

One of the effective ways by which cultural capital is converted into ﬁnancial capital
by employment or engaging in business activities is through the means of acquiring
educational credentials. Thus human capital can be deﬁned as investment in personal
productivity. Here productivity means a person’s ability to add value by doing work.
Work experience and education are the essential types of human capital, which resides in
the owner’s person and is an enduring resource. Empirical research by Coleman (1988),
Nee and Sanders (1996; 2001), Light & Gold (2002), Yoon (1991), and Valdez (2008)
has highlighted that human capital among all ethnoracial groups and categories facilitates
higher rates of entrepreneurship. Light & Gold (2002288) compared the rates of
entrepreneurship among blacks and whites using data from Statistical Abstracts of the
United States, 1996 (Table 49). They found that, in addition to having more ﬁnancial

capital, the higher levels of human capital among whites gave the group an advantage

50

that translated into higher rates of entrepreneurship. When human capital between these
two groups was statistically controlled, it decreased the self-employment rates between
blacks and whites by 30%. When the unequal distribution of human capital between these
two ethnoracial was combined with unequal ﬁnancial capital, the consequence of relative
lack of human capital among blacks became all the more evident.

Research conducted by Valdez (2008) on the effects of social capital on income
among four ethnic groups—Koreans, Blacks, Mexicans and Non-white Hispanics—
makes the case that “human capital” provides the winning competitive edge to ethnic
entrepreneurship in a market economy. Valdez (2008) explains the volume of human
capital among ethnic entrepreneurs is especially valuable when social relationships can
only generate social capital to provide some economic and noneconomic support, and is
generally compensatory or contingent and eventually insufficient to withstand market
uncertainties and shortcomings. Therefore, just as investments that are made in business
inventory, investments are also made in education in the hope of monetary returns
(Schultz 1963). Becker (1993) argued that investment in training, education, and even
work experience increases one’s productivity as well as earns ﬁnancial returns. Costs for
training and college tuition can be considered reliable and long term investments that
yield income-generating potentials. Economists therefore recognize an individual’s
repertoire of skills as a capital reserve similar to ﬁnancial capital (Light 2004:146). And
it is human capital that enables immigrants to gain employment in mainstream society
and engage in entrepreneurship beyond the conﬁnes of ethnic economy and community.

Human capital is desirable because it can be translated into ﬁnancial capital, but

procurement of human capital is far more dependent on class than on income (Light &

51

Gold 2000:90). To prove the importance of nonmonetary inﬂuence on educational
attainment, Farkas’s (l991cited in Light & Gold 2000:90) research highlights the
correlation between white and black childrens’ educational attainment and their parents’
cognitive skills. Children whose parents demonstrated strong cognitive skill beneﬁted
more from the informal curriculum these parents maintained at home, which paralleled
and reinforced the school curriculum, than children whose parents did not do the same at
their home. As there were many more white children than black children who beneﬁted
from the informal practices at home, this explained the differences in the educational
outcome among these two groups of children. The cultural traits the white children had
spontaneously internalized overshadowed income as the explanatory factor. However,
Light (2004:146) cautions that “high cultural knowledge is not human capital because it
does not directly support personal productivity. A business owner may have human
capital without the cultural capital, or, more commonly cultural capital without human
capital.”

Consequently, ﬁnancial resources not only confer the ability to purchase human
capital, but class culture among the afﬂuent nurtures an attitude that causes and espouses
educational accomplishment, reﬂecting Bourdieu’s habitus. This made the human
credentials of the Indian transnational entrepreneurs in this study a status resource, just as
much as ﬁnancial and social capital. The Indian entrepreneurs therefore employed a class
strategy in executing their decision to attend U.S. universities—enhancing their
individual ability to reproduce and replenishing collectively the volume of their class

resources (Light & Gold 2000:90).

52

As class resources, cultural and human combine to provide a perspective on the ways
in which social capital is embedded in varying types of networks. It is generated and used
in ways that allow Indian transnational entrepreneurs to accomplish their business goals.
Below, I examine the forms of capital generated within family structures, and the stock of
social connections that embed the family within larger social structures.

Social Capital and Networks:

As stated earlier, social capital, at its most basic, is a social network of a variety of
ties (Light & Gold 2000:94). Hence the framework of social capital probes into the
density and quality of social relations—strong and weak ties—and emphasizes the
importance of active participation. This form of capital has a strong normative element to
it, acting as a means of social integration that enhances group-based solidarity, reciprocal
obligations, and trust among network members (Bourdieu 1986). This distinguishes
social capital—which increases with use—from ﬁnancial capital, which is depleted by
use. Social capital therefore is an external resource which the learner absorbs and can be
distinguished from cultural capital which is endowed on actors.

For Bourdieu (ibid), group membership in social networks yields power and shapes
life chances for the individual, a notion that he shares with Nan Lin (2001). Mobilization
of social capital occurs by linking with social actors with similar class resources. That is
why Bourdieu perceives social capital to be a class (privilege) goods and a rather
exclusive resource, and is keen to show how class-based social resources lead to
exchanges that reﬂect the constant struggle for domination and control.

Expanding on Bourdieu’s conception of social capital, Light & Gold (2002:94)

distinguish class-derived social capital, which is access to class-based social

53

relationships that facilitate entrepreneurship, and ethnic-derived social capital, which has
ethnic origins. Ethnic-based social capital represents interpersonal relationships that are
deﬁned by ethnic group-speciﬁc skills and knowledge that the members of the group
possess by virtue of their distinctive socialization—like Mexican immigrants knowledge
about Mexican cuisine, or Jamaican immigrants knowledge of Reggae music. However,
ethnic and class-based social capitals often work in conjunction with and contribute to the
social capital required for entrepreneurship (Light & Gold 2002:105—108). For instance,
Indian transnational entrepreneurs dealing in agro products and Indian spices use their
diasporic ethnic networks as well as their knowledge of American tastes and sensibilities
in marketing their goods at U.S.-based stores like Target and in retail stores in India.
Moreover, Light & Gold (2002:95) maintain that social capital can be either inherited
or acquired. Inherited social capital is closely associated with class and represents class-
based advantages in entrepreneurship when, for instance, the recipient automatically
gains access to advantageous social relationships because of his or her class background.
Acquired social capital is slightly different from inherited social capital because it is class
status acquired through educational accomplishments or career development. It is
separate from the owner’s ethno-racial identity. Even entrepreneurs with inherited social
capital have to work towards attaining their own class-deﬁned acquired social capital. In
Montgomery’s (2008) study, Taiwanese and Indian software engineers strategically used
both inherited and acquired social capital to get their difficult assignments done, advance
their careers, and facilitate migration adjustments. By nurturing alumni ties to their
universities and institutions of higher education, these professionals were able to

inﬂuence their professional growth in the United States and the proﬁt margins of their

54

 

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U.S. frrms. They had access to the social capital of their alumni networks because of their
class-based acquired social capital. It was their class status (cultural, human and ﬁnancial
capital) that ensured their admission to these institutions. Another example is of Korean
entrepreneurs in the United States who are often successful because of their extensive
entrepreneurial networks from inherited and acquired social capital that situate them in
proﬁtable businesses (Bhattacharya 2003; Zhou 2000; Portes & Rumbaut 1990). Both
these examples highlight that social capital, when conceived of as a process over time,
can become a self-reinforcing virtuous circle in which multiple dimensions are inter-
related.

While Bourdieu (1986) and Nan Lin (2001) conceive social capital as an outcome of
rational self-interested behavior, others think of it as a civic virtue. Communitarians like
Coleman (1988, 1990) and Putnam (1993) conceive of social capital as a “collective
attribute,” which intrinsically belongs to those aspects of social life that allow people to
co-operate. These two theorists perceive social capital as public goods of communities,
cities, and even nations regardless of which members (individual or corporate actors)
actually promote, contribute, or sustain such resources. They associate social capital with
particular features of social structures that are useful to individuals for speciﬁc actions. In

this version, because social capital is perceived of as public goods, it depends on the good

will of individual members to make it happen4. For instance, Coleman (1988:98—99)

 

4 The two contrasting approaches to social capital can be traced to two distinct theoretical lineages. It is
generally accepted that the privileged-goods view, which tends to focus on networks and resources
available to both individuals and collectivities, is principally an extension of rational choice theorists and
an elaboration of the social relation in Marx’s capital theory. The public-goods perspective, which
emphasizes social cohesion, is inspired by the integrative approach or Durkheim’s view of social relation
(Daly & Silver 2008:544; Nan Lin 2001 :24; Portes 1998:7-8). However, the thrust of both these approaches
is to bring social relations to the forefront of analysis, except they do so in different ways. Both approaches

55

gives the example of wholesale diamond market of New York where merchants freely
exchange the precious stones estimated to be worth thousand of dollars completely based
on trustworthiness. Trust as a virtue is taken for granted among the diamond merchants
because of multiple and cherished familial, religious, and interpersonal ties that prevail in
this community. Coleman (ibid) reasons that the social structure of these merchants’
community has speciﬁc attributes, like the strength of trust-based ties that make these
transactions possible and trade to occur with case. In the absence of these ties, expensive
and elaborate insurance devices would be needed, or business dealings would not take
place.

Although the above example shows the value of social capital in bringing about a
favorable outcome—both economic and noneconomic—it assumes that all the diamond
merchants had equal access to the same measure of social capital in terms of civic
participation. For communitarian theorists of social capital like Putnam (2000) and
Coleman (1988) the issue of how social capital engages inequality remains largely
neglected. In Putnam’s conception of social capital, inequality or class bias is only
considered to the extent that it has potential for negative outcomes. The social structure is
taken as a given, where people can take advantage of social capital to ﬁnd their location
within it. Some critics of Putnam have noted an elitist attitude in his reasoning of
declining social capital, as he squarely places the blame for its demise on the leisure
activities of the masses, while ignoring the class-based and political organizations which

are more likely to mobilize the participation of low-income populations.

 

draw attention to the economic and the governance impact of civil society and effects on particular types of
social relations—co-operation and participation.

56

However, despite their positions on social capital, Coleman, Bourdieu, Putnam and
Nan Lin emphasize the convertibility or fungibility of social capital to other forms of
capital. Theorists of social capital agree that bonds, exchange, and ties among members
of networks facilitate actions that overcome market inefﬁciencies and information
deﬁcits that are converted into economic resources that contribute to socio-economic
mobility. Or, trust and norms of reciprocity are cherished for their potential economic
outcomes. For instance, Waldinger (1994; 1996) found in his research that hiring
networks among Indians workers had brought about their rapid entry into professional
and technical positions in New York City’s government, despite the reputation of the
agency as a bureaucratic structure which changed at a slow pace.

So, in the general literature on social capital there is a tendency to portray the positive
consequences of strong networks, which idealizes the co-operative nature of some ethnic
groups, but in so doing overlooks the undesirable consequences of networks (Portes &
Sensenbrenner 1993:1338—44). Portes (1998) has referred to this as the “negative social
capital.” Gold (2005:268) states that because of the varied characteristics of the emigrant
population and the different locations in which they settle, the networks offer different
kinds of resources to their members and may be more or less exclusionary in permitting
people to join. This is especially true when network participation is contingent on high
ﬁnancial costs and ascriptive aspects, like race, gender, religious or institutional
affiliations, religious observance, class, citizenship, ideological conformity, and the like.
Those who do not qualify because they are deﬁcient of appropriate attributes are devoid
of the social capital in the exclusive networks (Portes 1998; Tillyl990 cited in Gold

20052269). For instance, the Indian entrepreneurs in this research beneﬁted to varying

57

degrees from their respective diasporic networks because their access to social networks
was based on their afﬁliation to different religious sects of the Hindu faith.

In many situations, network membership deﬁnes commendable and condemned
behavior for its members. It shapes a variety of collective concerns—like being strict
vegetarians, adhering to strict dress code, and other forms of normative behavior—in
exchange for economic support and co-operation in business ventures. From this angle,
networks are not merely sources of useful business information, contacts, and resources,
they also change the context of social relationships of their members (Gold 2005:275). To
a great degree, the members’ world view and life chances are redirected as they interact
within the social environment of the network. For instance, the Indian transnational
entrepreneurs of this research who were members of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE)
became committed to the idea that, through transnational business with India, they were
participating in the economic and social development of India.

In many instances, networks created by immigrants create and perpetuate inequality
among members. Daly & Silver (2008:555) cite the example of Maﬁa or youth gangs that
have enormous social capital and can conspire against the public to cut off opportunities
from outsiders. These groups can become nepotistic and claim complete loyalty from
their members, besides making demands on their members to redistribute resources to the
group, thereby curbing individual mobility. Similarly, migrant networks are quite likely
to function as mobility traps of low-skilled workers and offer few prospects to learn the
host society’s language or develop the skills required to move beyond the bottom-rung
jobs in ethnic businesses (Bonacich 1987; Sander and Nee 1987; Powers and Seltzer

1998 cited in Gold 20052268). Networks therefore provide their members with a variety

58

of resources. In fact, the prevalence of uneven power relations between members
uncovers the structured access to scarce resources, which has an affect on opportunities
or imposes restrictions on behavior, besides inﬂuencing the amount and the kinds of
resources that ﬂow from one member to the other (Wellman 1983; Portes &
Sensenbrenner 1993)5.

Next, the quantity and the extent of social capital embedded in relationships is
mentioned as “bonding” social capital that is the degree to which members of a group can

co-operate, trust, and work with one another. These bonds therefore amount to “strong”

and “weak” ties6, and one would imagine them to be placed at opposite ends of the
spectrum. However, for Granovetter (2005; 1983; 1974) the distinction is not of quantity
but of quality of ties. This idea runs contrary to the “dense” network emphasized by
Coleman (1988) and Loury (1977) as a necessary condition for the emergence of social
capital, such as those found among family members or close friends (Portes 1998:6). For
Granovetter (1973), “strength of weak ties” is the basis for “bridging” social capital and
accessing potential resources through opportunities made available by distant
acquaintances. It refers to the power of indirect inﬂuences—outside the immediate circle
of family and close friends—to serve as informal informants, particularly in accessing

employment or entrepreneurial success, or mobility through the occupation ladder.

 

5 Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993:1339) cite the research of Chea (l 985) and Eﬁ'on (1990) on Southeast
Asians, particularly Vietnamese businesses in California, that had been affected by destructive forms of
collective demands from fellow exiles, which included Vietnamese youth and former military ofﬁcers.
Similarly Rumbaut’s (1990 cited in Portes and Sensenbrenner 1993:] 340) interview with a successful
Vietnamese electronic manufacturer in Orange County, California found that the businessman did not
employ Vietnamese and had anglicized his name, besides cutting off his ties with the immigrant
community in fear of demands from other Vietnamese and extortion from former members of the
Vietnamese police.

Sirnplistically, strong ties are close ﬁiends, family members, spouse, close ofﬁce/work colleagues, school
or college mates, peers, whereas weak ties are business associates from other companies, acquaintances or
people who are less well known to the individual (Harvey 2008:456-57).

59

 

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Burt (1992), two decades later, drew on Granovetter’s insights and developed the
concept of structural holes, which be deﬁned as a “relationship of nonredundancy
between two contacts.” The hole is a buffer, like an insulator in an electric circuit. As a
result of the hole between them, the two contacts provide network beneﬁts that are in
some degree additive rather than overlapping (p. 65).” Like Bourdieu, he acknowledges
the role of social capital as instrumental, but unlike Bourdieu argues for paucity as
opposed to density of ties in facilitating individual mobility (Portes 1998:12). So, for
these theorists—Granovetter and Burt—the concept of connection is key to furthering
individual or group mobility, and does not conceptualize ties to be social capital
unequivocally. The emphasis regarding economic outcomes is on weak ties or structural
holes respectively, which are considered to be sources of new knowledge and resources,
as opposed to stronger/denser/bonding ties that tend to pass on redundant information.
Granovetter claims that weak ties have a special role in a person’s opportunity for
mobility by asserting a “structural tendency for those to whom one is only weakly tied to
have better access to job information one does not already have. Acquaintances, as
compared to close friends, are more prone to move in different circles than oneself. Those
to whom one is closest are likely to have the greatest overlap in contact with those one
already knows, so that the information to which they are privy is likely to be much the
same as that which one already has” (Granovetter 1974:52—53 cited in Granovetter
1983:205).

For scholars like Burt and Granovetter, the structure of the network and the location
of the individual member in the social structure of the network become crucial to achieve

a competitive advantage. A balance between network size and diversity is obtained by

60

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optimizing structural holes, where these holes are the key to information beneﬁts. To
optimize the returns from networks depends on two principles: efﬁciency and
effectiveness of structural holes. The ﬁrst principle is about the average number of people
reached with a primary contact, and the second is comprised of the total number of
people reached with all primary contacts. When more contacts are included in the
network there is higher volume of beneﬁts. Apart from the volume, diversity in the
network augments the quality of beneﬁts. Hence, nonredundant contacts ensure exposure
to a wide variety of sources of information.

Although Granovetter’s concept of weak ties and Burt’s idea of structural holes seem
to describe similar phenomena with regard to information beneﬁts, they differ in their
treatment of two key aspects: causation and strength of ties. Burt (1992: 73) argues that
the causal agent (vis-a-vis information beneﬁts) is not the weakness of the tie but the
structural hole that it spans. Regarding the strength of ties, the weak ties framework
obscures the control beneﬁts of structural holes by moving responsibility for information
payoffs from the structural hole to the strength of the tie providing them, the ‘weak ties’
argument eclipses the control beneﬁts of structural holes. The beneﬁt of control over
structural holes is in many ways more important than the information beneﬁts of
structural holes. Moreover, the weak ties framework is about the location as well as the
strength of the tie, where the bridge is understood to be the chasm spanned and the span
itself. Put differently, it is the strength of the relationship that spans the distance between
two social clusters. Structural holes are gaps that have already been spanned, where
information beneﬁts are generated irrespective of the relationship being weak or strong,

when there is a nonredundant tie as a bridge in place. To clarify the concepts of structural

61

holes and weak ties, here is a visual of connections between clusters in a network from
Burt (1992273).

Figure no: 2-1: Structural Holes and Weak Ties (Burt 1992: 73)

 

"In this diagram there are three clusters of players. Strong ties, indicated by
solid lines, connect players with clusters. Dashed lines indicate two weak ties
between players in separate clusters. You, as one of the players, have a unique
pattern of four ties: two strong ties within your cluster and a weak tie to a
contact in each in the other clusters. These are three classes of structural holes
in your network: (1) holes between the cluster around contact A and everyone in
your own cluster — for example, the hole between contact A and C .' (2) holes
between the cluster around contact B and everyone in your own cluster — for
example, the hole between contacts B and C; and (3) the hole beIWeen contacts
A and B. Weak ties and structural holes seem to describe the same phenomenon.
In this ﬁgure, You are best positioned for information beneﬁts, contact A and B
are next, followed by everyone else. You have two weak ties, contactA and B
have one each, and everyone else has none. You have the largest volume of
structural holes between your contacts, contact A and B have fewer. and
everyone else has few or none (ibid)

Empirical research using the concept of “quality of ties” has demonstrated that use of

social networks varies greatly depending in what context people use networks, whether it

62

is for job purposes or for business opportunities as is the case for this dissertation
research. Granovetter’s research on professional, technical, and managerial (PMT)
workers in Newton, Massachusetts failed to take into consideration the contexts that
inﬂuenced peoples’ use of networks. To cite Harvey (2008:456), “Granovetter fails to
discuss in any detail whether social networks may vary from one sector to another, or
whether the density of social networks may vary within a ﬁrm.” Thus, issues of context
are important and crucial because there may be speciﬁc trends in the use of interpersonal
ties and contacts for achieving individual goals.

Quite a few studies highlight how different contexts—like geographical location,
institutional or ethnic culture, macro-level factors like U.S. policies-determine the usage
of different types of ties and in different arrangements and combinations. Alarcon (1999),
in his research on Indian and Mexican scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley,
highlights this signiﬁcance of context. He states although both ethnic groups used
contacts from their previous universities to help them obtain their ﬁrst jobs, Indian
migrants used social networks far more than Mexican migrants for job information. He
concluded that Indians were prone to use networks more for job information because (a)
U.S. immigration policy—which favored skills and education—assisted in maintaining a
highly educated network from India, (b) Indian policies which have given high priority to
the software industry had formed professional networks between India and the United
States, and, (c) English language proﬁciency, which is the language of higher education
in India, had given the Indian migrants a competitive advantage in forming relationships
with non co-ethnics in the United States. Similarly, Bagchi’s (2001:142—43) research on

Indian and Filipino professionals points out that macro level factors of U.S. immigration

63

policies can inﬂuence the extent to which migrants participate in different types of
networks. While not minimizing the individual’s agency in seeking jobs, she explains
how regional economies also play a role in the types of networks these two groups use for
procuring job information in the United States

Further, the importance of weak ties (as opposed to strong ties) has also been
challenged. These types of ties expose better-educated individuals to different social
circles, and therefore to new information about job or business opportunities. A recent
study by Harvey (2008) on British and Indian scientists in pharmaceutical ﬁrms in
Boston made clear that scientists of both nationalities to varying degrees were inclined to
use both types of ties to obtain information about employment opportunities. In his
research, the junior or senior scientists in the pharmaceutical ﬁrms did not display a
preference for using either strong or weak ties. Harvey concluded that the boundaries
between these two types of ties are blurred. For him, strong or weak ties are signiﬁcant in
different contexts, and “for the ability of actors to secure beneﬁts by virtue of
membership in social networks or other social structure (Portes 1998:6 cited in Harvey
2008:460).”

Likewise, Ooka and Wellman’s (2003) study of German and English Canadians in
Toronto show that “intra ethnic ties, and not inter-ethnic ties, beneﬁt job seekers in high
status ethnic groups (Ooka and Wellman 2003:14 cited in Harvey 2008:457, italics in
original).” This ﬁnding was in contrast to low status ethnic groups such as Ukrainians,
who regulme used inter-ethnic ties for job referrals. In other words, the highly educated
German and English Canadian migrants used their own expatriate social networks as

opposed to low skilled migrants who used the networks of other migrant groups. Ooka

64

and Wellman’s study concludes that the decision and the choice to use a particular
network therefore depended on what sort of resources were controlled within and outside
of one’s own ethnic group in the particular labor market.

True, there are evidences in the literature of occasions—as in the social and
professional networks of four groups of transnational entrepreneurs in the technology and
material goods sector of this study—when individuals make a choice of using strong ties
over weak ties, or vice versa. But in analyzing networks only a small effort is made—
other than for conceptual purposes—to separate the two. Scholars like Montgomery
(2008), Gold (2005), Ooka & Wellman (2003), Nahapiet & Ghoshal (1998), and Elliot
(2001) opine that more attention needs to be paid to the complexity of social networks,
and to move beyond the analysis of ties.

F rom the above empirical research ﬁndings, it is clear that the structural and the
relational dimension of social capital needs to be examined in depth to ﬁnd answers as to
whether a migrant group has a network advantage or a disadvantage over others. The
structural aspects refer to the overall pattern of connections between members or actors
of the network—that is, who you reach and how you reach them (N ahapiet & Ghoshal
1998:244; Harvey 2008:470; Burt 1992). This brings forth the most important aspect of
networks, that is (a) the presence or absence of ties between actors (Scott 1991;
Wasserman & Faust 1994 cited in Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998:244), and (b) the network
conﬁguration (Krackhardt 1989 cited in Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998:244), or morphology
(Tichy, Tushman & Fomburn 1979 cited in Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998:244) delineating

the patterns of linkages in terms of connectivity, density, hierarchy, and appropriable

65

organizations and clusters, that is the existence of a network created for one purpose
serves the use for another objective (Coleman 1988:118—19).

“Relational embeddedness” of social networks means the kind of personal
relationships people have developed with each other through a history of interactions
(Granovetter 1992). The notion indicates the speciﬁc relations people have, such as
friendship or respect that inﬂuence an individual’s behavior. It is through these ongoing
personal relationships that network members fulﬁll their social motives, like sociability,
approval, recognition, prestige, and the like. Thus, the relational dimension of social
capital means those assets leveraged and formed through relationships, of which the key
facets are trust or trustworthiness (Putnam 1993; Fukuyama 1995 cited in Nahapiet &
Ghoshal 1998:244), sanctions and norms (Coleman 1990; Putnam 1995), obligations and
expectations (Burt 1992; Coleman 1990; Granovetter 1985), and identity and
identiﬁcation (Hakansson & Snehota 1995; Merton 1968 cited in Nahapiet & Ghoshal
1998:244).

For the purpose of this research, social capital comprises both the network and the
assets that may be mobilized through that network, primarily using the conceptualization
of forms of capital by Borudieu (1986), Burt (1992), and Granovetter (1983). I have
chosen Bourdieu’s concept of capital for examining the resources embedded in
transnational networks of Indian entrepreneurs, because Bourdieu provides the toolbox
for analyses of social divisions in a society by thinking through the connections between
cultural, economic, and social worlds. This presents an opportunity to assess not just the
valuation of the various forms of capital, but also permits me to explore how such

valuations and rewards are being arrived at, by whom, and to whose interests. In my

66

 

 

 

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opinion, by employing Bourdieu’s concept of capital for this research on transnational
Indian entrepreneurs operating in two different domain of business venture: (a) the
technology sector and (b) material good sector will enable me to expose to what extent
the business practices and actions of individual transnational entrepreneurs is dependent
on structural patterns over individual choice or vice versa. Additionally, I will be able to
explore how the dissimilar contextual realm and differential distribution of capital
resources affect the scope, depth, and the effectiveness of social capital and social
networks of transnational entrepreneurs in the two separate business domains. For
example, technology entrepreneurs in their transnational businesses might be more
inclined to make use of their industry networks, including those that span geographical
borders. For them membership of these professional networks may supersede advantages
provided by ethnic and/or diasporic relations, as these members embrace a unique and
common language and shared culture, which precludes nontech entrepreneurs (Barley
1996 cited in Drori et a1. 2009: 1012). In the case of the material goods sector the
transnational entrepreneurs might rely heavily on ethnic, community, national, and
diasporic family networks for alleviating risks and uncertainty stemming from
unpredictability of the global markets, as documented in the case of loosely structured so-
called “bamboo networks” of Chinese transnational entrepreneurs (Koot, Leisink &
Verveel 2003 cited in Drori et al. 2009:1012).

Finally, as important as we acknowledge immigration and transnational networks to
be, they still remain little explored, particularly among the highly skilled migrants in the
United States. My research redresses this shortcoming in the literature by contextualizing

the case of skilled Indian transnational entrepreneurs in the le‘century.

67

Conceptual Framework of Transnational Networks between the United States and
India used by Indian Entrepreneurs
My explanatory framework deals with conceptualizing transnational economic

practices ﬁom a network perspective. In my model see ﬁgure no. 2—1 , the outermost
circles stand for the present global economic integration as an outcome of the present
phase of capitalism, which promotes circulatory mobility among highly skilled
population groups. The second circle contextualizes the case of immigration from India
to the United States as well as return migration to the home country. The rectangular box
of the leﬁ depicts the three forms of pre-migratory capital (cultural, human, and social)
with which the study population had entered the United States. The third circle
highlighted with a grey background depicts the transnational social ﬁeld or space created
by immigrant, returnees, and nonmigrant transnationals between India and the United
States. The thick web of several transnational networks is embedded within the
transnational space (highlighted by a blue rectangle within the grey oblong), which are
optimally used by Indian transnational entrepreneurs for facilitating their business
activities. The choice of networks to be employed for transnational business is
determined by the context and the resources that are available and/or generated by the
transnational entrepreneurs. The context is deﬁned by the cultural and human capital of
the individual entrepreneurs, which is mediated by their habitus, personal life stage, the
transnational business sector, and the geographical location of the enterprise. The
rectangular box on the right hand side of the framework displays the crucial and strategic
gains from memberships in various networks that make transnational business happen.

See Framework Diagram no. 2—1 overleaf.

68

Diagram No 2-1: Framework of Transnational Networks between the United States and India used by Indian Entrepreneurs

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Chapter — 3
Methodology and Data

A Multi-sited Ethnographic Research Design

One way to answer the research question of why and how Indian entrepreneurs
engage in transnational business would be to explain the varied networks that are used by
the respondents of this study to achieve their goal. I assume that transnational networks
exist among Indian entrepreneurs not simply because that they are important links with
family members, friend and community members, but because they have the potential of
functioning as complex structures across nations when global or international
opportunities become available to members of particular groups (Bagchi 2001; Lindquist
1993). The efﬁcacy of cross-country networks for transnational entrepreneurship has
been acknowledged by numerous studies among immigrant groups in the United States.
For instance, in Landolt et al.’s (1999) study on the large Salvadorian immigrant
populations of Los Angeles and Washington DC, she and her associates discovered a
vibrant entrepreneurial community functioned embedded in a web of cross border
network ties that was responsible for the emergence of micro-enterprises, such as food
stuff, clothing, auto sales and repair, and video stores both in the home and host country.
These low-end micro-enterprises catered to the needs of the immigrant and non-migrant
Salvadorian population.

Similarly, Portes et al.’s (2002) study on Colombians, Dominicans, and Salvadorian
immigrants in New York, Los Angeles, Providence, and Washington DC. established
that the survival of immigrant entrepreneurship, speciﬁcally the reliance of many ethnic

ﬁrms was dependent on continuing network ties with their home countries. In Gold’s

70

 

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(1994) research on Chinese Vietnamese in Southern California, he found that although
this group of immigrants generally did not function on the scale of import/export business
of the Japanese or the Taiwanese, they maintained social and economic network ties with
relatives, friends, and other organizations throughout the world. This allowed them to
function successfully in meeting the unique consumer tastes of co-ethnic Vietnamese
migrants, such as vegetables, sauces, teas, Vietnamese style cookware spices, and types
of ﬁsh.

However, a major shortcoming of research on existing literature on transnational
entrepreneurship is that it centers on the circumstances faced by low-skilled immigrant
groups in the United States and predominantly from Latin American source countries or
Mexico (Menjivar 1997; Hagan 1998). This causes biases in the literature of immigrant
entrepreneurship against (a) transnational business enterprises from distant sending
countries and (b) the resources needed by transnational immigrant entrepreneurs who do
not operate ventures in traditionally low-skilled business sectors, nor primarily engage in
businesses targeted for the co-ethnic market in the United States, and also do not employ
ethnic labor.

To address these gaps in the literature of economic transnational practices among
immigrants from distant Asian countries, and of Indian entrepreneurs in this study, who
perhaps incur greater costs than those entrepreneurs who enter the US from neighboring
countries, we must know the resources and actions that would be needed for cross-border
transnational business networks to ﬁmction effectively for this group of immigrants.
Consequently, to assess the worth of networks for Indian entrepreneurs, I choose to

examine the resources or capital that might have contributed to the formation of

71

relationships and ties within transnational networks in speciﬁc social and historical
circumstances both in India and the United States. Hence in this chapter I explain the
factors that underlie the formation of the social capital embedded in network
relationships, which affects both the meaning and functioning of this vital resource
necessary for transnational business.

Relatively fewer studies on Indian immigrant experience in the United States (Harvey
2008; Chakravartty 2006; Vanna 2006; Bagchi 2001; Montgomery 2008) and of Indian
transnational entrepreneurship among software engineers and scientists in Silicon Valley
(Saxenian; 2006; Biradavolu 2008) have used the variables of human and social capital to
explain their individual research objectives: e. g. how Indian migrants use varied networks
for migration or to seek job information and employment in the United States, advance
their career, facilitate migration adjustments, or for transnational entrepreneurship among
software engineers. Following their example, I too decided to choose social and human
capital as primary explanatory variables for this research on Indian transnational
entrepreneurship. Comparable research on highly skilled Israeli transnational
entrepreneurs (Gold: 1997; 2002; 2007) and that of Chinese transnational
entrepreneurship (Leung 2002 cited in Light 2007:93; Cheng 1999 cited in Fong and Luk
2007:11) have also highlighted in their ﬁndings that the high level of human capital and
ﬁnancial resources brought to the United States by new immigrants or acquired as foreign
students not only shape many aspects for their social and economic well-being, but also
strongly inﬂuence their preferences, practices, and priorities in transnational business.
This makes a crucial diﬁ‘erence in the resource content in the networks of skilled

immigrants compared to those with lower skill levels, as discussed earlier.

72

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Further, I choose to explore the how cultural capital that is closely related to human
and social capital can act as a class resource of the transnational entrepreneurs in this
study. While there are outstanding case studies (Saxenian 2006; Hondagneu-Sotello
1994; Landolt 2001; Levitt 2001; Menjivar 2000; Lessinger 1992 and others) in which all
three, sometimes two or one strand of capital have been explained, their exact
interrelation has seldom been theorized, especially among the skilled economic
transnational entrepreneurs. I intend to ﬁll this gap by analyzing how all three forms of
capital interact to create and maintain transnational connectivity.

Definitions of Key Terms for this Research:

The following deﬁnitions are used throughout the dissertation:

(i) Economic Transnationalism: For this research, Portes et al.’s (1999:219) deﬁnition
of economic transnational activities is adopted because he offers a structural, sociological
and measurable conceptualization of economic transnational activities. This is relevant
for my research. Portes et al. (1999:219) states economic transnational activities as those
actions and businesses that call for “regular and sustained contacts over time across
national borders for their implementation.” This kind of social conduct is characterized
by a high intensity of exchanges, new modes of transacting, and the multiplication of
activities that require cross-border travel and contacts on a sustained basis. Explaining it
further, Gold (2002: 13) mentions that transnational activities are grounded in
enviromnents variously called transnational social ﬁelds, transnational spaces, or
transnational communities.

(ii) Cultural Capital: For deﬁning the term “cultural capital,” I have used Bourdieu’s

(1986) explanation. According to Bourdieu (1986:47), this form of capital “exists in three

73

forms: in the embodied state, i.e. in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and
body; in the objectiﬁed state, in the form of cultural goods (books, paintings, artifacts,
machines, and dictionaries) . . . and in the institutional state”. The Institutional state can
be considered as objectiﬁcation of cultural capital in the form of academic qualiﬁcations.
For the purpose of this study, I use cultural capital to mean the embodied and the
objectiﬁed states of cultural capital (emphasis added).

In the embodied state, most of the properties of cultural capital can be reasoned to be
present within the body and presupposes embodiment. Bourdieu (1986:48) explains the
accumulation of cultural capital in the embodied state to be a process of incorporation
and embodiment that entails a conscious labor of inculcation and assimilation, cost time,
and personal investment of time by the investor. In other words, the work of acquisition
of cultural capital is work of self-improvement, particularly “as competence in a society’s
high-status culture” (Bourdieu cited in Light & Gold 2000:91). Furthermore, Bourdieu
states that “this embodied capital is external wealth converted into an integral part of the
person, into a habitus (emphasis added) that cannot be transmitted instantaneously,
(unlike money or property rights or title of nobility) by gift or bequest, purchase or
exchange.”

Therefore, cultural capital is acquired to a varying extent by members of a society,
depending on the period, the society, migration experience, and the social and economic
status, in the absence of any intentional cultivation and quite unconsciously. An
important aspect of the embodied state of cultural capital is the close association between
economic and cultural capital, which is established through the mediation of time

required for its acquisition. So, the differences in the possession of cultural capital by the

74

family suggest differences “ﬁrst in the age at which the work of transmission and
accumulation begins—the limiting case being full use of the time biologically available,
with the maximum free time being harnessed to maximum cultural capital—and then in
the capacity, thus deﬁned, to satisfy the speciﬁcally cultural demands of a prolonged
process of acquisition (ibid:49).”

Cultural capital in the objectiﬁed state in Bourdieu’s depiction has a number of
properties which can be described in relationship with cultural capital in its embodied
form. To cite Bourdieu, “the cultural capital objectiﬁed in material objects and media,
such as writing, painting, monuments, instruments, etc. is transmissible in its materiality.

. what is transmissible is legal ownership and not (or not necessarily!) what constitutes
the precondition for speciﬁc appropriation, namely, the possession of the means of
‘consuming’ a painting or using a machine, which being nothing other than embodied
capital, are subject to the same laws of transmission (ibid:50).”

(iii) Human Capital: To maintain integration between the three forms of capital as well
as to emphasize the fungibility aspect of one form of capital to another—as has been
elaborated in the previous chapter—I would like to use human capital to mean
Bourdieu’s deﬁnition of ‘institutional capital’ which is constituted by educational
credentials or qualiﬁcations. It confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital
which it is presumed to guarantee. The main difference between cultural and human
forms of capital lies in how the capital beneﬁts the owner. In the case of human capital it
increases its owner’s productivity, a competence that the employer rewards with an
increase in wages. On the other hand, cultural capital expresses the prestige recognition

on the strength of which people acquire desirable marriage partners, dream jobs and

75

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business contacts. Light & Gold (2000291) clarify the two forms of capital as thus, “the
same diploma has value as human capital and as cultural capital; the difference depends
upon whether we emphasize the real vocational competencies that a diploma represents
or the prestige recognition it commands for its owner.” Educational qualiﬁcation confers
both human and cultural capital. And, when a person’s education provides opportunities
that enhance his/her productivity and prestige recognition, then that person has two
categories of capital and can easily convert them into ﬁnancial capital (Light & Gold
2000:91).

(iv) Social Capital: I have used the deﬁnition of social capital offered by Portes
(1995:12) as “the capacity of individuals to command scarce resources by virtue of their
membership in networks or broader social structures . . . The resources themselves are
not social capital; the concept refers instead to the individual’s ability to mobilize them
on demand” (italics in original). Portes offers a Bourdieu-based deﬁnition of social
capital which I think is apt for this research on transnational entrepreneurs. Thus, social
capital is not a property inherent to the individual. It is drawn from that person’s web of
relationships. The volume of social capital possessed by an individual depends on the size
of network. As a result, social capital can curb an individual’s freedom by controlling
behavior or enhance privileged access to resources. It is founded on a collective
expectation that inﬂuences an individual’s behavior, including normative reciprocity,
trust, loyalty, and morality that is protected and controlled within social networks. Social
capital comprises both the networks and the assets that might be mobilized through those
networks. Conceiving social capital as dependent on membership or engagement in social

networks assists in identifying transnational networks arising out of opportunity

76

 

 

 

 

 

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structures in sending and receiving countries that motivate people to engage in
transnational business activities (Vertovec 2003:648).
Choice for a Multi-sited Ethnography:

A number of characteristics of the multi-sited ethnographic approach proved to be
appropriate for this research to explain causes and consequences of transnational
entrepreneurship. As the respondents of the study were spread across multiple urban sites
in India and the United States, it is a bi-national ethnography of immigrant, retumee, and
non-migrant transnational entrepreneurs who have opted to register their businesses and
live in the United States or in India at the time of the study.

This methodological approach enabled me to show how global intersects with the
local experiences of individual agents and how global processes are grounded in the local
circumstances and resources (Marcus 1995; Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Fitzgerald 2006;
Burawoy et al. 2000). The multi-sited approach challenges the claims of conventional
ethnographers who understand social relations by involving a family of methods for
direct and continued social contact with agents (Willis & Trondman 2000:] cited in
Fitzgerald 20062). The latter is more suited to study the settler migrant populations, who
have long periods of stay in the host country and so have deeper and more extensive
family connections in one location—the United States in this case——than sojourners or
transnational subjects.

In contrast, the present study is of transnational respondents who were neither

. 1 . . .
SO] ourner nor settlers , and for whom migration was not perceived as a permanent move,

 

l The sojoumer immigrant is oﬁen a male who leaves his family behind and enters the United States with
the intention of earning money to take back home. The settler, in contrast, is someone who enters the
United States and remains for a long period, perhaps for the rest of his or her life. Settler immigrants tend
to have deeper and more extensive family connections in the United States than sojourners (Paral 2005).

77

 

 

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but as an on-going process between multiple settings to which the respondents develop
personal meanings, which demanded analyzing social relations that were greatly
inﬂuenced by conditions of globalization. Consequently, I sought to understand how
relationships between society, space, and mobility are conceptualized, as well as
implications for appreciating ethnographic sites where social relations are not totally
embedded in a speciﬁc place.

Although sociologists and scholars of other disciplines have rewoven the de-linking
of the social and the spatial in many different ways, the approach I have adopted is to
analyze the power relations within networks. That would allow me to make clear the
reproduction and changes in the relational and structural aspects of networks. For such an
analysis to happen, it is necessary to incorporate place-based resources, as well as the
agency of the entrepreneurs and their sense-making activities as forces shaping the
networks. This line of inquiry where importance is given to knowing the actor’s
connections and practices in deﬁning the transnational networks, based on social
categories like class, gender, race, and citizenship which revealed the heterogeneity and
diversity inherent in the cross-border network structure.

In keeping with the above view of global ethnography, sociologists like Portes et al.
(1999), Gold (2002), Grasmuck & Pessar (1991), Kyle (2000), Smith & Guarnizo (1998),
Smith (2005), Voigt-Graf (2005) who have studied the social as “transnational” deﬁne it
as a study of various manners of border crossings by people, discourses, texts, and
representations at various geographical levels (Schiller 1997 cited in Gille & O’Riain
20021275). The studies by the scholars mentioned above testify to a sociological method

where studying transnational social relations as a measurable object of inquiry requires

78

considerable amount of conceptual rigor and ﬁeld research to make it worthy of the new
term. These migration scholars have directed their attention to studying transnational
activities of migrants, immigrants, returnees, transnational entrepreneurs, and cultural
groups from sending countries to émigre' communities in receiving countries. This way of
conceptualization of social action as ‘transnational’ gives insight into how social actors
build, mediate, and develop new scales of social relations and activities between the
national and the global. Another example of analyzing the transnational practices by
employing the rigors of sociological research to multi-sited ethnography was done by
Smith (2005) who examined migration between a town in the Mexican state of Puebla
and New York City, demonstrating migrants’ integration into New York, while
simultaneously remaining deeply involved with the cultural and economic life at Puebla.
Conceiving and analyzing transnational practices more as a lived and grounded
reality as opposed to perspectives by globalization scholars like Lash & Urry (1994),
Castells (1997), Appadurai (1990), where it is conceived as a global imagination such as
how social groups or movements create visions, construct identities, and develop
discourses on what globalization ought to, or might, look like tend to reify networks and
migration as themselves deﬁning society. In this view the social is disassociated from any
particular place (Gille & O’Riain 2002:274). These scholars provide meaningful insights
and put forth a whole range of new processes for scholarly considerations of competing

visions of the global. They reveal the impact of global organization on the local

knowledge and ideas in an increasingly globalized world2 (DeSoto 2000; Gille 2000;

 

2 For more elaborate discussion on global forces, global connections, and global imaginations see Burawoy
et al. (2000).

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Goldman 2001). However, they fail to take into account the structural basis of resources
that are needed for accomplishing the goals of migration and transnational practices and
actions realistically (Gold 2002:21—22). So, for me, the drawbacks of the alternative ways
of conceptualizing transnational throws into relief the advantage of adopting a multi-sited
ethnographical approach, where the “place” and structural resources continue to be
signiﬁcant in analyzing transnational economic activities.

I considered ethnography to be the most appropriate methodology because it allowed
me to investigate the social structures that are created across multiple scales
(geographical scope and range) and sites, by strategically locating myself at critical
points of intersection of these scales and units of analysis. For example I could examine
how transnational entrepreneurs situated in the United States or in India collaborate with
their school peers or work colleagues who inhabit the transnational space for acquiring
global business deals. Another reason for choosing ethnography is because it does not
rely on comparable or ﬁxed units of analysis, as do surveys and comparative research. It
is well suited to explain and describe “the articulation of macro structures with members’
lived experience, micro-interactions, and a deep appreciation of members’ meanings”
(Fitzgerald 2006: 12).

Finally, by following the methodological leads of a growing number of immigration
scholars in recent times (Tsuda 2003; Voigt-Graf 2005; Bashi 2007; Fitzgerald 2009)
who chose multi-site strategy for analyzing migrant and non-migrant transnational
networks between the host and the home country, I too have incorporated in-depth
qualitative interviews for collecting data at the research sites in India and the United

States. The information gathered from interviews, supplemented with other ethnographic

80

 

 

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ﬁeldwork methods in two countries permitted me to explain the transnational business
practices of Indian entrepreneurs in ﬁne-grained detail. In addition, using a multi-sited
perspective I could illustrate that the ‘ﬁeld’ of ethnographic inquiry is not merely a
geographic place waiting to be entered but in fact a conceptual space whose boundaries
are being constantly negotiated and constructed by the ethnographer and the transnational
respondents. In closing, I considered ethnography to be valuable for analyzing
“embeddedness” because it allows an understanding of the causes, consequences, and
mechanisms by which social structures affect economic outcomes and it generates a rich
source of data for testable and speciﬁc hypotheses (Uzzil996z677).

Data Sources and Collection Procedure:

Long before initiating this research project in 2007, I had conducted pre-dissertation
research on the Indian community in the United States as part of a requirement for a class
in qualitative methods in the fall semester of 2001. The preliminary research of 2001 ,
where I had conducted 15 in-depth interviews with Indian professionals working for
private and public universities, medical institutions, and multi-national corporations in
three mid-westem states—Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois—gave rne insights into heavily
politicized issues concerning the Indian immigrant community in the United States. It
quickly became apparent in my interviews and in conversations at private social
gatherings with this group of technically qualiﬁed professional Indians, that they were
grappling to understand the steady increase in the trend among their contemporaries,
friends, and relatives who had decided to re-locate to India, either as American

expatriates working for their U.S. company, or to launch their own transnational business.

81

 

 

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Exchanges and meetings with the Indian community in informal and formal settings
over the next few years further revealed that the Indian immigrants who had chosen to
become transnational entrepreneurs resided in many regions of the United States
(Northeast, Midwest, South, Southwest, and Northwest) and in India. In other words,
economic transnational practices were becoming increasingly a popular option of earning
a livelihood among Indian immigrants in the United States. There appeared to be two
characteristics that determined this trend. First, a small proportion of the Indian
immigrant community, largely men, took the risk of resigning from their secure high
paying jobs in U.S. corporations or universities to become full-time business people.
Second, they were a widely dispersed population in the United States in adherence to
Portes & Rumbaut’s (2006:41—5 l) observation of recent Indian immigrants. They
represented one of the most spatially dispersed groups, whose numbers had more than
doubled during the 19903. Given the dispersed nature of the study population in 2003, I
started maintaining a roster of names, ofﬁce addresses, and the type/sector of
transnational business activities of possible respondents in the United States and India.

In addition, information on prospective transnational respondents in both countries
was gathered by extensively participating in numerous community activities of Indian
immigrants over three to four years, especially in the United States. I was an observer to
the TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) chapter meetings in Chicago and Detroit, public social
gatherings on occasions of Hindu festivals like Holi, Diwali, Durga Puja at the Bharatiya
temple in Haslett, the Hindu temple in Lemont, Illinois, the Vivekananda Vedanta
Society in Chicago, and meetings of Michigan State University’s India Council. I kept

extensive notes of my observations from attending these meetings and public gatherings.

82

In addition, I exhaustively used personal networks of family, kin, and friends in the
United States and India to gather information about transnational entrepreneurs residing
in both countries. Finally, I used public data sources on the web and mailing lists of
Indian professional and business associations to complete the master roster of potential
transnational respondents. These multiple avenues of access enabled me to gather
information about prospective respondents from a wide range of groups who were
transnational entrepreneurs in the United States and in India, rather than a small number
of speciﬁc groups.

The Indian community in the United States at the venues mentioned earlier responded
to me with ﬁiendliness and with active interest in my search for identifying transnational
respondents in both countries. I was quite successful in establishing a rapport and gaining
acceptance in the Indian community in the United States, and as a result it eased my
efforts in identifying respondents whom I could approach in 2007 to participate in my
study. As the news of my intended doctoral research spread by word of mouth,
information of immigrant and returnee transnational respondents who more or less ﬁt the
proﬁle of transnational entrepreneurs for this research began contacting me on a regular

basis and in greater numbers.

While in India, I visited the ofﬁce of NASSCOM3 at Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi,

where I had lengthy conversation with the secretary and ofﬁcials of this premier trade

body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO4 industries in India (see more about

NASSCOM in appendix no.6). With a membership of 1,300 Indian and multinational

 

3 . . . . .
National Assocratron of Software and Servrces Companies

4 IT-BPO: Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing

83

companies in 2008, who have a broad presence in India in the businesses of software
development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPO services,
e-commerce and web services, engineering services, off shoring, and animation and
gaming, NASSCOM proved to be a fountainhead of information. Undoubtedly as an
Indian woman, and a PhD candidate from an American university doing ﬁeldwork in
India, and with the complete understanding of NASSCOM’s ofﬁcials and staff of my
research project, I was considered as an insider. My status as an “insider” among ofﬁcials
at NASSCOM made them willing to share information about companies and their owners
in India who matched the proﬁle of transnational entrepreneurs residing in India.

To supplement the primary data from interviews, I used secondary data from the 2000
U.S. Decennial Census, the Department of Homeland Security’s Ofﬁce of Immigration
Statistics (OIS) for 2006-07, the American Community Survey report 2006, World Bank
documents, Government of India Reports, and newspaper and online journal articles to
analyze transnational business trends among Indians in the United States and in India.

The next step of the data collection procedure was to select suitable transnational
respondents from the roster that I had created from 2003 onwards. At the time of my
ﬁeldwork in 2007, the master roster had information on more than 100 transnational
potential respondents situated in the United States and India. In order to incorporate
multiple perspectives into the analysis, a stratiﬁed purposeful sampling strategy was
employed. I chose this sampling method because I had prior knowledge about this
population and this strategy would allow selection of cases that would highlight different
perspectives of the transnational economic process. Moreover, this strategy was useful

for studying subgroups of transnational entrepreneurs and for facilitating comparisons

84

among different groups (Creswell 1998; Miles & Huberman 1994). To build diversity
into the data and to include a wide variety of experiences and opinions of economic
transnational practices, three groups of transnational entrepreneurial respondents were
interviewed: a) immigrant transnational entrepreneurs in the United States, b) retumee
transnational entrepreneurs from the United States in India, and c) non-migrant
transnational entrepreneurs in India.

Gaining Access:

The key component of the research plan was to collect information by conducting
personal in-depth interviews with the chosen respondents in the two countries. All met
the proﬁle of the interviewees of the study (discussed later under The Sample). In 2007 I
sent out letters of invitation to participate in my study, accompanied with a letter from my

advisor stating the relevance of the research in advancing the study of transnationalism,

and the IRB5 approval statement to a total of 55 potential respondents located in the
United States and India. I sent copies of the three documents ﬁrst by surface mail and
later followed up by electronic mail and telephone calls to the registered company ofﬁces
of the transnational entrepreneurs (see Appendices 1, 2 and IRB approval).

Although I had met some of the potential respondents at various venues and knew an
intermediary in most cases (e. g. an official at NASSCOM or other ethnic or occupation-
speciﬁc professional organization, a friend, acquaintance, or relative) who had
volunteered to act as a bridge to reach and persuade the respondents to participate in my
research, I was nonetheless acutely aware of the ‘elitist’ nature of the study population,

their hyper-mobility across the world, the enormous time constraints under which they

‘

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functioned, and their transnational lives. Therefore, I reasoned the best course of action
would be to take a formal route by obtaining an interview appointment scheduled in their
business calendar. I also thought perhaps this way I could avoid the respondent insisting
on a phone interview because they felt they did not have the time to spare for a face-to-
face meeting due to variable schedules and their professional and business
responsibilities. However, this proved to be impossible in a number of cases both in the
United States and in India, and I was compelled to conduct some telephone interviews
and thus compromise contextual information in the interest of guaranteeing participation
by these key respondents whom I knew would add value to the study.

To my pleasant surprise in several instances the administrative or personal assistants
to these high-proﬁle transnational entrepreneurs (the respondents for my study) became
my advocates, enabling me to schedule a 30 (minimum) to 40 (maximum) minute
appointment time for a face-to-face or telephone interview. The reference to an earlier
casual meeting with the respondent at a meeting, the letters, the IRB approval, and timely
interventions by intermediaries also helped in securing the participation of the
respondents. On average the appointments for an interview with the respondents were
scheduled two to four months from the time when the ﬁrst contact was made by the
official letter. The only problem I encountered with the transnational respondents in both
countries was when interview appointments were suddenly cancelled because of genuine
inability to ﬁnd a time slot in the calendar of the potential respondent. Also, a good
number of interview appointments had to be re-scheduled two or three times prolonging

the scheduling process over four to six months.

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On other hand I have wonderful experiences of prompt email responses or telephone
calls from transnational respondents located in both countries, where they responded
immediately to me on receiving my invitation letter to schedule an interview appointment
at a mutually convenient time. So, it was an assortment of experiences in gaining access
to this elite population of transnational entrepreneurs. However, once I was able to
schedule an interview, even those to whom access was relatively difﬁcult to gain,
respondents were enthusiastic and shared information freely and spontaneously. On
occasion they were willing to talk for a long time. All of my respondents made me feel
welcome and displayed an eagerness to know and learn about the research on
“Transnationals,” a term many admitted to not having heard before. They felt more
comfortable with the phrase “Globalization.”

The primary data were collected from transnational entrepreneurs by conducting in-
depth interviews. The respondents of the study were given the freedom to select the time,
date, and place that best met their busy schedule. However at the time of scheduling the
interview appointment I would mention the date(s) of my visit to a particular city or area
in the United States or in India. Sometimes when arrangements for a face-to—face
interview were not feasible during my visit to a particular city or region, alternative
locations were explored, and ﬁnally when it seemed impossible to have a personal
interview, telephone interviews were arranged. While many of the interviews were
conducted during ofﬁce hours on weekdays, some respondents found it more convenient
to conduct interviews over the weekend and also during evening hours. Interviews were
conducted at numerous locations. Many of the respondents preferred the interview to be

conducted at their corporate ofﬁces, whereas others requested interviews to be organized

87

 

 

 

 

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at their private homes, hotel and airport lobbies, private health clubs, public libraries,
coffee shops, or bookstores.

At nearly all interviews (in person) the respondent had a dossier which held all the
correspondence I have had with him or her, as well as had done the ground work to
prepare to answer the interview questions, especially those who had requested the
interview questions be sent to them ahead of time. More than half of the respondents had
been graduate students in U.S. universities themselves and others had attended
institutions of higher education in India, so all seemed to have a good idea what social
science research was about and had no trouble understanding my identity as a graduate
student researcher conducting ﬁeldwork. My role and identity as a doctoral student at an
American university often led them to reminiscence about their graduate years in the
United States.

I conducted 42 in-depth interviews in 2007 spread over eight months with
transnational respondents, which constitute the primary source of data for this study. The
ﬁrst phase was comprised of ﬁeldwork conducting interviews mainly with transnational
immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States. In the second phase of ﬁeldwork in India I
conducted interviews with retumee and non-migrant transnational entrepreneurs living in
India. In a few rare cases, the interviews were conducted with an immigrant in India or
retumee entrepreneur in the United States that was not in the country of the respondent’s
residence.

To ensure both structure and ﬂexibility in the in-depth interview, I created an
interview guide that contained open- and closed-ended questions (Legard et al. 2003). For

preparing the interview schedule, previous research and literature on transnational

88

 

 

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networks were utilized: Uzzi’s (1996) ethnographic research on CEOs and select staff
members of New York based apparel ﬁrms, Bashi’s (2007) examination of migrant
networks of West Indians, and Bagchi’s (2001) study of networks of Indian and Filipino
immigrant professionals to the United States.

In addition to obtaining demographic, socio-economic, educational, and occupational
information on the respondents and also that of their parents’ social, economic, and
occupational background, my interview questions were organized around the themes of
a) the societal or institutional structures in the respondents’ background that contributed
in the creation of cultural, human, and social capital; b) the migratory history of the
respondents to the United States and of return migration to India; c) the career path of the
respondents leading to transnational business; d) the conﬁguration and utilization of
respondents’ transnational business networks; and e) perception of self as a transnational
entrepreneur (for further details see Interview schedule, Appendix no. 3).

My interviews were conversationally oriented. I initiated the interview with open-
ended questions and then followed up on respondent’s responses, but I was careful to
conduct what Merton, Fiske, and Kendall (1990) call “the focused interview.” This
approach helped in providing the respondent considerable latitude to respond to the
questions and to discuss relevant topics that exceeded the prepared interview guidelines. 1
was open to changes of the sequence and form of the questions, and when required I
incorporated probing or follow up questions to increase the richness of the data (Patton
1990). All interviews were tape recorded digitally and, as suggested by Creswell (1998),
were transcribed into a Microsoﬁ Word document within 48 hours of the interview being

held. I also kept handwritten notes made during the interviews. Soon afterwards I

89

 

 

 

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organized my notes and supplemented them with observations while my memory of the
interview was still fresh.

The language used at the interview was English, although sometimes to express a
particular sentiment or to describe a situation aptly a Hindi word or an adage was used. I
wore comfortable professional clothes while meeting with the respondents for an
interview in the United States. However, in India I wore traditional Indian clothes. At the
start of the interview I stated that the respondent’s privacy was protected by guaranteeing
anonymity in the study. Each person interviewed was assigned a case number in the
analysis of the data and I assigned a pseudonym to each numbered subject and used only
these pseudonyms in writing the dissertation. I also made the interviewee sign a
conﬁdentiality form to support my guarantee to protect the subject’s privacy (see
Appendix no. 4). For telephone interviews, I obtained verbal consent at the start of the
interview. No remuneration was given to the respondents. On some occasions, I received
complementary gifts from the respondents which were either products or an insignia of
their company, like packets of Darjeeling Tea earmarked for export to the United States,
books, or a painting of respondents, a hand-crafted scarf, hand bags, desk calendar, paper
weights, pens and mugs with the company logo. I was obliged to accept these gifts as it
would be considered disrespectful in Indian culture if I were to refuse them. I was also
offered lots of Darjeeling tea or coffee or other non-alcoholic beverages during the
interview session.

The Sample:
I was curious to analyze the different types of transnational network conﬁgurations

because of dissimilar levels of resources (social, cultural, ﬁnancial, and human capital)

90

embedded within them, and thus I adopted a stratiﬁed purposive sampling technique (as
stated earlier) in the selection of the respondents that had particular characteristics or
features. This approach enabled a thorough exploration and understanding of the central
question: How do Indian transnational entrepreneurs in the United States and in India
develop transnational business/economic ties? The sampling technique allowed for a
comprehensive understanding of the experiences of transnational Indians that are very
similar to each other and yet the interviewees differ in physical location, age, sector of
business and entrepreneurship, and type and level of education.

I interviewed three categories of transnational respondents: Indian immigrants in the
United States, retumee migrants from the United States in India, and non-migrant
Indians. All the 42 respondents were owners and founders or a partner of a private
transnational business for a minimum of ﬁve to six years. Their ages ranged from 35—65
years. They all frequently travel to India or to the United States (four to six times
annually either way) for business activities and maintained a high intensity of exchange
and contacts with people from all walks of life on a regular basis between both countries.

To build variation in the data set I included two age cohorts of entrepreneurs (a)
above the age of 50 years or who have migrated to the United States between 1970—79,
and (b) below the age of 50 years or who have migrated to the United States in 1980—99.

See Table 3-1.

91

Table No. 3-1: Distribution of Respondents by Agg Entrepreneurial Sector & Gender

 

 

 

 

 

Respondents’ Age (Between 35—50 Respondents’ Age (Between 51 —65 Grand

years) years) Total

Sector of Sector of

Business Men Women Total Business Men Women Total

Tech - Tech-

nology 15 3 18 nology 8 9 27

Sector Sector (64%)

Material 6 1 7 Material 7 8 15

goods goods (36%)

Sector Sector

Total 21 4 25 Total 15 17 42
(60%) (40%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two time frames—determined by taking into account two migration cohorts to
the United States from India—were selected to capture the consequences of the
macroeconomic policy changes in India since the 19805 on the performance of
transnational business networks, and also to distinguish the economic transnational
practices and networks between these two age groups in their respective business sectors.
There were other distinctive differences between these two age groups in terms of their
individual motivation for migrating to the United States and that of receiving assistance
and support from established migratory networks. Another consideration in determining
the age cohorts was the year in which the respondents had registered their transnational
business in both countries. As a result, the respondents who had arrived in the United
States in 19708, 19805, and 19903 as graduate students or as company transferees were at
different stages of their professional career and at different ages. For instance, for the

younger transnational respondents it was far easier to obtain ﬁnancial capital from

92

venture capitalists and ﬁnancial institutions or as angel funds. Besides, the pro-business
policies of India acted dissimilarly as an incentive for undertaking transnational business
ventures between India and the United States, thereby affecting the volume of enterprise
between the two age groups. For example, younger women were more inclined towards
entrepreneurship than women respondents above age 50.

As highlighted in Table No. 3—1 , 27 (64% of 42) respondents were entrepreneurs in
the technology domain, whereas 15 (36% of 42) were engaged in transnational businesses
dealing in material goods in both countries. Women form only 14% (six of 42) of the
respondents in the study compared to men, who constitute 86% (36 of 42) of the
respondents. Efforts to recruit an equal number of participants by gender were
unsuccessful. To some extent this was caused by the difficulties in actual recruitment. For
instance, women transnational entrepreneurs who were heads or partners of their ﬁrms
were especially difﬁcult to ﬁnd. Several had chosen to go back to salaried employment
because of family responsibilities and to avoid frequent foreign travel. Further, more than
half, 60% (25 of 42) of the respondents were below the age of 50 years, whereas 40% (17
of 42) were above the age of 50 years. The striking imbalance in the ages of the
interviewees in this study is reﬂective of the demographic characteristics of Indian
population in both countries6.

Moreover, as seen in Figure 3.1, a higher proportion of younger entrepreneurs were
living in India 56% (14 of 25), whereas 44% (11 of 25) were residents of the United
States. Another conspicuous aspect of age distribution is the huge difference (almost

double) between the two age groups in India, compared to an almost similar ratio of

 

6
75% of Indian Population is below 35 years of age (Source: Population Bulletin (2006) Vol. 61, no. 3).

93

participants in two generation in the United States. In sum, the study largely describes a
younger population (below the age of 50 years), almost entirely male, engaged in
transnational economic activities in the technology domain, with a slightly higher fraction
living in India.

Figure No: 3.1: Distribution of Respondents by Age and Country
14

 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INDIA

 

ll Previous Generation I Present Generation]

 

Figure no. 3.2 illustrates the distribution of the respondents in their respective
transnational businesses in both countries. Respondents who dealt with tangible material
goods, mainly luxury goods (e. g. handmade textiles, fashion and costume jewelry) and
agro products (e.g. canned fruits or organic food items etc.), were fewer in India as
compared to the United States. It was the other way around regarding respondents in
technology business (e.g. IT, IT Enabled Solutions, Financial Services, Biotechnology,

etc.). The stratiﬁcation plan aimed at recruiting an equal number of respondents in the

94

two sectors in both countries——that is, entrepreneurs who were engaged in transnational

businesses in the technology and material goods sectors—was futile.

Figure No: 3. 2: Transnational Respondents in the US and India by Sector

I I In

Respondents from ) Respondents in ‘ Respondents from Respondents in

1 Technology Sector Matenal goods sector? Technology Sector Matenal goods sector)

No. of Respondents

1 USA INDIA 1
Countries
While I did achieve the goal of recruiting an equal number of participants in both
countries (21 in each country), immigrant, retumee, and non-migrant transnational

entrepreneurs are not equally represented in each of these categories of respondents. See

ﬁgure no. 3.3.

95

Figure No: 3.3: Migration Status of Respondents by Country

7%

 

 

ﬁrst Generation Transnational entrepreneurs in the U.S.

l I Second Generation Transnational entrepreneurs in the U.S.
I:I Retumee Transnational entrepreneurs in India l
l Non- migrant Transnational entrepreneurs in India J

 

Among the transnational immigrants entrepreneurs 43% (1 8 of 42) interviewees were
ﬁrst-generation immigrants to the United States, where as only 7% (three of 42) were
second-generation entrepreneurs of Indian origin in the United States. The over
representation of ﬁrst-generation Indian immigrants in the study was mainly due to the
fact that there are not many children of the ﬁrst-generation Indian immigrants who have
come of sufficient age to have an established career of their own in the United States. The
three second-generation transnational respondents considered in the study had taken
charge and expanded their parents’ or their family’s business in the United States. Some
of the sample biases reﬂected the population characteristics of this group of immigrant
economic transnationals.

All the respondents in the Technology sector in both the research sites were ﬁrst-time
transnational entrepreneurs. In the material good sector seven respondents had been

involved in their family business since their early youth. But, all seven of them were

96

responsible for extending their businesses beyond the national shores of their respective
countries and had initiated transnational business undertakings. The other eight
businesspersons in the material goods sector were ﬁrst-generation entrepreneurs like their
counterparts in the Technology domain.

The Study Site:

I adopted perhaps the most obvious and conventional mode of executing a multisided
ethnography, that is to “follow the people” (the transnational entrepreneurs). The
procedure was to follow the movement or migration of the respondents to their present
destination. As my research examined how such transnational economic activities change
the perception and construction of “place” within transnational social ﬁelds, the trail to
the present locations of the transnational respondents led me to four of the most sought-
aﬁer urban centers in the north, west, east, and south of India, which have gradually
emerged over the past two decades as global hubs for worldwide businesses and
initiatives in various sectors. They are as follows: Noida (close to New Delhi, the national
capital of India) in the north; Kolkata in the state of West Bengal in the east; Bangalore
and Chennai, in the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu respectively; Pune and
Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, Ahmedabad in the state of Guj arat—both in the
west; and Hyderabad and Vishakapatnam in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh (refer
to the location map at the end of the chapter, diagram no. 3-1). Similarly, the selection of
urban centers in the East Coast, South, Midwest and West Coast of the United States
were the present business locations of Indian transnational immigrants. This included
Alexandria, Hemdon, Chantilly, and McLean, Virginia (metropolitan Washington DC);

Rochester Hills, Bloomﬁeld Hills, and the Indian ethnic business districts of Orchard

97

Lake Road in the greater metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan; Devon Street in
Chicago, Illinois; Jackson Heights in New York City; Santa Clara and Mountain View in
California; Dallas, Texas; Teaneck in New Jersey; and Clearwater in south Florida.
Data Analysis:

Data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. For the quantitative analysis
of the data I looked for personal information of the respondents, such as age, gender,
level of formal education, high school and universities attended in India and in the United
States, language proﬁciency, parents’ education, citizenship, position/title in the
company, economic class of the respondent’s birth family, urban locations in India where
they were raised as children and young adults, year of migration to the United States
(where applicable), and the visa status at the ﬁrst time of migration to the United States.
This was done to get a fair description of the socio-economic and demographic
characteristics of the three categories of respondents—immigrant entrepreneurs in the
US, retumee and non-mi grant entrepreneurs in India—as well as to detect differences
between them and among the two age cohorts of interviewees.

For the qualitative analysis, all 42 taped interviews were transcribed into Microsoﬁ
Word documents and the data were analyzed using the qualitative data analysis software
program NVivo (Version 8). First, the interviews were manually coded by looking for
common themes and patterns, and frequently-appearing key words on the major themes
examined: (i) motives for migration to the United States and return to India, (ii) social
and human capital within networks employed for transnational business, (iii) skills and
competencies gained ﬁom migration experience and work career in multiple settings, and

(iv) revised perception of self brought about by transnational interpersonal connections

98

and from the advantages of being a member/citizen of multiple states. Second, by
copying and pasting the highlighted excerpts from the interviews that were representative
of these three major themes, I created an exhaustive list of “Tree Nodes” in NVivo for a
detailed analysis of the data under each particular theme. The audio tapes and
transcriptions of the interviews were continually listened to and read to identify common
trends throughout the coding process.

Next, under each Tree Node, I created ﬁrrther nodes identifying minor themes, which
represented more speciﬁc experiences. These minor nodes were helpful in highlighting
the richness of transnational experiences, to select relevant quotes and compare
respondents’ background information. This coding scheme in NVivo made it easier to
compare similarities and differences in the three groups of transnational entrepreneurs in
two territorial locations by their age groups, volume of cultural, social, and human capital
embedded in networks, sources of ﬁnancial capital, immigration period, and by their
transnational business sectors. It also facilitated the analytic process to search for
conﬁguration or patterns of networks routinely used by transnational business people for

their enterprise.

99

Diagram No: 3-1 (a):

Interview Locations in the United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

100

Diagram No: 3-1 (b):

Interview Locations in India

 

W . n

 

 

 

101

 

Chapter - 4

When Imagination becomes Reality

In keeping with ﬁndings in the immigration literature, earlier studies on Indian
emigration focused on social, familial, and economic motivations (Harvey 2008;
Saxenian 2006; Bagchi 2001; Poros 2001). However, previous empirical research on
Indian immigrants to the United States who are predominantly highly skilled (Portes &
Rumbaut 2006:77) has rarely analyzed how societal structures and especially class-based
resources of the migrants’ families in the home country inﬂuenced their migratory
decisions and shaped the formation of the premigratory networks that presented
migration as an attractive proposition for consolidating their economic resources. By
examining networks in both the sending and receiving countries, this chapter eliminates
these gaps in the knowledge of how business networks of highly skilled entrepreneurs
operate transnationally. In this chapter and in chapter 5, I also show that the types of
transnational networks used by immigrant entrepreneurs are likely to differ according to
their sector of entrepreneurship and resource distribution.

In this chapter I examine the social patterning of cultural competencies, preferences,
and practices that corresponds to the distribution of social and human capital that inspires
one to migrate to the United States over other countries. I analyze: How does migratory
experience reinforce the cultural and social capital that transforms some immigrants into
transnational entrepreneurs? How do cultural and human capital interact and function as
the essential powers beneath the social capital available in the relationships of
transnational business networks spanning India and the United States? How do social

ties—“bonding” (strong) and/or “bridging” (weak)—give rise to additional beneﬁts? In

102

other words, in this chapter, I explore how the resources (cultural, human, ﬁnancial, and
social) and the norms (quality of ties—strong, weak, ambiguous, etc.), which constitute
the essential relational aspect of networks together with the structural (context, size,
density, diversity, connectivity) component of networks form different conﬁgurations to
enhance transnational entrepreneurship among Indians.

In the following sections, I ﬁrst examine the premigratory cultural and human capital

of all forty-two transnational entrepreneurs, which I argue plays a decisive role in the

decision-making and motivation for 30 interviewees to migrate to the United States]. I
then examine how disparate possession of resources among immigrant entrepreneurs of
two age cohorts and in two sectors (technology and material goods) leads to varied
conﬁgurations and usage of transnational entrepreneurial networks. I conclude by
discussing the signiﬁcance and patterns of network ties in four immigrant entrepreneurial
networks used by the interviewees for advancing their transnational enterprise

Next, I focus most speciﬁcally on the cross-border entrepreneurial experiences of
Indians who were located in the United States at the time of this study and had initiated
their transnational business as well as registered their administrative headquarters in the
United States. In Chapter 5, I will discuss the similar entrepreneurial experiences of
retumee and nonmigrant transnational businesspeople located in India.
1. Distribution of Premigratory Cultural, Human, and Social Capital:

In the previous chapter, I reasoned that in order to understand how “social capital”
becomes a signiﬁcant outcome of transnational networks, one has to investigate the local

contextual circumstances that contribute to the formation of the cultural and human

¥

Aniong the immigrant entrepreneurs, three are second generation Indians and nine are nonmi grant
entrepreneurs.

103

capital of the respondents. In the subsequent sections, I investigate the life experiences of
transnational entrepreneurs (especially their school and college years in India) in keeping
with Bourdieu’s (1986:243) notion of habitus. I recognize the value assigned to the
reproduction of cultural capital among the respondents by their family members
inﬂuenced by their social and class background, and the close connection among various
forms of capital. This takes the analysis of transnational networks beyond the divide of
structure and agency at a particular moment in time to reveal the deeper societal
structures that lie behind the transnational practices of these entrepreneurs. By examining
real cases of interviewees, I bring together the cultural, social, and human capital of
transnational entrepreneurs with their structural circumstances, such as father’s
education, economic class, type of school and college attended, etc. that both contribute
to and constrain their transnational activities, but sometimes are not of their choosing.

1. The Human Capital of Respondents ’ Birth Family: The majority of fathers of
respondents (23 of 37 cases or 62%) had a professional degree, masters’ degree, or a PhD
as indicated in Table 4-1. I considered the fathers’ education level to be the main
indicator of respondents’ inherited cultural capital. This is in keeping with Bourdieu’s
(1986:89) “volume of capital” notion, which is decisive for the construction of social
space—particularly in a society that is as highly socio-economically differentiated as
India. On the other hand, there were only six fathers who had only a high school
education, which does not necessarily reﬂect a lack of ﬁnancial capital in the family. See

Figure 4-1.

104

Table No. 4-1: Level of Education among Fathers of Respondents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Level of Father’s Frequency Percent
education
ﬂgh School Education 6 16.2
Undergaduate Degree 8 21.6
Masters Degree, PhD, 23 62.1
Professional Degree
Total 37 100
Missing Cases 5

 

 

 

 

When the father’s education level and vocation (an indicator of respondent’s class
origin) was considered, the largest proportion of fathers with at least masters or
professional degrees worked for the federal or state goverrunent, followed by fathers who
were big business owners or industrialists. An equal numbers of respondents’ fathers
were corporate executives, or had careers as teaching faculty in the education sector.
Therefore, level of education among fathers strongly inﬂuenced their earning capacity,
and—when considered alongside vocation—points to the social, economic, and cultural
circumstances in which the respondents were raised as children. See Table 4-2.

Table 4-2 illustrates that, of the men with higher education (36 of 42 or 85.7%), 23
(64%) had converted their noneconomic goods and services (human capital) into high-
paying employment in India, either with the state or federal government or in other
inﬂuential positions. In socialist-leaning India, the prestige and security of a government
job normally attracted the best talent in the country, particularly in the context of low
rates of total male literacy in India, which ranged from 34 percent to 47 percent between

1961 and 1981 (Source: UNESCO 1984:34—35).

105

Table No: 4—2: Respondent’s Father’s Education and Vacation2

 

 

 

 

 

Father's Father’s Occupational Sector/Profession
Educational
Level Education Big Business Corporate Government Blue-collar Total
Sector Owner & Executive 8. Civil Ofﬁcial Worker
Industrialist
High School or 0 6 2 0 5 13
Undergraduate (46.1%) (15.4%) (38.5%)
Degree
Graduate 6 2 4 11 0 23
Degree (26.1%) (8.7%) (17.4%) (47.8%)
Masters
Degree or PhD,
or Professional
Degree in
Medicine,
Engineering,
Law or
Management
Total 6 8 6 11 5 36
(17%) (22%) (17%) (30%) (14%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Big business owners are those with a large number of employees working for their business enterprise.
Industrialists owned big industries like chemical factories/plants, cotton mills, etc. Corporate executives were high-
ranking employees in multi-national ﬁrms.

This association between respondent’s father’s education level and the choice of
vocation explains the ﬂuidity of social life, which compels Swartz (1997:75) to argue for a
broader understanding of Bourdieu’s cultural capital, “. . . which covers a wide variety of
resources including such things as verbal facility, general cultural awareness, aesthetic
preferences, information about the school system, and educational credentials. His

[Bourdieu] point is to suggest that culture (in the broadest sense of the term) can become a

2 The mother’s education levels or employment were not considered because, except for ﬁve mothers of 42
l’tBSPOndents, none were employed in the formal economy or had an individual career. They also had low
levels of education. The mothers were ‘homemakers’ that is, as wife to their husbands they managed the
household. In keeping with the patriarchal norms of the Indian society in 19605 and 19705, women of upper
and middle class were not encouraged to work outside their homes. Less formal education among
respondents’ mothers was not indicative of lack of resourcefulness and inﬂuence within the household.

106

powerful resource.” In this manner, Bourdieu reminds us of the arbitrary and historical
sense of social relations, as well as directs the analysis to the point of intersection of
structure and the biography (Lareau 2001 :82). In this research, many transnational

respondents exhibited proﬁciency in more than two to three languages: English, Hindi, and

more than one Indian regional language3.
Only six (16%) fathers of respondents (except for two corporate executives and ﬁve

blue-collar factory workers) who did not have a graduate education were big business
owners, including an industrialist4. In such cases the interviewees’ fathers had
preferred—sometimes had been persuaded—to join the family business, being the son of
the family to assume familial responsibilities on reaching adulthoods. Moreover, these

fathers who were members of the middleman minority6 groups in India, like the Punjabis,
Gujaratis and Marwaris (Light and Gold 2000:7; Min 1984:334), did not feel the need to
pursue higher education as they reasoned at that time it would not have added value to
their existing family business or to their employment. Even though the level of education
and vocation of respondents’ fathers is a good indicator of economic class, and

consequently of speciﬁc cultural capital within respondents’ natal family, it leaves the

‘

3 Indians now have embraced the idea of English as the language of the globalizing Indian economy. Most
middle class Indians speak in at least two languages, besides their mother tongue. They usually have a
functional ﬂuency in English for business purposes and to manage communication with different
Communities (Nilekeni: 2009:92).

As an outlier, there is a father of a respondent who is an industrialist and also has a PhD from one of the
prestigious institutions of higher education.

In Indian patriarchal society, the “son(s)” of the family are expected to take charge of family matters and
fuIICtion as key decision makers, especially in traditional family run business houses.

_ Middleman minorities are trading communities with a history of traditional capitalism and occupy
lutel‘mediate position in their economic roles. Their focus is on trade, commerce, and other middleman
occupations that connect “producer and consumer, employer and employee, owner and renter, elite and
masses.” Examples of such middleman minority groups are Armenians, Chinese, Jews etc. (Bonacich
I973 :583 cited in Min 1934:334)

107

picture incomplete. Figure 4-1 informs us of the economic status of respondents’ parents,
as perceived by interviewees when they lived in their parents’ household:

Figure No. 4-1: The Economic/Financial Status of Respondents ’ Birth Family

rash [:2

prer Mddle I Mddle 32
Clms

o 5 1o 1T5 2b 2‘5 30 35

On examining the perception of economic class, it becomes evident that the largest
proportion (76%) of respondents felt that their parents had provided them the security and
physical and social comforts of the middle or upper middle class, notwithstanding a few
fathers who had lower education levels. The economic resources of respondents’ parents
provided the physical resources—like a spacious place to live and study, membership in
social clubs for cultivation of their personal talents or hobbies, travel opportunities—that
aided in the easy intergenerational transfer of embodied cultural capital in the birth
families of respondents. In my dialogue with respondents, some shared their memories of
growing up in India. Here is a reﬂection from one Silicon Valley immigrant woman
transnational, which is indicative of the life that most respondents enjoyed as a
Consequence of their parents’ economic class and social status in Indian society:

I had progressive and liberal parents. I think both my parents crossed many

social and cultural barriers. Both my parents did not confine me in anyway in

thoughts or actions. I think that kind of upbringing leﬁ an indelible mark on my

personality in all the choices I made. I am sure my kind of parents ’ family was
reﬂective of many middle class families in post independence India . . . I was

108

exposed to lots of books and ﬁiends ﬁom diﬂerent countries since my childhood.
My best friend was a Japanese girl. There was plenty available in India to build
a strong Indian identity and yet to be familiar with what was happening in the
world (sic).

Lamont et al. (1996:32) in their research have documented the importance of
structural positioning (economic class) in shaping cultural and moral boundaries7, which
they argue can be explained ﬁrst by local cultural supply-side factors (italics in original)
that are formed by drawing on the cultural tool-kit that is readily available to individuals
(Swidler 1986), which depends on the geographic location where one lives. And second,
the lifestyle in which they are involved is determined by their structural position—class,
race, and gender. Together these factors increase the likelihood that individuals will draw
on one type of boundary instead of another. From this viewpoint it can be concluded that
the majority of transnational entrepreneurs had developed their values, tastes, patterns of
recreation, and dress—habitus—for particular forms of lifestyle that the economic class

of their parents offered in the Indian context. Their common class lifestyle in India—such

as appreciation for the game of cricket and English literature, love for Hollywood and

Bollywood movies, Bhangra8 or Beetles, travels to foreign countries, and exposure to
diverse regional ethnic cultures of India as well as foreign cultures—in their school and
college years played a central role in the formation of social networks as well as in the

deﬁnition of their reference groups and role models.

‘

7 Lamont et al. (199634) explains “cultural boundaries to be based on self-actualization (including
intellectual curiosity), manners, tastes, education, and appreciation of high culture. Those who feel superior
tQWards people who are less culturally sophisticated than themselves are said to draw cultural boundaries.”
Smlilarly, moral boundaries are drawn on the basis of moral character. They are comprised of qualities
Such as honesty, work ethics, personal integrity, sexuality, religiosity, and consideration for others.

Bhangra is a form of music and dance that originated in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan.

109

The distinctive cultural orientation of upper and middle class of respondents’ birth
families was further enhanced when the educational qualiﬁcations (human capital) of
respondents’ fathers and the economic resources of the family became instrumental in the
preference of type of school the respondent attended in India. Refer to Table 4-3.

Table No:4-3: Ty e of school attended by respondens with father education

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Father’s Type of School attended by respondents in India
Educational Level
Private Missionary Government Total
School or Elite Residential Aided School
School
High School or 2 5 5 12
Undergraduate (16.7%) (41.7%) (41.7%)
Degree
Graduate Degree 10 9 0 19
(52.6%) (47.3%)
(Masters Degree or
PhD or
Professional
Degree in Medicine,
Engineering, Law,
Management)
Total 12 (38%) 14 (45%) 5 (16%) 31

 

 

 

 

Note: In private, missionary (also known as convent schools) and residential schools in India the instruction is in
English, whereas in govemment—aided schools, the instructions are in the local regional language. Additionally,
govemment-aided schools severely lack in ﬁnancial resources, as a result they have very poor infrastructure and high
rate of teacher absenteeism. Boarding or residential schools have always been popular with India's upper middle class
and elite (Nilekani 20092176).

2. Cultural Capital of the Respondents:

Above all, Table 4-4 reveals the high degree of association between the preferences
for school with the level of respondents’ father’s education. When 31 of 42 (73%) cases
are considered, 19 (61%) fathers with PhDs, or masters or professional degrees had
selected to send their children either to private or missionary or elite residential schools.

In Contrast, some of the fathers with an undergraduate degree or lower levels of education

110

and who in all probability belonged to the working class, decided to send their children to
government-aided schools. Therefore, respondents’ fathers’ educational level, as well as
cultural and ﬁnancial capital of the respondents’ birth family were powerful inﬂuences on
the choice of school the respondents attended in India.

In the Indian context, parents’ choice of private or missionary or a residential school
for their children’s education meant the priority and valuation that was assigned to the
role of English as career language, as well as parents’ knowledge of where the
opportunities lay in the future. The well-educated and professional fathers were aware of
the trade-offs that came from sending their sons and daughters to English-medium
schools. As the largest proportion of respondents’ fathers worked for the public sector

organizations, they were acutely conscious—despite the reluctance of Indian legislators

to address the English language issue head on9—that proﬁciency in English was the key
for admission to the best institutions of higher education and to top jobs in the
bureaucratic circles and private sectors. Thus, the type of schools that the respondents
attended valorized and assisted in transferring the embodied cultural capital (habitus) of
their parents’ social and economic class background, besides fulﬁlling the aspirations
respondents’ parents had for their children. But more notably, the English-medium
schools in India provided access to the language of modernity, and along with it a
western world vision and orientation that has proved to be of enormous consequence for
these transnational entrepreneurs later in their lives.

The value of English education in the families of these entrepreneurs as the pathway

for social and economic mobility and globalization is shown in Table 4-4, which shows

 

9
For a detailed discussion on the economics and politics of use of English language in independent India
refer to Nilekani (2009).

111

27 (82% of 33 cases) of the respondents had attended one of the types of schools that
imparted education in English.

Table No: 4-4: The Type of school attended in India by Respondents

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type of School attended in Frequency Percent
India
Private School 12 354
Missionary or Elite 15 45. 4
Residential School
Government aided public 5 132
School
Total 33 100
Missing Cases 9

 

 

 

 

 

It can also be concluded from Table 4-4 that those parents with lower education levels, or
those not sharing the cultural capital of fathers employed in the government service or the
corporate sector, had also shared similar ideas and ambitions for their children in an ever-
changing world. The majority of parents who had the advantage of economic resources
wanted to impart the “English way of life” to their children and extend their support to
institutions that had a key role in the process. Unfortunately, English language education
does not come cheap in India, which explains the six (18% of 33 cases) who attended the
state government-aided school where education is primarily in vernacular or regional
language of the state.

To understand how the cultural capital and associated effects of social networks were
employed for intergenerational transfer of such resources, I asked the questions: (a) how
did your family make choices regarding your education? And, (b) who is your role
model? The responses uniformly revealed that their parents had given a very high priority

to their children’s education regardless of economic class background, but what is

112

notable is the variation in parental involvement between those from traditional business
families and those whose fathers were professionals or held salaried employment.

Families where respondents’ fathers held salaried positions in the private or public
sector and who had the wherewithal (such as professional skills and complementary
social networks) were intimately involved in shaping their children’s school experiences
and felt obligated to maximize their children’s Ieaming both at school and at home,
especially for their sons, as stated by Goutam Kohli:

My father made sure wherever we lived I attended the best school in the city. I
think it was one of the key decisions that my father made that is to send me to a
private English medium school. But, at the same time he made sure that I spent
equal amount of time—outside school—learning my vernacular language, so
that I would not become a brown sahib [an Englishman of color]. He made me
appear for a variety of exams in math and science, which were conducted at the
state level. My father was more focused on my education than for my sister I
suppose that would be considered old fashioned now (sic).

From Coleman’s (1988:110) perspective, parents of respondents with professional
training and a higher level of education careﬁilly nurtured the human capital of the
interviewees, utilizing the social capital inherent in family relations. The abundance of
social capital in respondents’ birth family was made explicit by the important role and the
presence of mothers at home during the school years of the respondents, regardless of
their social class. It is noteworthy that women transnational entrepreneurs in particular
acknowledged the inspiring inﬂuence of their mothers in achieving their educational
credentials and later as entrepreneurs. Poonam Sharma, a woman immigrant transnational
entrepreneur, explained to me:

For whatever I am is because of my mother. My mother, who was the only

person with school education in her family was forced to marry at young age,

therefore could not pursue her education. So, she made it her life ’s mission to

educate all three of her daughters and make them ﬁnancially independent. I
presume she decided my school as well. My father was gone most of the time

113

ﬁom home for his business. For my mother education was of tremendous
importance, nothing else would satisfy her. . . we lived with our grandparents. I

think I got lucky too . . . being a ‘baniya ’10 my grandfather was supportive of
my mother’s dreams (sic).

My research makes a departure from Lareau’s (2003) research on white and black
families of different class backgrounds (middle, working, and poor), where social class
triumphed over race in reﬂecting the difference in parenting practices because of the

class-based patterns of thought, behavior, and taste—habitus. My research suggests that,

in the Indian context, entrepreneurs’ individual dispositions were effected by castel 1—
within the same social class.

Although I did not collect data on caste, it sometimes surfaced in my conversations
with the respondents. In the Indian context, class and caste identities are interconnected
in various and complex ways, and the nature of this interconnection varies over time and
by geographical location. Even if class is the most important axis of social differentiation
in contemporary India, caste-based values and social organizations exercise considerable
inﬂuence over social practices. One way to approach the class and caste interconnection
is to view both caste and class as vehicles for the creation of social identities that are
available for deployment by the individual and collectivities for various purpose. For
instance, to receive assistance from inﬂuential class members who also belong to the
same caste, it not only depends on one’s entrepreneurial success but also to have the
ability to manipulate cultural symbols of caste, and nurture the right kind of relationships,

like taking up leadership positions in caste-based business organizations or by making

 

1 .
0 An Indian caste consisting generally of moneylenders and merchants, found mostly 1n northern and
western India

11 . . . . . . . . . .
The Indian caste system descrlbes the some] stratlﬁcatlon and score] restrictions in the Indian

subcontinent, in which social classes are deﬁned by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups, often
termed as jatis or castes.

114

charitable donations. And, these caste-based symbolic gestures feed back into capital
accumulation, particularly for businesspeople.

Respondents belonging to traditional Hindu business families and castes, like the
Marwaris and J ains, mentioned that their career trajectories were strongly inﬂuenced by
the cultural capital of their business caste and class. For example, the child rearing
practices of parents of respondents from traditional business communities were strongly
inﬂuenced by the patriarchal norms of conservative Hindu society that encouraged
adherence to traditional gender roles. Radha Agarwal’s account of differential gender role
expectations in her family demonstrates the intergenerational transfer of social norms and
cultural capital along gender lines in conventional business households:

Education was never the be all and end all of our lives. All of us had an
excellent convent school education. We were raised sensibly to be good human
beings ﬁrst and to be street smart. Being the daughter, my mother took special
care to raise me to be a good homemaker, like how to entertain guests, arrange
ﬂower decorations, etc. Business was for the guys in the house Life changed

for me, when I was divorced. I had to eek out a living as a single parent with a

small child. I suppose I too had the entrepreneurial genes in the same measure
like my brothers. My grandfather was a noted businessman in his time, and
everyone in my mother ’s family is a successﬁtl entrepreneur (sic).

For additional information about cultural and social capital in informants’ parents’
homes, I asked about role models in the lives of respondents. The majority of the
respondents stated either one or both parents had been their role models, whereas one of
them mentioned the principal of his missionary school. Others regarded a successful elder
brother, an uncle, aunt, or a close family ﬁiend with impressive academic credentials and
careers in India or overseas to have motivated them in making major decisions of their

lives. This is what an immigrant technology entrepreneur in the United States had to tell

me:

115

Hard to say actually yes it was probably a close family friend who graduated
in ’77 from [IT in Bombay. He was not a mentor, but a role model for me. His
name is ---. Today, he is a professor at Columbia University. I think my parents
were my mentors; particularly my mother has been a great moral inﬂuence on
me and on our children (sic).

Surprisingly, all the folks who were role models to the respondents were part of or a
node in their family networks, rather than someone who was a spatially distant ﬁgure,
such as a national/intemational hero or a cricket star. For many, role models often
doubled as mentors and were people with whom they had regular contacts. These mentors
provided the respondents with information and strategic knowledge about how to
navigate their career and to fulﬁll their ambitions, including that of college education in
India and the United States as well as for migration to the United States Hence, for this
section of the Indian population the social networks of their family, kin, and friends
offered what Giddens (1990: 123) called the transformative aspect of intimacy and a
positive appropriation of circumstances in which globalized inﬂuences impinged on the
informants’ everyday life during their school years and youth. Therefore, I contend the
unevenness in cultural capital possessed by respondents’ parents, their social class,
network connections and respondent’s habitus played a crucial role in the selection of
institutions for undergraduate/ graduate education in India.

3. Human Capital of the Respondents:

In Figure no. 4-2 and 4-3, it is clear that a higher proportion of respondents who had

attended any type of English medium schools - 27 (84% of 32 cases) -- also studied in

either premier institutions of higher education (31%), in professional 4—year state

universities (35%), or in the 3-year undergraduate degree colleges of state

116

universities (31%)'.

Fig:4-2: Distribution of type of schools attended in
India
5
16%

   
   

27
84%

 

I Engﬂsh Medium Schools I Government aided Public School

 

Fig: 4-3: Distribution of higher educational
institutions attended in India

 

14
35%

 

I Presigious Prern'er Naional lnsitiions olegher EdueE *
I Probssional 4 year see Insimons

u Undergraduab Degree Colege, Slab Inautons (3 years)

I Masters Degree tom Slab lnsliluions

 

117

The three different types of higher education institutions attended by respondents in
India, above all, point towards the college network resources that were available to the
respondents. Undergraduate institutions of higher education in India fulﬁlled two
objectives for respondents. The type of institution attended served ﬁrst as the repository
for human capital for respondents to acquire their formal educational credentials
(technical/ nontechnical), skills, competencies, and other individual characteristics.
Secondly, it served as a space—especially for those who lived on college or university
campuses—for forming life-long ﬁiendships and gaining access to associations—
networks beyond the nuclear family. Thus, college or university life helped in expanding
their social networks.

I argue in order to analyze the alternative forms of networks created and used by
Indian transnational entrepreneurs, one has to step back and scrutinize the three major
types of undergraduate institutions attended by interviewees in India (see Figure 4-3).
These affected the differing volume and quality of cultural and social resources
respondents brought for social exchange, which in turn inﬂuenced their connections for
migration to the United States and their transnational entrepreneurial operations
(explained later). In other words, the unevenness in cultural and social capital entrenched
in higher educational institutions of India, along with respondent’s individual level of
human capital, add to the complexity that underlies the dissimilar conﬁguration of
transnational business networks. Graduates of premier institutions like IIMs and IITs
have access to alumni organizations that span the globe because such large numbers of
graduates have migrated to—and succeeded professionally in—the United States,

Australia, developed countries in East and Far East Asia, as well as in major metropolitan

118

centers in India. Comparably, informants who attended professional or other degree
colleges of state universities in India had no access to such mammoth alumni networks or
to the global reach of the premier institutes of India. This hierarchy in undergraduate
educational institutions also played a key role in their migration decisions to the United
States, to which I turn in the next section.

11. Time to “Go West...”

A close examination of informants’ motives for immigration provides insights into
their reasons for living in the United States for their transnational businesses or for
returning to India for the same reason—as well as into their economic transnational
practices itself. For example, what factors might have prompted respondents at a personal
level to consider migration to the United States in the ﬁrst place? How did respondents
get their information for migration to the United States? What kind of contacts did
informants use for aiding their migration to the United States? Do company sponsorships,
especially in the case of an Indian employer, signal access to a network? Answers to
these questions provide a comprehensive view of how networks among Indian
transnational entrepreneurs developed over the course of time.

1. Motives for Immigration

Irnmigrating to the United States on a job assignment, as a student, or to be reunited
with family does not always indicate a move for permanent settlement. It is necessary to
examine the immigrant’s economic, social, and human capital at the time of entry to the
United States—their previous business/work afﬁliations, and personal and familial ties
and obligations—all of which provide information about the existence of various network

contacts prior to their migration.

119

Table 4-5: Motives for Emigration to the United States

 

 

 

 

 

Reasons for lmmigrating to Frequency Percent
the United States
Study 21 64
Relocation on Company 8 24
Transfer
Reunion with Family 4 12
Total 33 100

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This table reﬂects all the respondents who are immigrant and retumee transnational entrepreneurs (33 of 42).
This section does not take into account the nonmigrant transnational entrepreneurs (nine) as they had entered the
United States mainly on short-term business visas for their transnational business.

As shown in Table 4-5, the highest number (21 individuals, 64%) of immigrant and
retumee transnational entrepreneurs ﬁrst came to the United States to study, primarily for
postgraduate education. Closer examination of the relatively higher proportion of
informants migrating to the United States for graduate education reveals that 16 of 21
(76%) informants got a masters degree or a PhD in engineering, computer science, or bio-
sciences, whereas ﬁve got degrees in management studies, economics, or ﬁnance.

The higher frequency of informants choosing to immigrate as young adults to the
United States for a science-based American education speaks to a macro structural‘2
impact at the individual level. For these respondents, charting a career in engineering or
science implied access to high quality infrastructure and facilities and the kinds of
resources that were not easily available in India, but were to be found in the resource-

rich, often highly-specialized, institutes and centers in United States universities. The

 

12 Cheng & Yang (1998:632) contend that, in addition to economic interdependency, there has been a
growing articulation of higher education between poor and rich countries since the 19705. The impact of
advanced countries’ higher education systems on less developed countries has been accumulated scientiﬁc
knowledge and an advanced technological base—with the requisite economic and social infrastructure. One
direct outcome of global articulation of higher education has been higher levels of migration from poor to
advanced countries by foreign students who want to be employable internationally.

120

desire for international mobility as young adults was also a natural extension of the
Indian cosmopolitan character cultivated during their school and undergraduate college
years in India. Added to these personal considerations was the awareness of the
progressive internationalization of science and engineering, which too proved to be a
powerful attraction for migrating to the United States. This quote from Sudhir, an
immigrant transnational entrepreneur in California, encapsulates these motives.

I came to the U.S. for post—graduate education, because higher education in
Engineering and in any ﬁeld of Science is considered to be the best here than
anywhere else. I wanted to think big. Studying in IISc makes you very
hardworking. You have got to be that way in order to survive there, and it also
opens opportunities for you to grow. But, in the U.S. you learn things a little
differently and at an international level. I learned to cultivate “critical thinking”
about issues. In fact, it becomes a second nature to think out of the box. I would
say my Stanford education or from any reputed U.S. university is an interesting
one. It comes handy over a long period of time. It ’5 like osmosis. . . it has a
long-term impact (sic).

Among 21 respondents who had migrated to the United States for graduate studies 12
(57%) were from premier national institutions of India. The higher proportion of students
from premier institutions as graduate students in American universities bespeaks of the
extent to which global articulation of higher education and the process of
internationalization of academic faculty through inter-university research programs, often
supported by foreign universities and foundations, had taken place (Ong et al. 1992).
Consequently, the institutional structures of premier and other centers of higher education
in India and college peer pressure can be expected to have exercised a powerful inﬂuence
on respondents’ perspectives on available mobility opportunities more strongly than their

individual desires. When asked about how they had arrived at the decision to migrate to

the United States, two IIT alumni described the process in the following manner:

121

When I was growing up in India the path to live the American dream was, first
to get into IIT and the second was to go to the United States. America exists in
the [IT campuses. In the 3” year you write GRE, all these are predetermined
steps in the HTS. It has changed a little bit now. Then in the 4’ year you write
your advanced GRE and in your ﬁnal year you apply, get your scholarships and
then you go. That was the normal course of things in the [ITS then. It is a kind of
herd mentality. If I 0 people are doing it, then you will wonder why you are not
doing it. And, people who did not go to the U.S., it was assumed that either that
person did not get a scholarship or they might have some problem. That is what
you are talking all the time in II T. In the ﬁnal year the talk is about how many
job interviews one has given although you are 60 percent certain you might
not take up the job oﬂer or which is the best scholarship oﬂer from the U.S. I too
gave an interview with Infosys, knowing fully well I would not join them. That ’s
the kind of thing that existed in IITs, maybe it exists in all engineering colleges
(Rukmini Mehta; 2007).

After graduating ﬁ'om IIT, Powai, I felt a need to go to the U.S. It was a herd
mentality. The peer pressure is very high. And, in II Ts one gets so many signals
ﬁ'om your seniors and specially faculty while you are living in the [IT campus

that you develop a mindset for migrating to the U.S. for higher education.

Parents too exert the same pressure. I think I would have got the same education

in India what I got at Virginia Tech, but that would not have changed the way I
had thought then. We are almost brain washed to go to the U.S., after having
done undergraduate degree in engineering at IIT. (Neel Mukherjee; 2007)

Some even stated that they had nurtured a desire to particularly work with
internationally renowned scholars, so the star reputation of U.S. academicians exerted a
magnetic pull, as well. I make a special mention of interviewees from foremost national
institutes—like the HTS and professional 4 year degree colleges of State universities—to
illustrate the strong peer bonding these transnational entrepreneurs had developed during
their undergraduate years. The strength of their peer bonding which aided in developing
their migration networks to assist in their initial move to the United States, later got
fortiﬁed into transnational business networks with the development of etlmicized

professional organizations for Indian entrepreneurs (TiE), or global alumni organizations

(Pan IIT), etc.

122

There were eight (24%) respondents who entered the United States on company
transfer and only four (12%) who migrated to reunite with family. Seven respondents
who had migrated to the United States on behalf of their parent Indian multinational
companies came to expand their company’s operations in the United States, e. g. TATA
Companies, whereas one of them worked for Bank of America. These interviewees stated
that they moved to the United States for better opportunities for the advancement of their
career and to provide their children an international school education. Therefore, 88
percent of respondents entered the United States on a nonimmigrant visas. So, the
majority of the respondents, who had considerable amount of cultural, social and human
capital at their disposal, did not perceive their move to the United States as a conclusion
of the migration process.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that none of the respondents gained admission to
the United States on occupation preference or HI-B visa, where work authorization is
strictly limited to employment by the sponsoring U.S. employer, which might have had a
bearing on their decision and orientation for transnational entrepreneurial activities later
on in their careers. Immigrant transnational businesspeople that had decided to settle in
the United States admitted to considering returning either to India or some other country,

if better business opportunities became available.

123

2. The Structure of Migration Networks:

Table 4-6: Contacts for Mimtion to the United States

 

Contact in United States before migration Reason for Migration to the United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Study Work Family Reunion
College Per 11 (52%) 2 (25%)
Immediate Family (e.g. sibling, ﬁancee, 3 (33%) 4 (100%)
parents)
Friends and Work Colleagues 450%)
Did not know anyone in the United States 2 (9.5%) 2(25%)
Total 21(100%) 8 (100%) 4(100%)

 

Note: For many respondents, college peers and close friends were the same individuals and are counted as peers
in the table. For the category “friends and work colleagues,” means these individuals did not attend me same college
as the respondent in India. Work colleagues often doubled as close friends.

All the informants but four had contacts prior to migration to the United States, as
illustrated in Table 4-6. More than half of the respondents (52%) who had migrated as
students took the help of their college peers, who were mostly their seniors during their
undergraduate years and were admitted into U.S. universities; others knew family
members, ﬁ'iends, and work colleagues. There were only three women respondents who
had migrated to the United States for higher education, and all of them mentioned their
ﬁance'e had graduated ahead of them and was in the U.S. at the time of their migration.
Although the three women respondents had migrated as graduate students, their decision
to move to the United States had greatly been inﬂuenced by the presence of their future
husbands in the United States.

The overwhelming presence of men as immigrant and retumee transnational
entrepreneurs within this study might arise from the fact that the majority of them had

also obtained their degree from the best business and engineering schools in India, where

124

far fewer women than men are enrolled. The small ratio of women students in these
institutions is reﬂective of gender bias in Indian society, where women are not
encouraged and do not receive the same educational training. Further, responses of these
three women reafﬁrm Bagchi’s (2001:134) ﬁndings of professional Indian migrants,
where conventional Indian gender norms could have interfered with autonomous female
migration.

A novel feature of peer-supported migration to the United States among the
respondents was the exclusivity of college/institution migration networks. College seniors
in U.S. universities encouraged migration of their peers from their own alma mater in
India, and established a sort of information system guiding the efforts of their incoming
peers. Sometimes these college seniors in the United States took the pains of establishing
the initial contacts between faculty members with project funding and potential incoming
students from their colleges in India, thereby securing funding at U.S. institutions for
their college peers. Rarely did the lines of peer support overlap for participants from
different educational institutions in India. I contend that these informal migration
channels set up by seniors at U.S. universities (Findlay & Li 1998) perpetuated inequality
of relational resources (ties and norms) available later in the different conﬁgurations of
transnational networks (Gold 2005:268). An example of such a channel would be, as told
by one immigrant respondent, “I knew I would either get admission at Duke, Berkeley, or
Stanford; that is where seniors ﬁom IIT had gone in the past. Hey! I needed the comfort
zone of [IT ‘Desis’ [meaning Indians in Hindi] when I was leaving India for the ﬁrst

time. ”

125

Although an insigniﬁcant number of respondents (12% of 33) knew no one before
their migration in the early and mid 1970s to the United States, it is reﬂective of the
absence of a substantial U.S. Indian population before the 1965 amendments to the
Immigration and Nationality Act, where the primary objective of the act was to unify
immigrant families (Bhalla 2006; Khadria 1999). With the changes in 1965 of the act,
this was not the case for informants who entered the United States in later decades on job
assignments, who had work colleagues in their company’s U.S. ofﬁces, family members,
and college peers as permanent residents in the United States.

The ﬁgures in Table 4-6 suggest that for 29 (87% of 33) respondents, the presence of
college peers, ﬁiends, and family members in the United States played an important role
in their migratory decision making process, although the actual act of moving was an
independent decision. The individual nature of the migratory decision is highlighted in
the following recollection of a retumee informant, where he emphasizes his decision to
move to the United States for post graduate studies was completely personal, even if his
action was motivated by his college peers.

In the 80 ’s, the job market was hard in India. I was one of the few guys who got

a job straight out of college when I graduated. I worked for a software company

in Bangalore making a grand salary of 3 000 rupees in those days. I was one of 3

or 4 guys out of a graduating class of 80 who had got ajob straight out of

campus. The job market was awful at that time So, when we graduated what

happened is many of my close ﬁ'iends applied to graduate school in the U.S.

because that’s what everyone did. For me, it was more of my close ﬁiends,

maybe 8 or 10 of us, everyone besides me had made up their minds to go to grad

school in the U.S. Because they decided to go, I said okay let me go too. For me,

it was like I was losing a group of my friends, whom I 'd known for 10 to 12

years, we ’d all gone to school and college together. For me, it was unthinkable

that they would all leave and I would be left behind in India. I had a good job . .

. but I thought it would not make too much of a difference if I stayed or leﬁ for

the U.S. My dad was still working with the Government. But, it was clear that
I’d be therefor a few years and then make my way back to India (sic).

126

In addition to the social resources from contacts in their respective college networks
from India and family members, these respondents indicated that they had personal
ﬁnancial resources, such as graduate assistantships from the U.S. universities and
ﬁnancial support from their parents, when required. With respect to family support,
nearly every one of the interviewees stated they had received encouragement for availing
opportunities in the United States to realize their potential, and to perceive their migration
decision as a personal responsibility. It can be inferred that family members (especially
parents) and the respondents themselves perceived migration as a strategy to fulﬁll their
individual ambitions with economic and/or social gains to follow. Analyzing the motives
for migration, the ﬁndings among transnational Indian entrepreneurs bears closer
resemblance to the result of Hondagneu Sotelo’s (1994) study of undocumented
immigrants, in which very few people migrated as part of a conscious and deliberate
household strategy. This conclusion differs from the understanding of “new economics of
migration,” where migration is explained to occur as a strategy for income diversiﬁcation
or maximization (Massey et al. 1993:432). In fact, the ﬁndings validate Pessar’s (1999)
perspective on “moral economy” within traditional household migration.

Finally, the presence and use of contacts in the United States availed by the
respondents was strongly determined by the year/decade of migration to the United States
As displayed in Table 4-7, the largest proportion of respondents (76% or 22 of 29)
migrated to the United States in the 19808 and 19905. A smaller number of respondents
(7) had migrated in the previous decade; four of those had come to the United States on

company transfer and three for postgraduate education. All the respondents came directly

127

to the United States from their country of birth, except for three who reported their
parents had entered the United States after having lived in the UK. for some time.

Table 4- 7: Migration History of the Res ondents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decade of Migration Frequency Percent
1969-1979 7 24. 1
1980—1989 13 44.8
1990—1999 9 31.0

Total 29 100
Missing Cases 4

 

Note: Out of the 4 missing cases, 3 respondents were 2“d generation Asian Indian immigrant entrepreneurs.
lnfonnation on year of arrival in the United States for 1 retumee entrepreneur is missing.

The respondents of the 19703 could be considered pioneer immigrants and, as stated
earlier, did not have the assistance of a resident Indian community or an established
college peer network in the United States. The higher number of respondents entering the
United States in the 19803 and 19903 is indicative of a shift in the valuation of a career in
the Indian Government—which was held in high regard by respondents’ fathers
belonging to an earlier generation—as well as the gradual implementation of the neo-
liberal economic policies in India. Besides, a preference for western postgraduate
education had gained momentum in Indian universities and colleges during the 19803 and

19903, which encouraged and supported international migration among their students.
The decade of migration appears to have played a signiﬁcant role in determining the
extent to which the interviewees in the 19703 relied on themselves, and migration

networks proved to be less important to them than for others who had entered the United

States in the 19803 and 19903.

128

Therefore, despite the independent and voluntary nature of immigrant and retumee

transnational entrepreneurs’ move to the United States, the social capital derived from

strong or interpersonal ties13 of ﬁ'iendship dominated their migration social networks,
where actions were guided by the normative content of trust and obligatory assistance of
college peers and family members. These norms of reciprocity, trust and identity had
developed because of having attended the same institute/college as undergraduate
students in India and for having shared a common class and cultural capital. While the
channels for the transfer of information was effective and resulted in positive outcomes,
there existed distinct social boundaries—similar to Coleman’s (1988:105—08) notion of
closure—which directed the trustworthy behavior and cooperation in the college
migration network of the respondents. These sociological boundaries distinguished
members of a particular college from nonmembers and was conducive to the
development of high levels of social capital among members, although the closure
facilitated stratiﬁcation among Indian educational institutions, and also perpetuated a
system of uneven access to network resources for return migration to India.

In the eight cases of company transfer where respondents entered the United States
through sponsorship by their respective Indian companies, such a move cannot be
described totally as “weak ties” as often an affable relationship was responsible for the
relocation decision. In a few cases, the desire for relocation was ﬂoated by the
respondents themselves and later supported by their peers and superiors in the company

and therefore cannot be considered as part of network structure. Thus, social capital

 

13 Poros (2001:245) distinguishes between interpersonal and organizational ties. Interpersonal ties are
social relationships with family members, relatives, and friends. Organizational ties are mediating
structures of firm/organization/school networks, which include social relationships with colleagues, college
seniors, supervisors, etc. Sometimes interpersonal ties of family and friendship exit in organizations.

129

embedded in relationships that originated both in the home and host societies was
employed in developing the migratory network structures. More importantly, these
migratory network arrangements laid the foundation for transnational business ﬁelds to
emerge spanning India and the United States.

In sum, a majority of the 33 immigrant entrepreneurs brought with them the cultural
practices and social capital of their upper or middle class professional background. In
addition, they entered the United States primarily for augmenting their human capital by
acquiring an U.S. graduate education in anticipation of being part of the US economy in
professional and managerial occupations. While these characteristics of Indian immigrant
entrepreneurs bears resemblance to that of Korean entrepreneurs in the United States
(Light and Bonacich 1988:361; Min 1984), who too had migrated to the host country
with the cultural capital of urban middle class background, the major difference between
the two immigrants group was that of English-language proﬁciency, which greatly
determined access and opportunities in the American labor market.

The Indian immigrants of this study, like Filipinos and other South Asian migrant
groups, had a good command of the English language on their arrival to the United States
as compared to Korean immigrants in the 19603 and 19703, most of whom had a severe
English language handicap and consequently were unable to practice the profession for
which they were trained, besides facing other labor market discrimination, such as for
being viewed as foreigners or as a member of racial minority. I imagine an unspoken and
underlying motive for obtaining an American education by Indian immigrants especially

by pioneer transnational entrepreneurs of 19703, who had the cultural advantage of

130

English language skills, was also to minimize job discrimination as foreigners, which
Asian professional immigrants have regularly faced in the United States (Parlin 1976).
III. Capital and Networks among Immigrant Transnational Indian Entrepreneurs:

The friendship ties that the immigrant entrepreneurs developed during their school
and college years in India, and the networks used during their migration process to the
United States proved to be important in many ways and serve their long term
transnational business interests, which I discuss in this section. In this segment, I explain
the dissimilar and yet distinctive patterns of transnational networks because of
differences in the distribution of cultural, social and human capital among immigrant
transnational entrepreneurs in two business sectors. My objective was to ﬁnd out how
the structure of transnational business networks were formed, the longitudinal changes in
the networks arrangements upon which transnational entrepreneurs relied, as well as the
means that were employed to generate social capital in these networks to support their
individual business.

I focused on two age groups of immigrant entrepreneurs: a) the senior transnational
Indian entrepreneurs who migrated to the United States in the 19703 and were between
the age of 51 and 65 years, and b) younger immigrant transnational businesspeople who
entered the United States in the 19803 and 19903 and were mostly between 35 and 50
years. Two time frames were selected to capture the consequences of the macro economic
policy changes in India since the 19803 on the performance of transnational business
networks, and also to ascertain the subsequent increase in the economic transnational
activities between the United States and India. I begin by discussing economic

transnational business networks of senior transnational entrepreneurs from an earlier

131

generation, followed by networks of younger transnational entrepreneurs, who were
engaged in two different business sectors: a) the technology sector and b) the material
goods sector (agro products, chemicals, jewelry, etc.). The following bar diagram shows

the distribution of immigrant transnational entrepreneurs by age and sector:

Figure No 4—4: Distribution of [migrant Transnational Entrepreneurs in the
United States by Age and Sector

No. of Entrepreneurs
10 w A 0| 0)

_I
i

 

 

o
1

Senior Entrepreneurs (above age 50 years or Junior Entrepreneurs (below age 50 years or
had migrated to the U.S. before 1979) had migrated to the U.S. between 1980 -1999)

 

I Technology Sector I Material Goods Sector (like Agro products, Jewelry, clothing etc. ‘

 

Note: At the time of the study all 21 of the immigrant transnational entrepreneurs lived in the United States for periods
longer than a year and mentioned the United States as their home.

The discussion in Chapter 3 on the age of the informants is again clearly reﬂected in
Figure 44, where a slightly higher proportion (11 or 52% of 21) of transnational
il‘l’lmigrant entrepreneurs were below 50 years, and the rest (10 or 48% of 21) of the
entrepreneurs had migrated to the United States before 1979. When the distribution of
entrepreneurs is considered in terms of their business sector, a higher ratio of informants

earned their livelihood from businesses in the technology sector in both the age cohorts.

132

By default, my study sample reﬂects the highly skilled nature of post-1965 migration of
Indians to the United States.

I regarded the interview questions concerning transnational entrepreneurship ties and
networks to be the most important part of the interview sessions and these were
complemented by all the respondents in the same spirit. The conversations were guided
by questions focusing on entrepreneurs’ experiences and the use of networks for their
transnational business primarily with India. The discussion centered on: a) personal
reasons and experiences for choosing to become a transnational entrepreneur and b) the
type of networks used for their transnational business where actual or potential resources
could be accessed for cross-border economic activities.

1. Senior Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the United States:

Why did you want to become a transnational entrepreneur? My reason for soliciting a
response to this question from the senior immigrant respondents was to inquire into the
relevance of socially and contextually embedded forms of capital and knowledge that had
prompted them to opt for transnational entrepreneurship. For example, did the senior
immigrant entrepreneurs consider their migration to the United States to be a decisive
factor in their decision, or how did their experience as students and professionals in the
United States impact their transnational practices, actions and social capital?

Out of 10 senior respondents, more than half (six) of them had arrived in the United

States to enhance their educational credentials, while one third (three) of them had come

on company transfer, and one on family reuniﬁcation”. See Figure 4-5. The resource

\
1 4
One more senior respondent had initially come to the United States as a company transferee. Within a

gery Short time of his arrival in the United States he resigned from his job to obtain a management degree.
0’ Ihave m counted him as a company transferee in my analysis of this section.

133

distribution of human and social capital among senior immigrant entrepreneurs largely
can be explained from their context of entering the host country, which would play a key

role in the patterns of the transnational business networks in both sectors.

Figure No 4-5: The context of entering the United States among senior immigrant
entrepreneurs

30%

 

 

I Graduab Edumion (Management Degree, PhD, Masbrs)
I Corrpany Transbree
El Farriy Reuniiwton

 

 

The common answer from the six senior transnational entrepreneurs, who had spent
at least 2 to 5 years in a U.S. academic institution, mainly stated their deep appreciation
of social factors, such as freedom, transparency and informality, they had experienced
while working with American faculty members and college peers, that was absent in
India. Although opinion was divided among the six interviewees about the beneﬁts of
American graduate education in the advancement of their technical knowledge base and
skills, they all agreed that American school experience had immeasurably helped in their
bi-cultural literacy and in consolidating a few life long friendships. Besides, the U.S.
school experience had enlarged their network contacts that went beyond their national

and ethnic loyalties. For example, the senior transnational interviewees stated that it was

134

their non-Indian ﬁ'iends and the American tmiversity experience that had facilitated
developing an international outlook—cultivating different cultural competencies, tastes,
and mannerisms and appreciating diversity in lifestyles among fellow mates and
colleagues—that helped in augmenting their self-conﬁdence to conduct transnational
business beyond the comfort and familiarity of co-ethnics. Such was the case for Rahul
Sethi, who got his management degree from The Ross School of Business, University of
Michigan.

At Ross school, I understood the global environment better. I understood the

world is a big place and I had the freedom to choose my path. In India I grew up

with the perspective that if you are not good at holding a regular salaried job,

you did business to survive. That perspective changed completely. At the

business school I learnt that if I was an entrepreneur the faculty would

encourage me. That kind of learning environment helped me to think of business

positively, and not as a dirty word meant for the corrupt. In India, people did

management to strengthen their résumé to get better jobs. Noboay thought of

entrepreneurship, at the time when I went to school in India. In the U.S. it was

just the opposite. I could talk openly with my professors and peers about my

business models, where each of us were using a diﬂerent cultural conceptual

lens (sic).
How the respondents dealt with the cultural and human resources that were available in
their changed context and new surroundings in the United States, in my view, had a lot to
do with the respondents’ personal habitus and competencies they brought with them on
migration from India. From this standpoint, the six senior immigrant transnational
interviewees who were from better institutions of higher education in India, and had a fair
amount of western cultural exposure during their school and college years—including
competency of English language as their instrument for constructing social reality—had a

deﬁnite advantage in embracing the ground rules for a globalized social ﬁeld that would

transform them into transnational entrepreneurs. Thus, being embedded in a multi-

135

cultural setting helped them learn the rules of the game in order to pursue acceptable
transnational actions.
Interestingly, it was these interviewees who stated that they had not got much out of
formal U.S. education, nonetheless were quick to point out that years in the United States,
universities had considerably changed their representation of reality and patterns of
action, which they concurred to have had a compelling inﬂuence in shaping their
respective transnational business. However, those who were beneﬁciaries of
undergraduate education from second or third tier state universities in India had the
highest regard and were proud of their U.S. university education. The two respondents
from state universities voiced they would never have acquired the opportunity for
postgraduate education had they remained in India.
In addition, senior immigrant entrepreneurs’ experiences suggest that re-articulation
of the social reality and inculcation of international business cultural practices was also
true for those who entered the United States on company transfer. Ram Shankar, who
worked for Bank of America for 14 years before launching his own transnational ﬁrm,
attests to the mental make-up of these senior entrepreneurs:
My professional experience of I 4 years was very useﬁtl. The work ethic of my
colleagues, their customer focus, professionalism, transparency in business
transactions, and focus on eﬁ‘iciency and innovation, the ﬂat organizational
thinking, the performance-oriented reward system; team spirit, an open and
diversity-tolerant culture and ﬁnally people ’s ability to manage a healthy work-
life and personal-life balance had a great inﬂuence on me, and I have tried to
bring the some international (American) culture into my business (sic).

In sum, the majority of the senior Indian entrepreneurs had entered the host country under

a favorable and positive “context of reception,” deﬁned by Portes and Rumbaut

(2006:93) as conditions of the host labor markets, policies of the receiving country’s

136

government and the characteristics of the immigrant ethnic community that determine the
incorporation of immigrants into American society. In the case of the Indian immigrant
entrepreneurs, all three attributes worked to their advantage in the 19703.

Up to now I have presented evidence regarding the unequal allocation of human and
cultural resources of senior immigrant transnational entrepreneurs, however, does this
mean that the seniors in the technology and material goods domain had similar
motivations for starting their own business? The four senior entrepreneurs dealing with
material goods did not appear to differ much in their reasons for becoming transnational
businesspeople (Figure 4-4). All four of them stated they were part of existing family
businesses in India and had migrated to the United States in search for better markets for
their business enterprise. However, two of them had arrived as students to the United
States and went on to complete their graduate education in U.S. universities. According
to them, it was easier to enter the United States as students, and therefore they chose to
avoid the inconvenience of a long wait time stipulated for family reunion.

In contrast, the key motives of the six senior entrepreneurs in the technology sector
mirrored the personal experiences of “Making it in America” (Portes & Rumbaut 2006),
which was reﬂected in the nature of their arrival to the United States as international
graduate students with the ambition of working for the world’s biggest economy. All six
of the pioneer transnational technology entrepreneurs had professional work experience
in American and Indian multinational ﬁrms—an average of 20.4 years—before and after
emigrating to the United States as students or as company transferees, and were citizens

of the United States for around 32 years at the time of this study.

137

For these senior immigrant businessmen, a combination of personal and secondary
factors catapulted them into becoming transnational entrepreneurs. As noted by Ong
(2003:161), in the early 19803 during the early years of high tech industry, these senior
technology entrepreneurs were hired by their companies because they were trained in
American universities, and had the knowledge and skill that contributed to a large extent
to the growth of the industry as a whole. However, they all recognized their rapid rise
within the company would hit the glass ceiling, and they would never make to the
executive management levels. In our conversations, they pointed out that in the late
19703 and early to mid 19803, U.S. corporate culture was very different from what it is
today, where educational credentials from the very best engineering institutions in the
United States and in India and exemplary work experience give them a slight advantage
over native-bom white Americans. Previously, their ethnicity disqualiﬁed them for
managerial roles in the company, despite the favorable reception they had enjoyed since
their arrival in the United States.

The glass ceiling experience of the senior Indian technology entrepreneurs, which has

also been felt by other Asian immigrant professionals, can be explained from the

perspective of labor market disadvantage15 theory. Light & Gold (2000:197—202)
describe the phenomenon as: ethno-racial groups who have no resource disadvantage
receive below-expected returns for their human capital, for reasons not related to

productivity. The ceiling on promotion, despite the senior technology entrepreneurs’

 

15 Labor market disadvantage theory is a variant of disadvantage theory, which explains the high

propensity of self-employment among Asian minorities. Light & Gold (2000:197- 202) ﬁrst proposed this
theory, where self-employment is not for economic mobility, but as an alternative means for wealth
accumulation. The glass ceiling faced by Asian professionals has been documented extensively in research

by Ong (2003), Gu (2006), Saxenian (1999:42-44), and others.

138

education credentials and skill, was a form of labor market disadvantage. Another
example of labor market disadvantage is when women who are equally productive as
their male colleagues are paid less. Min (1984) highlights the case of Korean
businessmen in Atlanta who started small businesses because their lack of English
proﬁciency raised barriers to success in white-collar occupations. Bates (1997 cited in
Light & Gold 2000:200) referred to this as blocked mobility.

However, because senior Indian technology entrepreneurs were not a resource-
disadvantaged group, they were able to overcome the labor market disadvantage by
launching their private transnational business in the formal sector of the economy. Their
superior levels of resources (some brought from India and others acquired in the United
States) made them invest in large transnational enterprises, as has been the case with the
Taiwanese and Chinese transnational entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley studied by
Saxenian (2002). Naturally, experiences of entrepreneurs with resource advantages differ
from immigrant entrepreneurs who have inferior resources such as Mexicans,
Dominicans, Salvadorians, Vietnamese, and some other Asian groups (Portes 2000; Gold
& Kibria 1993; Landolt 1999; Itzigsohn 1994). For many immigrants from these
countries, transnational entrepreneurship is to avoid the drudgery and the minimal
remuneration of work in the industrial sector. The resource disadvantaged immigrant
entrepreneurs become aware that their pay and labor conditions in America’s advanced
economy will not go far in promoting their own economic goals, and hence turn to self-
employment in the informal economy. These immigrant entrepreneurs are unable to

mount a response in the formal sector to counter labor market disadvantage.

139

Coincidentally the personal experience of discrimination by senior technology
entrepreneurs caused by labor market disadvantage happened around the time of
economic boom in the U.S. computer industry, which had put pressure on the federal
government to increase the intake of skilled foreign workers to 65,000 in 1990 (Portes &
Rumbaut 2006:87). So, all six senior entrepreneur informants, including two who entered
the United States on behalf of their employers, called it quits and created their own
transnational businesses during the 19803 and early 19903, bearing out the tenets of
“disadvantage theory” discussed earlier. Similar to American corporations they too were
able to recruit skilled workers from India on Hl-B visas for their technology ﬁrms. In
addition, it gave them a hiatus to break free of the Indian middle class mindset of having
a good, solid stable job, to fulﬁll their personal ambition. Here is an example of a senior
entrepreneur’s emotion:

I wanted to be my own Boss. . . I had made enough money to call the shots. I

was tired of being tied down. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was something

that I wanted to do what was potentially a growth area and having worked for

so long obviously helped. . . Honestly, this was happening en masse among my

friends in the Valley and elsewhere in the United States.

Q: Was this again the ‘herd mentality’ that you had mentioned earlier regarding
your decision to migrate to the United States?

Yes and no. We were much older and experienced men by now. But, I felt
encouraged to take the plunge, when my buddies were doing the same (sic).

This was probably also a fortuitous opportunity to link India’s vast cheap talent pool
with the global economic picture and re-write their personal destinies and those of whom
they employed in their transnational business. It made perfect economic sense for the

ﬁrst-time entrepreneur, Sudip Choudhury, to stretch his reach back to India:

140

In early 90s, I saw that if I outsourced my work in India, I could offer better
services to my customer at a competitive rate. I continued to do that for 5 to 6
years and then started my own subsidiary in India. I saw that potential I 5 years
ago even when no one was doing business with India. I was located in
Washington D. C. area. It would have been very expensive for me to do business
being brand new to the game and an immigrant. The cost factor was a huge
consideration. And, I am ﬁom India originally so why should I not take my work
there. At least I could help my country. I have started a company in India and
it’s growing. . .(sic).

Therefore, for senior immigrant transnational entrepreneurs it was the coming together of

their personal, cultural, and social capital, along with the opportune integration of the

global economy, which transformed them into transnational entrepreneurs.

2. Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Senior Transnationals:

Now that I have provided a general picture of what the distribution of human and
cultural capital looked like for the senior immigrant entrepreneurs in both sectors, I
would like to explain how three forms of capital affected the formation and usage of
numerous networks for their cross-border business. This caused me to ask the question:
How did you get transnational customers for your business?

One commonality between senior immigrants of both the sectors was the assistance of
their immediate family members (wife, brother, uncle, brother-in-law, and children) in
the United States. None of them, except for two corporate transferees, owned office/shop
space in the 19703 and early 19803; hence most started their businesses from the “kitchen
table” or the basement of their residences with unconditional co-operation of their
spouses and support from their family members. Two senior entrepreneurs with

transnational business in the material goods sector even chose to become traveling

salespersons in the initial years of their business, as described by one of them:

141

My jewelry business experience comes totally ﬁom my family. So, my immediate
family and relatives in the U.S. and India is my business network. In the U.S. we
ﬁrst marketed through Indian grocery stores, many of whom knew my brother
well, and also by using the Mandir [Indian temple] organizations in cities with
high South Asian populations. In those days, the Indian stores would mail
invitations for us and then we would rent a room in a hotel and people would
come. We would make the jewelry and ship to the customer. Yes, it went back to
India to make the jewelry order. My father in India saw to it that it was done

(sic).

As established by Gold (2002), Gold and Kibria (1993) Zhou (1992), Light and
Bonacich (1988), research on immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs in the United States
from Israel, Vietnam, China, and Korea respectively, the above example illustrates the
economic beneﬁts gained from co-ethnic collaboration, and the cooperation received by
the senior Indian businessmen in the material goods sector from their fellow co-nationals.
Concerted efforts were made to mobilize the economic beneﬁts from social interactions
and relationships from the resident Indian business community in the United States,
despite its relatively small size and limited geographic range—mainly in a few major
cities on the eastern seaboard. Hari Thakur of Jackson Heights in Queens, New York
prided himself as a veteran of the Indian ethnic business community in the United States,
and the very ﬁrst transnational entrepreneur in the true sense of the word in that area. He
stated in‘order to achieve remarkable growth for his business in Indian garments and to
serve the South Asian population across the United States, he had to make the best use of
resources available from contacts in the Indian diaspora (U .K., Hong Kong, Singapore)
and in India, while being appreciative of the support from co-ethic businessmen in the
United States. His aim was to dispel the stereotypical image of a struggling ethnic
business family. It was possible for him only because of his prior international

experience, cultural repertoire, diasporic connections, reliance on personal and family

142

ﬁnancial resources in the home country, and by regular travel and trade with India. In
addition, be recruited for his chain of stores Indian managers from India with whom he
shared a common cultural perspective for conducting business with Indian American
customers. In his words:

I arrived in the U.S. in New York in April 1971 and have not left ever since. I
have been here for 3 7 years. We opened our ﬁrst store in May of I 971, 3 7East,

29th street in New York It was 2000 square foot shop. We have shops in every
major city of the U.S.—Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Cleveland, San
Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, etc. We have had a very good run
for several years. We grew into an organization we don ’t run business like a
typical family business, where the wife is running the business ﬁom the garage
with the kid helping out, no expenses nothing... but these types of stores
mushroomed and it became hard to compete with them because we have high
overheads. We don ’t get our managers on the cheap because they have lot of
responsibilities. We maintain certain standards in our shops, like convenience,
open, large ﬂoor areas to display our goods, which meant many more
employees, and usually in very good shopping districts.

We built this shop in 1986 in this area because over the years this had become
the area where most South Asians prefer to live. We chose this area because of
convenience and its closeness to LaGuardia Airport. There are a lot of transit
people meople who were traveling via NYC to other places in the U.S. and
tourists to New York, both ways) who come into this store. It was a good move to
have a shop in Queens for the (a) concentration of the ethnic population and (b)
closeness to the airport. Slowly this place gained the reputation of Indian Ethnic
business all over the world. The convenience of the customers mattered to me

(sic).

My interviews with the four senior immigrant entrepreneurs revealed disparate
conﬁgurations and optimum usage of very distinctive business networks, deﬁned mainly
by the respondents’ families’ community membership and religious affiliations]6 in India.
For example, where one of them leveraged his contacts in the global Sindhi council

network, another took advantage of the South Indian Mandir [temple] network. All of

 

‘6 Sub sects of Hinduism like followers of spiritual gurus like Swami Narayan, Sadhu Dada J .P. Vaswani
etc.

143

them agreed that trust-based strong ties of family members, relatives, family business
partnerships spanning multiple generations, and personal friendships played a key role in
their network arrangements, from where they gathered and exchanged information,
obtained business contacts and customers, and so on to set up their transnational
businesses in the United States (Rajagopal 2001; Rangaswamy 2000).

Further, representing the different Indian business subgroups, like the Sindhis,
Gujaratis, Punjabis, the four respondents hailed from different Indian business
communities. They brought distinctive cultural practices and ﬁnancial capital to their
respective networks, shaped by that community’s business presence in international
markets: the size, global spread, and migratory history of the individual business
communities. For example, the Gujarati and Punjabi business communities have a
compelling presence in many countries of Africa, Asia, and Europe compared to the
South Indian community. I found the degree to which economic and social resources
were made available to these senior entrepreneurs—decided by the cultural capital
embedded in the global network structure of their respective business community—
strongly inﬂuenced the scale and volume of their personal business activities in the
United States. Nevertheless, as if by rule, network members of the Indian business
community in India and in the diaspora nurtured close social contacts with their
members’ for enhancing their chances of economic prosperity in the United States. Thus,
diasporic and American co-ethnic co-operation and support proved beneﬁcial for the
senior immigrant respondents of the 19703 in launching their transnational businesses in a
variety of consumer and luxury items. They were executing middleman economic roles,

similar to the other Asian ethnic businesses at that period of time (Gold 1994:205—207).

144

Further, to ensure continued support from their particular business sub groups, these
senior respondents preserved their unique lifestyle, like being strict vegetarian, attending
their sub sects’ speciﬁc religious institutions, etc., despite their migration and settlement
in the United States. In this way strong familial, social, and business ties of senior
immigrant interviewees served their economic interests in the United States, although
strictly controlled and dictated by their family’s longstanding relationship to speciﬁc
Indian business communities (Portes & Sensenbrenner 1993: 1 335—3 6). Very similar to
Gold’s (2002:80—82) ﬁndings of Kibbutzniks and Mizrahi Jew entrepreneurs in the
United States, who brought various capitals from Israel and Middle Eastern countries
respectively, the patterns and norms of traditional Indian business community networks’
solidarity originated in India and were brought to the United States by the senior
entrepreneurs dealing in material goods.

The sway of dissimilar cultural and human resource allocation among the senior
immigrant informants becomes boldly apparent when network conﬁguration of
transnational businesses of senior entrepreneurs in the technology domain is considered.
All of the six senior technology entrepreneurs stated categorically the enormous
assistance, counsel, recommendations, business information, and contacts—and in two
cases ﬁnancial investment—they had received from their former colleagues and friends at
previous work places in the United States and in India. The resource mobilization for this
group out across ethnic, religious, racial, and national boundaries. Along with
connections to their previous work environments, the senior technology entrepreneurs
said their personal professional reputations as specialists in their chosen ﬁelds brought

legitimacy to their enterprises. For these men, social capital was relevant only when their

145

personal, social, and profe33ional relationships could be organized to mobilize
knowledge, competencies, and skills which gave their business venture a competitive
advantage. All of them acknowledged that they could achieve their ambitious business
goals because they were able to put together what Yeung (1998; cited in Vertovec
2003:657) has called the economics of synergy, that is, resource pooling (capital, labor,
and technology), information sharing, and reciprocal personal favors. Sudhir Parikh’s
account exempliﬁes the economics of synergy, which resonates with the notion of social
capital:

First, when I started the company my existing customers from my previous

employment said that they would come with me after I started something of my

own. They were true to their word. Then as I was building the company I tried to

put the right board members and management team together so that the

company could scale beyond me. I was cognizant of their potential and they had

a good idea of my work. So, the point is when you have this powerful team, the

team brings with it their social network Then you can leverage from these

networks. You can start with your reference customers: build your brand, that ’s

how each one feeds on the other positively. We also got some introduction ﬁom

my board member ﬁiend, who was our financial investor. We get our clients

now because of the reputation we started with and arduously built over the

years. We are known all over the world now, so customers come to us (sic).

This quote from an elderly immigrant technology entrepreneur—which bears a close
resemblance to the others in this category—highlights how a prudent mix of strong and
weak ties was deliberately cultivated for the acquisition of transnational business deals.
First, being industry insiders in their respective areas, they relied on strong ties from
previous professional relationships, which provided access to resources (ﬁnancial and
expertise), and offered trusted feedback. Interestingly, the emergent phase of their
businesses was equally marked by the corresponding presence of weak ties brought into

the network by the board members and by the management team. Hence, both strong and

weak ties played an inﬂuential role right from the beginning of their enterprise.

146

Second, although strong ties with their college peers from India and the United States,
who were industry insiders, provided easy access to the resources they desired, these
entrepreneurs required additional contacts for knowledge, the latest information, and for
the diverse perspectives that enhance business creativity. The weak ties within the
network put in place by the management team and board members fulﬁlled that function.
Strong ties with previous co-workers and current management also offered a degree of
focus in the search for the weak ties that provided the vital novel information needed for
further business expansion. In particular, for the elderly technology entrepreneurs in this
study, the legitimacy of the founder and company board members in combination with
other network advantages created a multiplex of ties that played a key role in the
development of transnational business between India and the United States (Steier &
Greenwood: 2000 cited in Elﬁing & Hulsink 2007:1862). In sum, it was the importance
of prior knowledge (Shane 2000) in strong ties of personal relationships and new
information found in the weak ties (Fiet 1996) that were beneﬁcial in different ways in
the different stages of their entrepreneurship (Elfiing & Hulsink 2007; Uzzi 1997).

Their wives’ income was another signiﬁcant source of social and ﬁnancial capital for
the senior technology entrepreneurs—particularly during the initial phase of their
businesses. The spouses of all six technology entrepreneurs were professionals and
worked as doctors, accountants, administrators, etc. when their husbands made the
transition to self-employment. In four out of these six cases, the business was self-
ﬁnanced, and the wives acted as guarantors for the risk of entrepreneurship. Professional
relationships were important in acquiring social capital, but so were family ties.

Relationships with people the entrepreneur knew from previous activities, like childhood

147

mentors, school principal and classmates, were also important. Consequently, the
transnational business networks of these senior technology immigrant interviewees
included personal relationships, contacts with business and professional associates and
colleagues, and the social contexts of past and present life in India and in the United
States. Table 4-8 summarizes the information on the sources of ﬁnancial assistance for
senior immigrant transnational entrepreneurs in both sectors of business.

Table No. 4 -8: Source of Financial Capital for Senior Transnational Entrepreneurs

 

In the Material Good Sector (like agro products, jewelry, clothing etc.)
> My jewelry business was totally funded by my family and kin in the U.S. and India.

> My mentor, who was also a distant family member in Singapore, funded a large part of
our business operations in the U.S. He is no more. So it was my family and our diasporic
[religious and ethnic or both] business community.

In the Technology Sector

> My wife had her own practice as a doctor. That was a steady source of revenue to fund
my business venture initially. I did not take a salary for the ﬁrst 5 years from my business.
Later, I could sustain and expand the business without external ﬁnancial help. There
were no Indian venture capitalists around when I started. No angels.

> My friends and colleagues were interested in my project. So they helped me initially with
ﬁnancial capital. Rest was my savings. I took no institutional ﬁnance. [One of the board
member, who is also a friend of this respondent was his ﬁnn’s ﬁnancial investor].

> My wife has been a big help in the business. She was my ﬁnancial guarantor. My elder
brother also invested in my business.

 

Further, my interviews revealed that the entrepreneurial networks that emerged in the
19903 grew out of efforts begun by these senior founders of technology companies in the
United States. Their efforts have proven to be extremely valuable for transnational
business in the technology sector for immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs in the United
States and in India respectively. Saxenian (1999:42—51) states that the new ethnic

business networks were developed as a result of the barriers the senior entrepreneurs

148

experienced when starting or sustaining their transnational enterprises in the 19803 in
Silicon Valley.

First, their experiences as transnational entrepreneurs inspired senior U.S.-based
founders of technology ﬁrms to invest their fortunes, provide mentorship, and become
catalysts to the younger generation Indian entrepreneurs. This gave birth to an
organization called The IndUS Entrepreneurs (or TiE). Over the years, TiE has become a

platform where successful Indian immigrant entrepreneurs in the technology sector share

their resources with other aspiring Indian entrepreneurs”. Thus, TiE is both a means and
a process through which successful transnational entrepreneurs who have moved into
positions of leadership and greater socio-economic status can “preach the advantages of
hard work and efﬁciency they now believed explained their own success and the value of
ethnic identity, an element which generated the cohesiveness necessary for many to
succeed and attain positions of group leadership” (Bodnar 1985:139 cited in Gold
2005:267). Poonam Sharma, a benefactor of TiE, explained the dual objective of this
entrepreneurial network:

See there was not a critical mass of people in the late 80s or early 90s. In

December of 1993 T iE was formed in the Silicon Valley, when some of the Asian

Indian immigrants who had phenomenal success in their business venture came

together to start T iE to give something back to the younger generation, which

they did not have when they were starting out. It serves two purposes: one is

their sense of altruism, and two it gives them an opportunity to invest their

ﬁnancial and social resources, that is, to invest their money to good use, where
it would multiply (sic).

 

‘7 The founding members of TiE included three of most successful older Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon
Valley: Suhas Patil, former MIT professor and founder of Cirrus Logic; Prabhu Goel, founder of Gateway
Design Automation; and Kanwal Rekhi who founded Exelan, which merged with Novell (Saxenian
1999244). At present, TiE has 53 Chapters in 12 countries spread across ﬁve continents. The organization
has 11,000 members and 2,500 charter members who are the top entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, lawyers,
and management professionals in their chosen ﬁeld. Source: The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

149

Second, all four senior technology entrepreneurs in the United States who had
graduated from premier national institutions had a strong loyalty and serious commitment
to the alumni entrepreneurial networks of their alma mater, for instance Pan IIT
networks. I contend that the networks of premier institutes have been more effective and
inﬂuential than those of lower-tier universities and colleges in India, as I elaborate in the
next chapter. As discussed earlier, the exclusive nature of college peer networks that were
dominant in setting up the migration channels to educational institutions in the United
States (refer pages 27-29), were again reinvented as entrepreneurial networks for the
alumni of those institutions. Explaining the high-standards and competitive spirit upheld
in the premier national institutes, Rahul Sethi expressed the basis for his commitment to
fellow IITians:

I feel what brings us together is the common experience of being together from

age 1 7 or 18 for the next ﬁve years. The value of such an education is to make

you aware of your potentials and all the possibilities that exist. Above all it

convinces you that you can do it. I assume we come across as conceited to

others. My involvement in the [IT network is to take this critical mass of

excellence to another level. By coming together we are and can be a formidable

force (sic).

Therefore both TiE and IIT18 are examples of existing networks that absorb
newcomers; function as a source of meaningful ties with the past and with college peers
and co-ethnics; and make additional network resources available to members, which in
turn encourages further network expansion, a process that is repeated again and again as
the size of both these networks continues. Over time, both these entrepreneurial network

organizations have spread outwards to encompass nonmi grant Indian entrepreneurs in

India and many others in the Indian diaspora.

 

1 .
8 Both TiE and IIT alumni networks are exclusrvely for technology entrepreneurs.

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3. Present Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the United States:

Conversations with the younger entrepreneurs in both the technical and material
goods sectors revealed a clear shift in the modus operandi of conducting transnational
business with India, when compared to their senior counterparts. I see these changes as an
outcome of the slightly higher levels of human and cultural capital in both sectors
compared to their predecessors, which could have had a bearing on their network
arrangement, and thereby on the social capital available to them. Also, the timing (i.e. the
year) of their migration to the United States inﬂuenced their access to existing network
resources.

Among the 11 younger immigrant entrepreneurs represented in Figure no. 4-7, none

of them were from premier national institutions of higher education in India, nor was

anyone a company transferee”. Eight were ﬁrst-time migrants to the United States—
most were the ﬁrst in their immediate families to migrate—and entered the United States
to acquire graduate degrees. The remaining three were second generation Indian
Americans and therefore considered to have migrated as part of family reuniﬁcation.
With the exception of one transnational businesswoman in the technology domain, all

other younger informants in the United States were men.

 

One person in the material goods sector migrated on company assignment, but resigned from his job
soon after his arrival to attend graduate school in the United States.

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Figure No. 4-6: The context of entering the United States for younger immigrant
entrepreneurs

 

 

I Graduate Educaton (Management Degree, PhD, Masbrs)
I Fairly Renunitcaion

 

 

Eight of the entrepreneurs from Figure 4-6 who entered the United States in the 19803
or 19903 as graduate students made the United States the base for their business. All the
recent immigrant entrepreneurs explicitly stated the U.S. university experience had
contributed immeasurably to their personal self-discovery as graduate students, then as
professionals in the U.S. labor force, and later as transnational businessmen. Likewise to
the accounts of senior transnational businessmen, the American university education was
a transforrnative experience for younger transnational entrepreneurs. It honed their
cultural and social competencies and their ability to participate effectively in the global
economy. Additionally, the status a graduate degree from a U.S. university confers
cultural capital. For Siddharth, it was especially important in acquiring a tool-kit of
communication skills, the ability to handle multiple tasks, an awareness of others’ points

of view, etc. that helped him fulﬁll his long-term entrepreneurial goals. To cite Siddharth:

152

I think something new that I learnt in my U.S. education is ‘networking’. It is a
skill that is not taught in India. This is what U.S. business schools focus a lot. In
India it is more family connections. Networking is much more overt and taught
as a skill to develop in the U.S. If I had not learnt that skill in the U.S., I would
not be where I am.

I really used to think this networking skill to be innate and unchangeable, but I
worked at it and learnt it. This helped me to relate to people from dijferent
countries and dijferent cultures and of course to advance my worldwide
business. . . Another thing I learnt in the U.S. campus is the power of
knowledge. It made me realize that preparation is so important. It has taught me

to be well prepared before going into any business meeting. I am not an expert,
but I can do fairly well. Little things like this are not given importance in India

(sic).

An American university education was part of a premigratory strategic plan for the
younger immigrant entrepreneurs—whereas it had been an emergent product for senior
entrepreneurs. Admission to U.S. universities also could have been a calculated move to
compensate for what they thought they might have missed by not attending premier
institutions in India. For them, an American education was an effective means of
challenging the ways in which they were recognized by their Indian entrepreneurial
colleagues or in their business circles (Williams and Balaz 2005:446). My ﬁndings on
younger immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States conﬁrms the conclusions arrived at
by Wadhwa et al. (2007) in their study of Indian immigrant entreprenetus in the
technology and engineering domain. Their study found that recent Indian founders of
technology companies in the United States graduated from a diverse set of schools in
India, including many considered to be second—or third—tier universities.

Analogous to the senior transnationals, I asked the present entrepreneurs: Why did
you want to become a transnational entrepreneur? I wanted to explore the ways in

which their habitus, along with their migratory experience in a different time, had shaped

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their resolve to embrace a life of transnational entrepreneurship. All eight immigrant
entrepreneurs—irrespective of business sector—said they possessed a desire for
entrepreneurship before entering the United States. I see their desire for private enterprise
and a global business career as being inﬂuenced primarily by the Indian government’s
pro-business attitude since the 19803. Migration for a U.S. education was intended to
build their competitive advantage at an international level. Unlike the immigrants of the

19703, these men and women came to the United States with what Nilekani (2009:73)

dubbed a “Bombay House mind set”20. This hastened the process of their maturity into
economic transnationals. Summing up the changed socio-economic situation in India and
the opportunities to be had from an American education and work experience, Rajiv
Bhatia said:
Indian business was opening up after its lengthy stranglehold by the time I
entered Engineering College in the mid 1980s. I agree every business person is
not successful, but when there is a tide it opens up a lot of opportunities for a lot
of people. Having said so, being in the U.S. it was far easier to become a
transnational. The campus life in the States gave me a global perspective and a
taste of what it means to be internationally competitive (sic).
4. Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Younger Transnationals:
Among the younger entrepreneurs in the material goods sector, there were three
second generation Indian Americans, whereas two were ﬁrst generation immigrant
businessmen. Despite the small number of respondents (ﬁve, which represent 45 percent

in this category—see Figure 4-4), it was remarkable to observe the innovative ways in

which these interviewees made use of their cultural and social resources for cross-border

 

20 Bombay House is the headquarters of the Tatas and is located in the center of Bombay’s business
district. It is an enormous, beautiful building and is the symbolic representation of burgeoning spirit of
entrepreneurship (N ilekani 2009).

154

businesses. Three second generation transnationals had taken charge of their parents’
small, local, ethnic enterprises more than 10 years ago, and had evolved an import-
oriented family business into either one large transnational ﬁrm or separate units of a ﬁrm
functioning across the national borders. These young transnationals in food, garment, and
jewelry businesses had built their own manufacturing bases in India, like food processing
and garment factories in Gujarat”, or diamond cutting and polishing industrial units that
belonged to the same owner in Chicago.

They had established new distribution networks both for U.S. and Indian markets by
not relying completely on contacts from family members or co-ethnics in the United
States. They had Indian bank accounts and real estate in India as well as in afﬂuent urban
neighborhoods and in multi-ethnic suburbs of American cities. Indians are not the only
immigrants to transform family owned ethnic enterprises into transnational businesses by
taking advantage of the technological and travel facilities of the global economy. Similar
patterns can be seen among second generation Chinese, Korean, Jewish, and Iranian
entrepreneurs in Los Angeles and New York (Gold, Light & Johnston 2006; Zhou
2004:1055).

Furthermore, the second generation Indian American entrepreneurs, who had the
beneﬁts of bi-cultural literacy and ﬁnancial resources from their immediate families and
ethnic ﬁnancial institutions in the United States, perceived their transnational business
activities as initial attempts to enter the mainstream American economy, and of making
the ﬁrst cracks at the formidable Indian markets. Shiv explained how he markets his

products for Indian and American customers:

 

2 l . .
A state in western India.

155

Let ’s say I want to start a particular packaged Indian food, for example sweet

lime pickle. First I would go ﬁnd the best guy who makes this in India. I will

delegate this responsibility to the team I have set up in Bombay who works for

my enterprise. This core team who are also my manufacturers would get to learn

the know-how and put it together. I will ﬁnd markets for this product all over the

world wherever I have network tie-ups, including all my retailers in the U.S. I

will also sell the product in my shops in the U.S. I had put up the seed money for

the factory of my manufacturers in Gujarat. We work together basically. I also

sell their products in the American market. They have the advantage of having a

set up in the U.S. They have full access to my infrastructure and to my

connoisseur team. It ’s a win win situation (sic).
From the above quote, I infer that the younger generations of entrepreneurs dealing with
material goods constructed personal collaborative transnational network structures. These
consisted predominantly of strong, trust-based ties of workers, suppliers, manufacturers,
fashion designers, business associates, and friends. The long-term relations between
entrepreneurs and their sub contractors in India relied on personal trust, which generated
high standards of behavior and feelings of reciprocity and obligations. These
entrepreneurs had formed a cohesive, durable network built around these affective
relationships that acted as glue for smooth functioning of their transnational enterprise,
comparable to those found in Mitchell & Old’s (2000) study of “overseas Chinese”
business networks in the development of property markets worldwide.

All ﬁve contemporary entrepreneurs shared information about the roles their families
played in teaching them the tricks of the trade, and also as benefactors—most of them
had family members partly ﬁnance their businesses. However, these entrepreneurs in the
material goods sector recognized their family and co-ethnic members’ limitations as
resources, as their knowledge was primarily of the speciﬁc requirements of the U.S.

Indian community. Transnational business networks provided younger entrepreneurs with

more expansive knowledge on global market trends. A collaborative network of vendors

156

provided material resources that might, for example, include no-fee credit lines to boost
transnational economic activities.

Four of these contemporary entrepreneurs extended their business with customers in
India and elsewhere through extensive use of their business websites. In the words of one
Michigan-based transnational businessman dealing with fashion accessories, jewelry, and
Indian costumes:

Now days, I do much of my business with India using interactive media and the

internet: email, web chat, social networking sites, and videos, etc. In 2000-01,

_we used Yahoo chat to procure our products ﬁom all over India, including from

little known towns like Jabalpur. My manufacturers now all have digital

cameras. They photograph their products and upload them on my website for me

to make decisions. The revenue from website sales is 0k. (sic).
These entrepreneurs, in conjunction with other networks of suppliers and manufacturers,
constructed an extensive virtual network and maintained a relatively large volume of
occupationally-based weak ties. The weak ties that approached the entrepreneur for
business came from diverse social backgrounds (i.e. ethnicity, gender) and possessed
different occupational skills, which provided these entrepreneurs with access to an
enormous variety of social capital and knowledge (Boase et al. 2004). In some cases
these weak ties evolved into strong ties of business partnership, for instance when two
businesses decided to merge after developing a relationship online. For this group of
businessmen, the intemet affected the conﬁguration of their business networks, which in
turn promoted their transnational business. These virtual networks provided the younger
entrepreneurs in the material goods sector a sense of freedom and openness beyond the
bounds of local ethnic enclaves in the United States.

An important difference between transnational immigrant businessmen in the material

goods and the technology sectors was access to powerﬁrl professional or trade networks.

157

Entrepreneurs in material goods lacked access to these networks. Neither did they seek
support from ethnic social structures locally or in the diasporic Indian community, as had
their senior counterparts. By stepping out of the niche ethnic markets in the United States,
these young Indian entrepreneurs developed their distinct individual transnational
networks using both strong and weak ties that were widely dispersed in both countries.
Their membership in diverse worldwide entrepreneurial networks empowered them to
sometimes challenge the “enforceable trust” mechanisms of the local ethnic community,
as their source of social capital was not entirely characterized by the local group level
ethnic behavior (Portes & Zhou 1992). The greatest strength and resource for these
transnational businessmen was their individual demographic and socio-economic proﬁle,
such as their U.S. education, higher level of English and computer literacy, and the bi-
cultural capital accrued from knowledge of American society as well as being second
generation Indian American—which they strategically employed in the United States and
India to advance their enterprises.

The second generation respondents in the material goods sector adhered to the
“middleman model,” where ethnic groups retain high levels of self-employment across
generations, despite having high levels of education. Although second generation Indian
American entrepreneurs comprised only 14 percent of my sample, preliminary
observation highlighted a trend towards self-employment in transnational business. Their
preference for self-employment challenges the tenets of the classic model of generational
succession in self-employment. In this model, immigrants’ children pursue professional
work instead of self-employment as they acquire better educations and become more

assimilated into American society (Gold, Light & Johnstonz2006).

158

A somewhat dissimilar network pattern emerges when I examine the contemporary
immigrant transnational entrepreneurs in the technology domain. As described earlier, all
the respondents in this group had acquired advanced degrees from American universities.
This expanded their existing networks of peers from engineering schools in India to
include friends, cohort mates, and alumni from American universities. In addition, the six
had worked for U.S. technology companies for an average of 10 years before starting
their own enterprises, during which time they built a network of professional colleagues.
Four of the entrepreneurs had opportunities to work in countries other than India and the
United States while with multinational ﬁrms, which too had expanded their web of
professional and social networks. In short, these young entrepreneurs had a vast circle of
contacts acquired at universities in two countries, work experience in the United States
and other countries, and from membership in ethnicized entrepreneurial networks (TiE).
They were fortiﬁed with human and cultural capital to become transnational
businesspeople.

I asked the contemporary transnational respondents in the technology domain the
same question that I had asked their senior counterparts: How did you get transnational
customers for‘your business? From their responses, I became aware of the creative and
multiple strategies they had used to generate the social resources/capital from their
relationship in various networks to develop their transnational enterprises. Here, by
narrating the thoughts and actions of Dev Gupta, I try to explain why the present-day
technology entrepreneurs had placed enormous signiﬁcance on networking to acquire
business information and knowledge, and to demonstrate the practical relevance of

Ronald Burt’s (1992:65) concept of “structural holes”. Structural holes can be thought of

159

as bridges or buffers that can attach disconnected and unlike network clusters, which can
be inﬂuential sources of social capital and supply vital connections. Here is Dev Gupta:

Networking is very critical. It ’s not what you know, or who you know. I actually
take it further to say “who knows you. ” That is why I am very active in TiE
chapter of Washington D. C. I speak at events, and do interviews and write
articles regularly. Primarily you are building yourself as the thought leader in
your ﬁeld. You can ’t directly correlate one to one with everyone to get business.
It would be a futile exercise. But, when you meet three people at a network
meeting you will get one client. Besides, the bigger your network and the more
your connections, the probability to bat is higher, whether you hit the ball is a
different question.

I joined T iE for two reasons, one I have been running this company for seven
years, and there are lots of people who are looking to start a company and
Indians in particular have a tough time. The Indians do not have the advantage
of “good old boys network” if you didn ’t go to Yale or Harvard, etc. Most
Indians don ’t have that, except for those who went to IIT. I joined TiE if I could
help other Indians. Second, I am not plugged into the ‘Desi’ [meaning Indians in
Hindi] network here like the ‘mandir [Temple] network’ etc., so for me to meet
other Indian entrepreneurs would have to be through T iE. In my opinion T iE has
grown to be a great organization.

In terms of networks, I would say ﬁrst the D. C. network, which is everyone
whom I meet in D. C. of Indian origin, the second network is what I call larger
telecom network—you know I have been in the telecom and media industry for
the last 15 years. That’s how I know a lot of people in the communication space-
whether they be in software, or mobile company or telephone company. Then
there is the McKinsey network, which is a very strong network of powerﬁtl

people whom you can tap into (sic).

The younger technology entrepreneurs in transnational business are unlike the
entrepreneurs of the earlier generation in their unwavering belief in networking in
professional or ethnicized business networks like TiE. To them this is the proven way to
success for their transnational business. It was a deﬁnite departure from their senior
counterparts where the underlying belief in operating their transnational business was to

know lots of people inside the industry/company and employ expert knowledge to get

things done. Whereas for the younger entrepreneurs in the technology sector, grave

160

importance was given to gaining and bringing new ideas to their transnational enterprises
from outside contacts or by means of occupationally-based weak ties. This shift in the
perspective of obtaining transnational business therefore distinguishes their network
arrangements and their uses from the senior technology entrepreneurs.

So, younger entrepreneurs’ enterprises were characterized by the presence of
numerous weak ties leveraged from multiple networks—professional, specialized, and
socio-cultural—where they might or might not have been a member of the network. They
had access to the social resources of several networks because of bridging ties. The
presence of numerous weak ties was essential for acquiring ﬁrst hand and private
information on transnational business opportunities, especially during the emergent phase
of their businesses. Their network membership and participation also gave them access to
inner circles of inﬂuential heavyweights in the IT industry, both in India and the United
States.

My conversation with younger entrepreneurs disclosed that, above all, network ties to
prominent players in the technology ﬁeld—for example, by inviting them to be on their
company’s board or in the role of venture capitalist for their ﬁrms—they were able to
fulﬁll two main requirements for their business to take off. One, it brought much-needed
legitimacy to their innovative business ventures, which helped them to improve the
public image of their transnational ﬁrms. It also enhanced their ability as founders to
create further social ties to central players in the ﬁeld. In this way they were able to
compensate for the lack of expert/specialized knowledge, which the senior technology
entrepreneurs had in good measure when they started their transnational business. Two,

reputable network members supported transnational start-up entrepreneurship by

161

investing ﬁnancial capital in the ﬁrms of the younger entrepreneurs in the United States
and India. In addition to the ﬁnancial support, the venture capitalists also brought
managerial and technical expertise to the transnational businesses that were started in the
19903, thereby increasing the information base of the ﬁrm. Unlike the senior technology
entrepreneurs, four of the younger transnational entrepreneurs in the United States
received start-up funds from venture capitalists to augment their own investments (see
Table 4-9). None of the younger entrepreneurs mentioned their family’s ﬁnances or their
spouses’ earnings and involvement in their transnational business.

Table No. 4-9: Source of Financial Capital for Younger Transnational Entrepreneurs
in the Technology Sector

 

> I actually had investments out of Swiss venture capital company out of Zurich. They
invested 2 million dollars when I ﬁrst started out. I did not invest any of my personal
capital.

> I took money from venture capitalists who are members of TiE and my own money.

> We got our capital from (venture capital) from members in TiE and their friends. We had
Angel funds too. People from TiE were big contributors to our enterprise. So, it was a
combination of two sources. No personal funds.

> Venture capital. Everything else was all self-ﬁnanced with credit cards. No bank loans or
personal funds.

> It was basically savings from the job I had at The World Bank. 80, it was personal capital
to a large extent.

> I funded both the operations in the U.S. and India.

 

This does not mean that strong ties to family, ﬁiends, and colleagues did not have a
role in their business. As with the senior technology entrepreneurs, both strong and weak
ties had deﬁnite involvement during the initial years of their entrepreneurship,
particularly in the resource and information acquisition phase. As one entrepreneur said,

“my college buddies in India will give me a heads-up on emerging opportunities that will

162

do the rounds in the network circuits later. In our business it’s the early bird that gets the
worm.” For another younger entrepreneur, his ﬁrst transnational business opportunity
came from his parent company, for which his new ﬁrm was the sub-contractor for many
years. Thus, for the younger immigrant technology entrepreneurs, where the emphasis for
their relatively newer transnational business was marked by their exploration for new
information on opportunities, occupation-based weak ties were more pronounced. Strong
ties were important, too. On some occasions during the growth phase of their
entrepreneurship, weak ties developed into trusted strong ties, which later played a
signiﬁcant role in securing all sorts of resources.

Summary and Conclusions:

In this chapter I attempted to take the analysis of transnational networks beyond the
mere divide of structure and agency at a particular moment in time, to reveal the deeper
economic and social contexts that lie beneath the transnational businesses of Indian
immigrant entrepreneurs. By examining the cases of 42 transnational Indian
entrepreneurs, I analyzed their dispositions (habitus) by taking account of their cultural,
social, and human capital, primarily determined by the social and economic location of
their birth families in Indian society. I examined the education and occupation of the
respondents’ fathers, the type of school and college attended by the respondents, and
other factors that both contributed to and constrained their access to a variety of networks
that functioned as a source of social capital. My research found a strong association
between the cultural, human, and social capital of the entrepreneurs, assessed by the type
of undergraduate colleges they attended in India and in the use of peer networks for their

initial migration to the United States. The undergraduate college and peer networks also

163

laid the foundation for the development of transnational entrepreneurial networks. Thus,
dissimilar possession of cultural and social capital during their school and college years
in India had led to a stratiﬁed character of social networks.

A major task, then, was to specify the conﬁguration of the networks of four groups of
transnational immigrant entrepreneurs and their usage for transnational business. A
substantial variety seems to exist among entrepreneurial networks when cultural, social
and human capital are taken together with variables such as timing (age and year) of
migration, motives for migration, national and immigration policies of sending and
receiving countries, respondents’ individual involvement with co-ethnics and the
diasporic community, etc. In particular, intergenerational differences among the senior
and relatively younger immigrant transnational entrepreneurs in the material and
technology sectors revealed the heterogeneity of Indian transnational entrepreneurial
groups and the complexity of ties within respective networks.

The major determinants affecting all the transnational entrepreneurs for both
generations in both business sectors were the existing socio-economic founding
conditions for their entrepreneurship in the United States and the availability of resources
(cultural, social, and human capital) when they launched their enterprise. Both of these
decisive factors inﬂuenced their network conﬁguration, membership, and the tie
formation during their post-founding entrepreneurial process. For senior entrepreneurs in
both sectors, the relational content—the norms (reciprocity, sanctions) and strength
(strong or weak) of ties—in the business networks was mainly related to their diasporic

connections and to their professional experiences in the United States in the 19703.

164

Nonetheless, two distinct conﬁgurations of networks emerge when the two groups of
elderly transnational businessmen are studied separately. For senior businessmen in the
material goods sector, their transnational economic activities and personal behavior was
shaped and controlled—e.g. severity of sanctions like 1033 of reputation, loss of close ties,
loss of source of income, etc.—by their respective ethnic business community in the
Indian diaspora, which had a religious overtone. Hence, their support (social capital) for
transnational economic behavior was intertwined with their social behavior, as well as
participation in the religious and community organizations of their respective sub groups.
For senior transnational businesspeople in the material goods sector, the solidarity of
their transnational business networks was typiﬁed exclusively by trust based strong
family and community ties. These ties originated in India and were brought to and
reproduced in the United States. The social relationships and practices of these
entrepreneurs reinforced the “twice migrant theory” where shared identity and collective
way of life prior to migration is recreated in the host country far more quickly than those
migrants who are members of majority groups in the society (Bhachu 1985; Espiritu
1989; Zenner 1991; Nonini and Ong 1997 cited in Gold 2002:81).

On the other hand, the senior entrepreneurs in the technology domain did not identify
as belonging to any particular sub group from India—religious, ethnic, or otherwise.
While they too banked on trust based strong ties, these largely originated from work
colleagues, friends, and college peers in the United States and in other international
locales where they had worked. So, their social capital was expressed in the form of
business information and contacts, counsel, and expertise that was not limited by ethnic,

religious, racial, or national boundaries.

165

Further, the difference in the primary sources of cultural and social capital for these
two groups of senior nansnationals explains the process through which legitimacy was
acquired for their business. For the technology entrepreneurs, their professional
reputation as specialists in their ﬁeld and their ﬁiendship with people of similar
backgrounds brought legitimacy to their businesses and gave them a competitive edge.
For the material goods entrepreneurs, it was their umbilical connection to their personal
diasporic Indian business community that fulﬁlled this necessity.

In other words, the form and level of social capital enjoyed by both these groups of
senior transnational entrepreneurs was affected by different kinds of personal cultural
endowments. For instance, the attitude towards family, friends, and community (cultural
capital) was the strength of interpersonal relations for the businessmen in the material
sector—this was substituted for relations deﬁned mainly by human capital at another
level for the technology transnational entrepreneurs.

Analysis of the entrepreneurial networks of senior technology entrepreneurs
highlights the equally important role weak ties play in transnational business success. In
many instances, critical information was exchanged through the use of both strong and
weak ties and sometimes via ambiguous ties. My research has found that technology
entrepreneurs do not give preference to either strong or weak ties, which challenges the
popular argument that highly skilled workers prefer to use exclusively weak ties
(Granovetter 1973; 1995).

The founding conditions for the younger immigrant transnationals in the United
States were somewhat different from those of their predecessors in both the sectors. They

had the advantage of higher levels of human and bicultural capital, which clearly

166

inﬂuenced their network arrangements in both structure and relational aspects. Younger
immigrant entrepreneurs, especially those in the technology domain, who migrated to the
United States in the last two decades of the 20th century, had access to existing
entrepreneurial organizations like TiE, and to the organizational network. Taken together,
the favorable macro socio-political circumstances (the cordial political relations between
the United States and India and the market-friendly Indian policies of the 19903) and their
personal endowment of cultural and human capital substantially increased the chances of
business success for the younger transnational entrepreneurs.

Further, regardless of business sector, younger transnational entrepreneurs
strategically drew on multiple networks simultaneously: professional, specialized and
ethnicized networks, U.S. and Indian university/college alumni networks, global
networks of friends and work colleagues, networks of vendors and manufacturers, and
local ethnic community and family networks. Although trust based strong ties had an
important role, especially for those in the material goods sector, their reliance on
occupation based weak ties for acquiring new business information and contacts was
more pronounced than in older entrepreneurs. The emphasis among the senior
entrepreneurs was to gain support, invest in relationships, and search for expertise from
within the industry/company or in ones’ own diasporic business community. The younger
entrepreneurs acquired information and new ideas from a wider world in order to stay
ahead of the game.

Younger entrepreneurs saw membership and active participation in all sorts of
networks—including intemet networking sites like LinkedIn—as important for new

business opportunities. The increased scope of their networks and the volume of weak

167

ties compensated for their lack of extensive work experience—and in some cases the
absence of hereditary cultural capital from traditional business families. But—as with
senior technology entrepreneurs—strong ties to family, friends, college peers, and work
colleagues contributed during the initial phase of their enterprise.

In conclusion, the three transnational groups of two generations and in two business
sectors relied on both strong and weak ties to further their transnational business goals.
The only exceptions were the senior transnational entrepreneurs trading in the material
goods sector, who relied primarily on family and intra-ethnic strong ties. This could be
because of lower levels of human capital and bicultural literacy among this group of
senior entrepreneurs, who migrated in the 19703 (Valdez 2008; Zhou 2004; Sanders
2002). The transnational entrepreneurs in the United States as a whole—except the
elderly businessmen in the material goods sector—displayed a highly individualized
decision making process and therefore cannot be typiﬁed by business sector or
generation.

The transnational business ties based on premigratory college networks and those
formed through post-migration professional networks appear to converge at intermediary
organizations like TiE and SIPA (Silicon Valley Indian Professional Association). Here,
ties to members in the organizations facilitated entrepreneurship and made transnational
business transactions easier in multiple ways. The common platforms functioned as hubs
for intellectual capital, deﬁned by Nahapiet & Ghoshal (1998:245) as the knowing
capability of a social collective that enables people to act in new ways. For transnational
entrepreneurs, collectives like TiE represented a potential resource where action and

practices could be taken based on knowing and on knowledge that was socially and

168

contextually embedded. Consequently, the formation of transnational business
organizations played a signiﬁcant role in channeling and optimizing economic
transnational practices among Indian immigrant entrepreneurs.

In addition, respondents deﬁned the intimacy of a relationship—and whether it was
strong or weak—based on the social context in which the social relationship was formed,
e.g. having lived together in the same dormitory during university years. My analysis
here of the origins of tie formation in this group contests Granovetter’s (1973; 1983;
1995) thesis that innovative ideas originate solely from weak ties. Resources, be they
ﬁnancial or social (ideas or information) came to these entrepreneurs from strong and
weak ties equally at different stages in their careers. In some cases the strong ties—e. g. a
venture capitalist friend—doubled as bridging ties and exploited the structural holes in
the networks. In keeping with Burt’s (1992) notion, the quality of ties was deﬁned largely
by the context in which they were formed, their functional arrangement, and their
location within the entrepreneurial networks.

Finally, my ﬁndings reafﬁrm the conclusions of scholars—including Saxenian (2002;
2006) and Gold (2002; 2007)—who argue that migrants with high levels of human
capital require networks for migration, settlement, economic advancement, and
transnational business just as much as migrants having low or no human capital. For the
young technology entrepreneurs, the networks and strong ties that support migration to
the United States are also invaluable in return migration to India, and to the success of

their transnational business enterprises, which I discuss in the next chapter.

 

1 Although India produces a large number of engineers each year, their quality is uneven. Most higher
education in India is still oriented towards producing ‘Babus’ (Hindi for pen pushing government ofﬁcials
and petty bureaucrats). Very few regional engineering colleges, including IIS and IIT, train world-class
engineers. India also produces a very small number of doctorates. The public university system, which is

169

 

corrupt and often politicized, has to grapple with a shortage of high quality teaching and research faculty
and is severely limited in resources The unequal structure of the educational system is to a large extent self
perpetuating: those who have access to private schools have access to the elite universities. The majority of
students in these educational institutions both at the school and college level are from upper caste, urban, or
Jain background. Poor rural and lower caste students usually attend resource-starved inferior public
schools and rarely qualify for college or higher education. (Saxenian 2006: 323)

Soon after India gained independence from the British in 1947, the Indian state under the leadership of
Cambridge-educated Prime Minister Nehru actively encouraged the development of institutions of higher
education devoted to science and technology. The idea of founding Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)
was the brainchild of Sir Ardeshir Dalal, an aristocratic Parsi technocrat of extraordinary dynamism. Sir
Ardeshir Dalal was a member of the cabinet-in-waiting when India became independent in 1947. Dalal, like
Nehru, strongly believed that the economic future of the country rested on the development of science and
technology. To raise India up the technology ladder, Dalal’s strategy was threefold: (a) produce world class
engineers, (b) set up a vibrant research inﬁastructure, and (c) create a system of scholarship so that
deserving Indian students can take advantage of the best post graduate education in the world. The
founding of IIT represented the ﬁrst part of the threefold strategy (Deb 2004; Biradavolu 2008).

170

Chapter - 5
The Game Changers

The transnational immigrant Indian entrepreneurs in the United States epitomize not
only a powerhouse of human and social capital—as explained in the previous chapter—
which they deftly use for their business advantage by aligning their actions to the forces
of global economy, but they are also actors who came from India’s emerging economy,
and have the capacity and the wherewithal to make long-term contributions in two
geographically non-contiguous countries: India and the United States. In the following
chapter I discuss why some transnational Indian entrepreneurs have exercised a choice to
return to India (retumee) from the United States, and how they use their social, human,
and cultural capital (resources) and a variety of ties (bonding/strong, bridging/weak,
interpersonal, organizational, ambiguous) within entrepreneurial networks to advance
their transnational business in the Indian context. To assess the transnational economic
practices of retumee respondents, I will compare and contrast their experiences with
networks and capital used by non-mi grant entrepreneurs engaged in transnational
entrepreneurship. The ﬁnal section of the chapter discusses how “place” or “location”
plays a signiﬁcant role in facilitating economic transnational practices.

The return migration to homeland by transnational members of various immigrant
ethnic groups, like the Chinese, Taiwanese, Israelis, Koreans, and Indians in the United
States has been established to be one of the notable outcomes of the emergence of late
capitalism that has brought about ﬂexible modes of production, social arrangements, and
consumption behavior worldwide (Gold 2007; Lowell & Gerova 2004:8—14; Saxenian

2000, 2002; Ong & Nonini 1997:10-11). However, there are very few ethnographic

171

studies which investigate the experiences of retumee entrepreneurs in their home country,
particularly of well qualiﬁed and successful transnational Indian entrepreneurs who have
spent a major part of their young adult lives in the United States (an average of 11 years)
before making the crucial decision to relocate with their families to India.

Although in this research I am unable to establish the extent of return of highly
accomplished Indian immigrants compared to the total immigrant Indian population in
the United States, the return of Indian technology professionals with more than 5 years of
experience has been a growing trend since 2002-2003 (Saxenian 2006:288). Also, the
NASSCOM-McKinsey Report (2005) has estimated that some 25,000 IT professionals
returned to India between 2000 and 2004 after having worked abroad (Chacko 2007:134).
This challenges the popular image of immigrants set by those from low-income countries
like China and India, who have historically tended to stay permanently in the United
States. Observers like Pocha (2007), Lowell & Gerova (2004), and Kuznetsov (2006)
have commented that even before the 2008 ﬁnancial and economic crisis, a substantial
number of highly skilled immigrants from emerging economies like China and India had
returned to their home country to participate in the tech boom of their respective

countries, thereby revolutionizing the old concept of ‘brain drain’ to ‘brain gain/

circulation (Wadhwa et. al. 2009)].
Further, despite the reverse ﬂow of highly skilled returnees to India being relatively

small, these technically qualiﬁed Indians are welcomed back by the national and state

 

1 . . . .
For more dlscussron on this issue refer to Chapter I.

172

governments in Indiaz. In the present political and economic climate of liberalization and
free market in India, they are perceived to embody knowledge and capital resources by
returning to facilitate the skill and ﬁnancial transfers necessary for integrating India’s
economy with global business. As a result, transnational retumee entrepreneurs in this
study had high proﬁles in India.

It is interesting to notice that of the 22 migrant entrepreneurs (refer Table 4-7) to the

United States during the 20 year period (1980—1999?, 12 (55%) of 22 immigrant
technology entrepreneurs had decided to return to India either to start their transnational
business or to promote further growth of their transnational entrepreneurship, whereas
eight (36% of 22) younger immigrant technology entrepreneurs belonging to same time
cohorts had decided to continue living in the United States. Given that 22 entrepreneurs
had migrated to the United States from India under similar political and economic
situations and in the same time frame, although having graduated ﬁ'om varied
undergraduate institutions/colleges in India, this dissertation seeks to understand what
could have inspired the 12 retumee entrepreneurs to move to India, while eight of their
younger compatriots chose to be in the United States for their transnational business. To
address this incongruity among technology transnational entrepreneurs, I begin by
analyzing the motives of the retumee entrepreneurs by examining the networks that might

have aided in their return to India.

 

2 Traditionally India had maintained a distance from the Indian diaspora and thwarted the gestures of
goodwill and development from its immigrant community. Thankfully, this attitude of the Indian
ovemment has changed in the last few years (Khanna 2007).
The 22 immigrants to the US during 1980 - 1999, include 2 senior immigrant transnational entrepreneurs

who have not relocated in India. The remaining 19 migrants to the U.S. during that period were below 50
years and 1 retumee entrepreneur was above 50 years.

173

1. Time to “Come home . . .”

Saxenian (1999; 2002), in her study of Indian technology entrepreneurs in the Silicon
Valley, found that Indian entrepreneurs when compared to Taiwanese and Chinese
engineers were reluctant to return to their home country to start new technology
companies because of the heavy administrative burden of doing business in India and for

the lack of reliable infrastructure.

Defying these notions, 12 returnee transnational entrepreneurs in this study4, returned
to India to either consolidate or re-register their transnational businesses as Indian
companies or to start new technology companies in India (see Figure 5-1 overleaf). These
returnees had migrated to the United States in the 19803 and in the ﬁrst half of the 19903
for higher technical education, except for three who had entered the United States as
company transferees.

Ironically, contrary to the widespread perception, while all the retumee transnational
entrepreneurs were in the technology domain, only two of them lived or worked in
Silicon Valley at the time of their return to India. Only three of them relocated their
technology business at Bangalores. Does that mean these tech retumee entrepreneurs, for
their relocation to India, followed a different path than their counterparts in Silicon
Valley? Did they have compelling reasons for returning to India other than career

advancement?

 

4 . . .
As a cautionary note the small sample srze does not allow one to make broad conclu31ons.

A metropolis in the south of India. In India, Bangalore is regarded as the hub of Information Technology.
It is often considered to be the counterpart of Silicon Valley in Asia.

174

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Analyzing Figure 5-1, out of 12 retumee entrepreneurs, seven returned to India in
2000 and afterwards. Three of them had relocated to India toward the end of 19903, one
in 1995, and one in 1996. The retumee respondents had spent between four and 22 years
in the United States—as graduate students, salaried professionals, or as technology
entrepreneurs—before returning to India. All but one were under age 50. He had been a
professor at a major U.S. university. The decision to return home permanently or
temporarily was a phenomenon that correlated with the younger generation of
respondents, which afﬁrms Saxenian’s (2002:32) research on Indian and Chinese foreign
born professionals in the Bay Area, where 50 percent of foreign born respondents under
age 35 had expressed a desire to return home in the future. The length of stay of retumee
entrepreneurs who had entered the United States in the 19903 was shorter than those who
had migrated to the United States in the 19803. This could be reﬂective of dissimilarity in
the expectations of these immigrants in the United States. Changes in macro-economic
determinants regarding entrepreneurial and business opportunities in both countries might
have also been reasons.

However, personal relocation decisions for transnational entrepreneurs in the second
half of the 19903 or between 2000 and 2004 in India is not indicative of the span of the
careers of transnational technology entrepreneurs. The year of departure ﬁom the United
States for the retumee entrepreneurs seems to be related to multiple factors in their lives,
with no issue gaining a priority. These factors included personal, social, professional, and
entrepreneurial factors like quality of life and culture, loyalty to family, caring for aging
parents, desire to contribute to India’s economic development, wanting an Indian

education for children, and business opportunities in India in the latter half of the 19903

176

and 200036. Thus, for the retumee Indian respondents, the move to India was as much an
act of self-determination as was their migration to the United States for higher education
or professional advancement. Similar to Gold’s (2002; 2007) research on Israeli
returnees, Saxenian et al.’s (2002) work on Taiwanese tech returnees from Silicon Valley
in Taiwan, and Phillips & Potter’s (2009) research on Bajan- Brit returnees living in
Barbados, the retumee Indian entrepreneurs’ decision to relocate in India emphasized a
new understanding regarding the relationship between emigrant sending/ immigrant
receiving countries in this current moment of capitalism. In doing so, the retumee
entrepreneurs shifted the debate beyond the separate macro push-and-pull factors in
different countries to micro-meso level dynamics as major explanatory factors of what is
actually occurring. This is particularly true for the highly skilled migrants from emerging
economies of the world—and challenges the popular ideology that sees migration as a
permanent move.

Further, the action of returning to India after an average of a decade’s stay in the U.S.
suggests that the social and economic reality of highly skilled immigrants is vastly
different from migrants who have lower levels of human capital, and for whom returning
to home countries would mean reduction of economic opportunities and a drastic
compromise in standard of living (Gold 2002:217). The difference in the perception
regarding return was brought out by Akash Jain when I asked him to share his reasons for

returning to India in spite of having a dream job in a U.S. technology company:

 

6 . . . .
In Chapter - 6, I discuss the socral and personal aspects of retumee transnational entrepreneurs which had
motivated them to return to India.

177

The word migration is strong in my case. I don ’t think I migrated. I traveled to
the U.S. for higher education. I worked for a couple of years so that I could
build my ﬁnancial capital and business network before returning home. I had
always wanted to come back to India to start my business. No question about it

(sic).

The retumee entrepreneurs had a transnational orientation even before their arrival to
the United States. And, given their favorable reception and professional success in the
United States, their transnational endeavors represent a linear extension of their interests,
former activities, and contacts in India (Portes 19992466). This is opposed to the “reactive
ethnicity” that is often an outcome of immigrant groups that are conﬁned to the bottom of
the economic and social ladder. Of the 12 retumee entrepreneurs, 10 stated pre-return
transnational business connections/contacts in India, and had arduously nurtured
interpersonal or strong ties with their undergraduate college friends, classmates, and
college alumni—some of whom were non-migrants in India. In a few situations, family
members—like a brother/brother-in-law/ cousin, father, and even parents in law—served
as business partners. Ravi Gandhi in my interview explained the mutual beneﬁts from
being a board member for a technology company in India started by his college peers
from IIT, a couple of years ahead of his decision to relocate in India.

Returning to India permanently was not a big decision for me. I had got married
to a woman ﬁom Pune, who had mentioned at the time of our wedding she
would want to live in India. I ﬁnished my doctoral studies and got a job almost
immediately, then we had our ﬁrst child I had everything going for me
actually an ocean ﬁ'ont oﬂice as a tenure track faculty in a good university,
two children and a happy marriage. But, my wife felt very strongly about
returning to India. . . I was ambivalent. But, I must say returning to India ﬁtted
well with my plans of starting a tech company of my own, although I was in the
teaching profession. So, when the opportunity came my way to join P... as a
board member, I was delighted and grabbed it. P. . . was a ﬂedging technology
company of my buddies I had known at IIT. Linking up with my college ﬁiends

made the transition to India easy. . . I had leﬁ for the U.S. in I 983, as part of
the herd from IIT. I had mentioned to my parents that I would return to India 4-

I78

5 years. What changed was the number of years got extended, but I had not
totally abandoned the idea of returning to India (sic).

Conversation with the retumee respondents made absolutely clear that existence
of transnational professional networks was crucial for facilitating a return to India, as
noted by Vertovec (2002). While none of the retumee entrepreneurs had registered

their own business in the United States, they often functioned as a business partner or

as a consultant/advisor or source for angel funds7 for technology ﬁrms in India. In
the role of a transnational business contact in the United States prior to departure to
India, the retumee entrepreneurs provided Indian technology companies with critical
contacts, information, and cultural know-how that linked the Indian company to the
U.S. and global economies. These kinds of transnational business connections
expanded the returnees’ social networks and business relationships spanning India
and the United States. Many of the returnees had cultivated enduring informal and
formal ties with start-up Indian tech companies even while working at salaried jobs
in the United States.

Considerable diversity existed in the forms of transnational business tie-ups and new
transnational joint ventures. And, in all cases the business association was with someone
with whom the retumee entrepreneurs shared a strong bonding relationship. The
transnational linkage with their Indian peers brought the retumee entrepreneurs back into
the loop. Kapil Dua said, “I got re-connected to India, which I had got disconnected from
while working in various corporations.” Two of the retumee respondents who had chosen

to become entrepreneurs in 1997—but had waited until 2002 and 2004 before returning

 

7 An angel investor is an afﬂuent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in
exchange for ownership equity.

179

to India—permanently resigned from their respective corporate jobs in the United States
and were co-founders/ partners of their Indian transnational business enterprises (see
ﬁgure 5-2). They worked for their transnational company from the United States,
bringing to their private business newly accrued skills from their corporate careers, a taste
for innovation, and networks that proved to be advantageous, as described to me by one
of them:
My career (i. e. work life) was constantly ﬂourishing; I didn 't feel stagnated at
any time in the U.S. I worked for exciting companies for nine years, did
independent consulting for two years with an Indian technology company, and
then ran my own business for about seven years before relocating to India (sic).
Hence, the retumee entrepreneurs acted as conduits for transnational linkages
between India and the United States prior to their return to India. We see another variant
of such transnational linkage in the cases of two returnees who came back to India in
1995 and 1996 with attractive jobs in Indian and U.S. multinational technology
companies and later launched their own private businesses. For the remaining eight
returnees shown in Fig. 5-2 on the next page to engage in transnational technology
business, it was an expression of a deep yearning. All of them started their enterprises no

more than two years before or after their arrival in India. India appeared to be the best

option in fulﬁlling their business aspirations.

180

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For the younger generation of Indian retumee entrepreneurs, coming back to India
made perfect business sense when considering the economic factors needed for their
entrepreneurship: the availability of cheaper skilled labor, a booming Information
Technology industry, access to ﬁnancial capital, and—above all—a stable, open,
complimentary macro political and economic environment. The combination was just

right for them to compete in the world market.

In my research and the research of others, 2000 stands out as a watershed years. The
entrepreneurial atmosphere in India had changed signiﬁcantly since the state controlled
socialist past prior to the 19803. This new atmosphere enabled the growth of middle and
small scale indigenous entrepreneurship among new and ﬁrst generation Indians who had
no political access or capital, but plenty of verve and ambition to challenge old
monopolies owned by business families (N ilekani 2009:125-26). There was the
perception among the returnees and across Indian industry that they were in a position of
unique strength in the international economy (Wadhwa et al. 2009; Nilekani 2009;
Kamdar 2007; Saxenian 2006; Bardhan & Kroll 2003). This perception was based on the
success of domestic IT ﬁrms—Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)—in the
international market, infra-structural investment in research and development, as well as

outsourcing of software projects by established multinational ﬁrms like Hewlett-Packard,

Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Texas Instruments9 and others because of recession in the

 

8 Saxenian (2006:304) states during the 19903 very few domestic IT start-ups survived in Bangalore
compared to the accelerated success of start-ups in Taiwan and Israel started by returnees from the U.S. in
the 19903 in those countries.

9 As mentioned in Chapter 1, in the 19803 and 19903 a small but signiﬁcant cohort of US educated Indian
engineers (N RIs) played a critical role in convincing the management of their respective U.S. corporations
that India was the location for their software development centers and encouraged the use of Indian ﬁrms as
outsourcing partners. They also initiated an ongoing dialogue with Indian policy makers and laid the

182

Silicon Valley around 200010. For one U.S.-educated retumee entrepreneur, the

preference to be in India was based on (a) high quality work opportunities and (b)

opportunities for more career growth:

This is the third wave for India. The ﬁrst wave was to build software application
for back end ﬁmctions, the second wave was all around BPO services (business
processing outsourcing), and the third wave is what is happening now where
start ups and established players are building their products in India. Today we
have all the leading software industries in the U.S. as our clients be it Google,
Oracle, Yahoo etc. If I had remained in the U.S., I would have missed the bus
(sic).

To better understand the evolution of political institutions since the 19903 and the
consequent macro-level changes in broader economic and social trends in India—
especially in everyday practices at the micro level—I asked the retumee entrepreneurs
with at least ﬁve or six years of Indian entrepreneurial experience to share their
evaluation of the present business climate. Here are three responses to my question:

Q. How has the central and state government policies changed to encourage
export businessll as a result of which your business has beneﬁted?

Respondent I : I would say there’s a cultural shiﬁ that has happened since the
late I 990s. India has encouraged exports across the board. So anyboay who is
exporting is given certain beneﬁts, which a normal Indian company will not be
given, whether it is beneﬁt of tax holidays or importing equipments. Our export
revenue is tax free, as of now. We can apply to the State Industrial Development
Board for land and they will acquire in one of the commercial parks at a slightly
lower rate. This was an attractive proposition for me. So far, we have not
experienced any interference from the state government, although I wish the
government had intervened to improve the infrastructure. It would help us all.

 

foundation for cooperation between Indian government ofﬁcials and successive generation of American
multinationals (Saxenian 20062274-287).

The economic recession in the early 20003 was felt in mostly Western countries, and affected the United
States mostly in 2002 and 2003. This phenomenon is also commonly known as the IT boom of the 19903
followed by IT bust of 2000 when many service jobs were outsourced to India (Pandey et.al. 2006282).

11 . . . . . .
I used “export busrness” to mean “transnational” in my intervrew. More often than not, “transnational”

caused confusion among the interviewees. I gradually navigated our conversation for the respondents to
elaborate on business with the United States.

183

No delays or anything for registration and getting the authorization. The local
state government oﬂicials can be moody but overall proactive (sic).

Respondent 2: Perhaps it is because of the domain I am in. For a very large part
the Government of India has disabled a lot of bad things—like crippling laws,
rules and legislation—that existed earlier. Although it takes way longer to start
a company in India, it is shorter than what it used to be earlier. We still have a
long way to go. The government has cut a lot of disablement for entrepreneurs,
so that a lot of enablement can happen (sic).

Respondent 3: Indian government policies are very encouraging, their
functioning is suﬂiciently supporting. If there is one area they can make an
improvement it is in the department called “registrar of companies ” or
“directorate of company registration it should be made more transparent. No,
I did not have to pay bribe for registration of my company, but when we had to
seek permission for something I did not have to pay the bribe myself but the
consultant had to grease a few palms in the government departments to obtain
permission. That remains a problem in the Indian scenario. What is worse is
when an Indian who has lived in the U.S. or is an American citizen who tries to
get past the bureaucratic permissions is charged an arm and a leg. . . The
“babus ” [Hindi for Indian bureaucrats/oﬁ‘icials] ’2 at the local level is not
exactly ﬁiendly on nitty gritty details to Indians who have returned or lived
abroad for a considerable period of time (sic).

Hence, within the overarching enabling macro economic environment to promote growth
through export-oriented trade policies (see Appendix no. 5), particularly favoring pro-
indigenous businesses in the lnfonnation Technology and electronic industries, problems
remained in the execution of these changes at the state and local level in India.
Resentment towards retumee entrepreneurs by the locals were often cited in the
interviews. Harassment was noted in long and unnecessary wait time for ofﬁcial
permissions or to contend with the culture of paying bribes. Here is Sanjay Mathur’s

experience of starting his transnational entrepreneurship in Bangalore:

 

12 To cite Chinmay Chakravarty (2007) “In British India “babu” was used to mean a native Indian clerk
who was educated enough to help the colonialists in plundering India. They were known for their blind
loyalty and so drew hatred from the nationalists. This was the beginning of a more negative usage for this
term. A typical ‘babu’ sits on the ﬁles, deals with red tape, procrastinates, takes bribes, snobs and snubs,
behaves in a copybook style, and smiles only in beﬁtting company and meticulously follows a dress code.
The term, ironically, deﬁes class division as it is applicable from the clerk upwards to the topmost officer in
the hierarchy.”

184

One is certainly infrastructure, which seems ridiculous, but just to set up oﬂice
space and whatever is required to set up an IT shop still takes several weeks as
opposed to days, I don ’t know why. By the time you get through the process of
registration, down to a telephone line and water supply, it took me two months,
which is ridiculous but that ’3 still the case. So I think for people like me, even
though I grew up here . . . but since I ’ve never done it before, I didn ’t really
know how to get a telephone line in ’99. It was these little things that irritated me

(sic).

Q. Did you have to bribe government officials?

Mathur: That’s one way to do it. I never paid a rupee and I never will. I also
didn ’t have someone else do it. Direct or indirect. I don’t believe in doing that.
In that case what do you do? You live with the cycle. It took me two months to

get a telephone connection but I eventually did it. At some point, you have to
learn how to turn government screws on people and I learned how to do that

(sic).

Resentment towards return migrants as a phenomenon has been cited in the literature
for other nationalities as well (Saxenian 1999; Lucas 2004; Gevorkyan & Grigorian 2003
cited in Lowell & Gerova 2004:14; Louie 2004 cited in Gold & Hart forthcoming). This
was true for the returnees in this study, despite prevailing favorable business climate and
legal rights that had strongly conditioned the desirability of their return to India. I argue
that more considerable improvements in the efﬁcacy at the state and local level of the
national government’s pro-business policies might have attracted many more retumee
entrepreneurs”. While I have elaborated on the main motives of the 12 immigrant
entrepreneurs for returning to India, the explanation does not reasonably answer why

eight immigrant transnational entrepreneurs who had entered the United States after 1980

 

'3 Resistance and resentment by the locals was shown mostly by the people in the government at the local
level, as these officials thought of themselves as losers from the beneﬁts to be reaped from economic
reforms in India. Lucas (2004) claims that more advanced countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Israel, and
Ireland have been successful in attracting higher rates of investment from their diasporas because
government efforts in these nations have been more explicit in embracing their expatriate population,
besides continuing engagement of these governments in promoting return of its diasporic community.

185

chose not to follow their cohort mates. The answer is to be found in the size and resource
content of the networks structures of the retumee entrepreneurs, to which I turn next.
11. Capital and Networks among Retumee and Non-migrant Transnational Indian
Entrepreneurs:

The demographic characteristics, especially age, and the status of being a retumee or
a non-migrant entrepreneur, shows a strong correlation with the domains of technology
and the material goods sectors of transnational entrepreneurship in the Indian context. All
but one of the 11 retumee entrepreneurs from the United States belonged to the younger
generation—i.e. below 50 years—of a total of 15 businesspeople engaged in transnational
entrepreneurship in the technology ﬁeld in India (see Table 5-1). Out of 15, there were
three nonmi grant entrepreneurs, and only three technology entrepreneurs who were above
50 years of age. The remaining 12 (80% of 15) respondents were below 50 years.

Table No. 5-1: Distribution of Transnational Entre reneurs in India by Sector

 

 

 

 

 

Sector Retumees and Non-migrants Non-migrants Total
Technology 15 0 15 (71%)
Sector (Younger (12 returnees from the U.S. and
Generation) 3 non-migrant entrepreneurs.)
Material Goods 0 6 6 (29%)
Sector (Senior
Generation)

15 6 21 (100%)

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Out of the 15 technology entrepreneurs, there were three entrepreneurs above 50 years of age, while the
remaining 12 were below age 50. Out of the six non-migrant entrepreneurs in the material goods sector, four were
above 50 years of age, and only two were below age 50.

Although men (10) overshadowed women as retumee technology entrepreneurs, there
were two women returnees in the group, and one senior non-migrant transnational

businesswoman in the technology domain. For the convenience of analysis, I decided to

186

merge the non-mi grant and retumee technology entrepreneurs and the very few senior
entrepreneurs (3) in the technology sector into a single category, which has been
considered as a younger generation of transnational entrepreneurs in India. Similarly, in
the material sector, nonmigrant senior transnational entrepreneurs (4 out of 6) were
double the younger non-migrant respondents (2) in this category of transnational
business. Hence, businesses dealings with material goods in India have reﬂected the
senior generation of transnational entrepreneurship.

The presence of 24 percent women transnational entrepreneurs (5 out of 21) in India
in both sectors of business enterprises and across both generations was noteworthy,
compared to one immigrant woman transnational in the United States. Although women
comprised only 14 percent of the total number of cases (42), these women nurtured a
unique habitus—a consequence of their middle and upper class background and their
migratory and professional experiences in both countries. A combination of their higher
education, prior executive experience in multinational companies in India and other
countries had empowered them to launch transnational businesses in spheres not
traditionally dominated by Indian women. Four younger women transnational
entrepreneurs in particular mentioned receiving the same educational opportunities,
freedom of spatial mobility, and access to public and private resources as their male
siblings. This was true in the homes of their parents, during their college years both in
India and United States, and in their careers. They enjoyed similar freedom in decisions
regarding their marriages. Following marriage, expectations on them as homemakers and
caregivers to their children and immediate family had undergone a transformation as

well. The two nonmigrant senior transnational women entrepreneurs opted to launch their

187

own ventures as a consequence of economic necessity due to events in their personal
lives. As their businesses grew and ﬂourished, along with simultaneous changes in
India’s’ pro-business economic policies, both these women respondents were
emboldened to take on the risks and uncertainties of expanding their businesses globally.
None of the women said they received any special privileges earmarked for women or
members of minority groups in either country. They perceived themselves solely as
entrepreneurs, although they admitted to awareness of the overarching patriarchal
articulations of entrepreneurial practices and actions.

In this study, the age proﬁle of transnational entrepreneurs in India unexpectedly
mirrored the “demographic dividend”, an argument which was put forward by the

landmark study of Goldman Sachs in Paper no. 99 (2003)—Dreaming with BRIC: The

Path to 2050—popularly known as the BRIC14 report. The authors argue that the young
Indian population and India’s sustained service-led (rather than manufacturing-led)
grth drove grth in Asia and provides India the “triple play” opportunity for further
growth: in the domestic market; in the world economy through migration; and through
the rise of the outsourcing industry (N ilekani 20092125). I reason that the higher number
of younger entrepreneurs in technology driven service industry (15 or 71% of 21) in this
research is part of broader macro demographic trends in India.

In addition, the age distribution of the transnational entrepreneurs, with a distinct
presence of returnee entrepreneurs (57% out of 21) in the technology sector indicates the

disparity of resource content—human, cultural, and social capital—in the two categories

 

‘4 BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The authors of Goldman Sachs Report no. 99 claim that by
2050, BRIC economies could become a much larger force in the world economy. If things go right for
these countries and if these countries are able to maintain policies and develop institutions that are

supportive of growth, then in less than 40 years, the BRIC economies together could be larger than the G6 ,
in U.S. dollar terms (Goldman Sachs: 2003).

188

of transnational entrepreneurship. As in the case of immigrant transnational
entrepreneurship, the retumee Indian businesspeople in the home country make optimum
use of their pre-migratory and migratory human and social capital, which in turn greatly
inﬂuences the conﬁguration of their social and professional transnational networks and
organizational afﬁliations.

I. Younger Transnational Entrepreneurs in India:

My interviews with the 12 retumee respondents revealed the effectiveness of the
normative and relational element (the quality of transnational ties) in various social and
professional networks, and in particular longitudinal development and arrangements of
school alumni and peer networks. This proved unequivocally critical for the transition as
retumee entrepreneurs and for the survival of their personal business in a different locale.
The technology entrepreneurs in India shared the “Bombay House mind set” (refer to
page 47) of entrepreneurship with their counterparts in the United States. Their
immigration to the United States and subsequent return to India was a natural progression
in their conceptualization of a seamless world. Nonetheless, their bold and new way of
imagining migration and return, and future work/ entrepreneurship was guided as much
by their personal life stage issues as it was by the enabling macro business environment
in India and their personal endowment of human and social capital. Most of the retumee
entrepreneurs were married and had families with young children who were in primary
school or kindergarten, while one senior retumee had children in middle and high school.
None had children in college. A few of the returnees were single and had deliberately
postponed family life until they had worked out the location for their entrepreneurship.

Therefore, comparable to senior immigrant transnational entrepreneurs in the United

189

States, for the retumee entrepreneurs it was the convergence of a different set of factors at
a different time: taking care of their personal responsibilities at the stage of life they were
in, along with well established entrepreneurial network support that made it possible for
availing business opportunities in India. Here are two women returnees expressing how
life stage issues intervened with their entrepreneurial decision of returning to India:

Rani Shah: My daughter was young when we decided it was time we moved back

to India. That is why we had not bought any property in the U.S., nor had any

investment. All our money was in stocks. If I had waited until my child went to

middle or high school it would be diﬂicult for her to adjust to Indian schools.

It’s a combination of reasons which prompts you to decide where you want to do

your business, so it wasn ’t just one reason (sic).

Rukmini Mehta: Once you stay longer than necessary it would have been

difficult for us to return to India. Besides, we would not have the same kind of

energy levels to uproot ourselves later. So, when we became serious about

starting something of our own it was best to come back to India (sic).

The human capital among the transnational entrepreneurs in the technology sector in
India was the highest among all the categories of entrepreneurs considered in this
research. Among the 15 technology entrepreneurs in India, there were three returnees
with a doctoral degree, followed by seven who had a Masters degree in engineering,
computer science, or business management (refer to ﬁgure 5-3 overleaf). Five of them

had no graduate degree; three were company transferees to the United States; and two

were non-migrants.

190

Figure No. 5-3: Distribution of U.S. Graduate Education among Technology
Entrepreneurs in India

 

Master Degree in PhD No Graduate
Engineering! Education
Computer Science
or in Business
Management

On closer examination of the human capital among all 12 retumee entrepreneurs, I
found that all six entrepreneurs from IIT who had migrated to the United States for
graduate studies in the 19803 and 19903 had decided to return to India for advancing their
transnational technology business around 2000.

This group of six sharply contrasts with the other ﬁve of the 11 technology
entrepreneurs who migrated to the United States in the 19703. These 11 (52%) of the 21
respondents who migrated for graduate studies (discussed in Chapter 4) were all from
premier institutes in India (IIT being among them). Unlike the more recent technology
entrepreneurial migrants, these earlier ﬁve remained in the United States. Thus, there
appears to be a generational rift between seniors who had obtained undergraduate
education from IIT(s) and other national premier institutions and the relatively younger

generation of technology entrepreneurs who had all attended IIT(s). No discemable

191

pattern of return migration was clear among Indian entrepreneurs from professional 4
year state institutions (e. g., engineering, pharmacology, biotechnology).

This decision to return by the six who were alumni of IIT(s) affected the human
capital of technology entrepreneurs as a group in India, as well as the potential for their
transnational business opportunities, by employing a variety of networks. Figure 5-4
illustrates the human capital of all 15 of the transnational technology entrepreneurs—
returnee and non-migrant—in India. The highest proportion of entrepreneurs hailed from
IIT (47%), followed by engineers from 4 year professional state institutions (33%). The
rest came from 3 year undergraduate colleges (20%).

Figure No. 5 -4 : Distribution of undergraduate educational institutions attended
by Retumees & Nonmigrant Technology Transnational Entrepreneurs in India

 

Undergraduate Degree
College

Professional 4 year ,
State Institution

 

 

 

Indian Institute of
Technology

 

 

 

Furthermore, when considering the graduate education received by 21 immigrant
transnational entrepreneurs, there is not much variation in the type of degrees obtained,
areas of specialization, or the graduate schools they attended in the United States.

Consequently, the immigrant and the retumee Indian entrepreneurs of the 19803 and

192

19905 were privy to similar social and cultural resources embedded in U.S. graduate
school networks, as well as those from ethnicized professional organizations like TiE.
Therefore, one of the convincing differences between the migrant transnational
entrepreneurs of the 19803 and 1990s who decided to return to India—and others who
have chosen to continue operating their transnational business from the United States—is
the different types of undergraduate colleges/institutions they had attended in India. This
led to a disparity in access to their individual college peer networks.

College/institutional alumni migration networks, particularly for those from IIT, not
only played a signiﬁcant role in the initial move to the United States but were essential
for creating the enabling environment and opportunities for return migration. The
presence of six (5 0% of 12) retumee entrepreneurs who had obtained their undergraduate
degree from IITs stands out. ITT’s is the only college peer and alumni network from
India to have evolved as an effective return migration network. From a socio-historical
perspective, the relatively recent relocation of IIT retumee entrepreneurs also highlights
the longitudinal expansion and weight of the actions of senior immigrant entrepreneurs
from IIT in the late 1980s and 19905. They laid the foundations for IIT networks, which
enabled the return of younger entrepreneurs from the same institution. The motivating
force and the exclusivity of [IT networks can be gauged from the fact that IIT alumni
associations in the United States make multi dollar contributions to their alma maters
rather than to enhancing education at large in India (High Level Committee on Indian
Diaspora 2001 cited in Lowell & Gerova 2004:25; Saxenian 20062309).

Additionally, Saxenian (2008: 383) states is that the salience of these big diasporic

network donations to the economic development of the alma maters does not necessarily

193

lie in building assets for these educational institutions, but also in the role of alumni
networks in designing new ways of functioning. Also, these network donations develop
new contexts and expand the peer networks of highly skilled people. Thus, returnees
belonging to these premier engineering schools or to other 4 year professional state
institutions were not simply moving in a vacuum between supply and demand situations
in India and the United States. They are actors whose movements and entrepreneurial
activities result from collective actions of many others who share a common cultural
capital that can be historically and physically contextualized (Meyer 2001 :96).

The remaining retumee entrepreneurs (6) who did not have the direct support and
resources of IIT network had adequately compensated for these limitations by leveraging

social capital from their participation and company membership in Indian soﬁware and

service organizations, like NASSCOM”, TiE chapters in Indian cities, and Young
Entrepreneurs Organization. Their family business connections, and college and high
school peer networks had also contributed in building their social networks. The main
difference among the 15 transnational technology entrepreneurs in India was that the
seven who attended IITs appeared to have attained a critical mass in this category of
entrepreneurs, while the remaining 8 of them, who were former students of other

undergraduate state institutions, seemed to lack this group support.

 

15 National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). NASSCOM is the premier
trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India. NASSCOM aims to drive the
overall growth of the global off-shoring market and maintain India’s leadership position, by taking up the
role of a strategic advisor to the industry. NASSCOM’s varied strengths include advocacy on public policy,
international trade development, research and market intelligence services, and access to an international
network through 20 MoUs (Memoranda of Understanding) and linkages with 40 industry associations
across the globe. This enables NASSCOM to advise members—both established and emerging
companies—to further their growth. Source: NASSCOM.

194

Why did you want to become a transnational entrepreneur? I asked the question to
explore any disparity in their personal experiences when compared with their
counterparts—younger transnational entrepreneurs—in the United States. From my
conversations with this group of technology entrepreneurs, it became clear that India had
hit a different stride after the economic reforms in the late 1980s and 19905. There was
no turning back to the socialist past. Although India had entered the global market under
duress and hesitantly in 1991 (see foot note 14 & 15 of Chapter 1), some of the biggest
gainers of the economic reform policy were the technology entrepreneurs. They wasted
no time in taking advantage of the favorable pro-business macro environment. So
pervasive was the enthusiasm for entrepreneurship in the software sector that a few of the
technology entrepreneurs had their ﬁrst taste of private enterprise as undergraduate
students at their respective engineering colleges/institutions. Here are recollections from
two technology interviewees in India:

Ved Iyer: It was during my college years, I knew that I wanted do something of

my own. Though, I had a government scholarship, I used to sell graph sheets,

engineering drawings to my classmates. In those days graph sheets were

diﬁ‘icult to come by. Very small stujf but it used to make me happy. I liked the

thrill of it. I knew for certain I would give up my job sometime to become an

entrepreneur. Besides, I grew up around a lot or people who were thinking of

business of some sort at that time. Entrepreneurship can be infectious. . . (sic).

Goutam Kohli: Even while I was in IIT, I had picked up a few clients ﬁ'om Japan

and had started a company and was working ﬁom there. That was during my 3'd

and 4’” year of study at IIT. One of the clients motivated me to get more projects

to sustain my expenses. It was a stimulating feeling and I liked the free

environment. Although I got ajob with T ata, which was bit of a social pressure

ﬁom family, I never abandoned the idea of running my own business. . . (sic).
Therefore, for the technology entrepreneurs (returnees and non-migrants) classroom

education in colleges and universities in India and the United States, as well as

acquisition of skill sets was entirely directed towards becoming a successful entrepreneur

195

in the global technology domain and in particular to ride the tide of unfolding
opportunities in India.

Complementing their counterparts in the United States, for the retumee entrepreneurs
too migration was a strategic decision to stay in a dynamic and stimulating environment
and to create further contacts and opportunities internationally. When asked how
American education and work experience might have enhanced his aptitude for
transnational entrepreneurship, Akash Jain responded:

The key diﬁizrence that the U.S. does for you is that it exposes you to a
completely dijferent culture. It makes you understand that you pay for
everything and you develop that outlook only aﬁer going to school in the U.S. I
discovered that everything is understood and perceived in commercial terms.
Adopting that perspective has helped me in my business. . . a sense of
accountability for your actions. Besides, after having spent a large amount of
time working in India and the U.S., I can say although we are people ﬁom
drﬁ'erent parts of the world and have lots of things in common, we also have our
unique traits that cause us to react to diﬁerent situations and issues in diﬁerent
ways. . . For example, when I ﬁrst started my job at a U.S. corporation 1 was
very hesitant to speak out in public, particularly amidst people whom I did not
know. But, I looked around and found Americans, including second generations
Indians were comfortable to do so. So, you pick up a lot of things that hopefully
would make you a better person. I gained self confidence to talk about
unpleasant things in public. I used to ﬁnd it very diﬁ'icult to say “No ” or convey
bad news. One other thing that I did learn from my U.S. work experience is
planning my work and home schedule, which has served me well over the years

(sic).
All the returnees and non migrant technology entrepreneurs who had lived in the United
States for short of long periods of time—when on business visa—felt that they were
driven to uncommon performance levels as transnational entrepreneurs because they
perceived travel and the migration process as a vital learning experience. The personal
involvement that migration required and the necessity to overcome adverse conditions in

a competitive environment was a common trait that retumee technology entrepreneurs

196

shared with Meyer’s (2001:100) results of research on highly skilled Colombian and
South Aﬁican migrants to numerous host countries.

3. Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Younger T ransnationals:

For maintaining congruity of ideas between technology transnational entrepreneurs in the
United States and those who lived in India, I asked the respondents in India the same
question: How did you get transnational customers for your business? I believed the
responses to this question would disclose how cultural and human capital of technology
entrepreneurs in India could have played an important role in deﬁning sub group
boundaries and the contexts within which different networks operated, and how
business—strong and weak—ties were formed.

I found that entrepreneurs who were alumni of IIT(s) in India had a deﬁnite

advantage over the other entrepreneurs”, because of their membership of a cohesive
subgroup/organization (IIT alumni organization/Pan IIT), which could be deﬁned as a

critical meso-level engagement that signiﬁcantly deﬁned their transnational business

actions”. However, the participation of the [IT alumni entrepreneurs was not restricted
solely to their Pan IIT alumni subgroup; they concurrently nurtured social relationships in
other national, regional, and local level Indian organizations like NASSCOM, CII
(Confederation of Indian Industries), the local TiE chapter, etc., as well as sought out
other business platforms like trade conferences and intemet portals like Linkedln. Two of
the seven IIT technology entrepreneurs also found ﬁnancial assistance and expert

business advice from their immediate and extended family members. To cite the case of

 

16 Henceforth referred as non-IITians.

17 Frank & Yasumoto’s (1998) research on French ﬁnancial elite also illustrate the critical meso-level
engagements which deﬁned their respondents’ actions.

197

Rukmini Mehta, who with her husband and a cousin operated a transnational business in

the life science domain, forming a complementary entrepreneurial team. Here, in the
words of Ms. Mehta:

Q. Tell me about the creation of your transnational enterprise. How did it all
happen?

Ms. Mehta: Basically, me and my husband toyed with a lot of ideas, starting
ﬁ‘om IT outsourcing to many other things, and then we met with our partner X,
who was trying to put all her consulting practice into one. Now, X is a cousin of
my husband and has been in the Biotech ﬁeld for 20 years. See, you can have
many brilliant ideas, but at the end of the day it might be a simple idea which
when executed successfully is what makes one an entrepreneur. That is what it
all boiled down to. . . X a had the biotech background, my husband had the
ﬁnance background and I have the more IT kind of background, besides being a
people person, process person and having knowledge of MIS. Now, with this
kind of talent pool, we thought out how to make ‘end to end contract research’
successful. We were not interested to do part of the work like only delivering IT
solution or something else. We wanted to put all the things together in a
research form. See, X had the domain knowledge . . . And if we were serious
about this entrepreneurship, we needed to give up our jobs and return to India.
That is how this company was started.

The decision about me being the CEO of our company had to do with our

individual personality. I think it was a collective decision that I was best suited

to deal with a variety of people in India and abroad. My husband ’s family is

also a business family. 0. . . is one of the companies of our extended family,

which we have started. It is true, if I did not have ongoing help and support of

my in-laws, [who were ﬁnanciers of the transnational business in the initial

phase] and our extended family, it would be very diﬂicult for me to run the

business (sic).
In my research I found business partnerships among technology entrepreneurs in India to
be a common practice as opposed to transnational entrepreneurship in the United States.
Very few of them were single owners of their enterprises. Partnerships were formed out
of trust-based strong bonds of friendships, spouses, or family members. Among

technology entrepreneurs from IITs, six out of seven transnational business partnerships

were formed with ﬁiends who had previously been classmates or seniors during their

198

years of study at IIT(s). Thus, much like the relationship of the French prestigious
institution Ecole National D’Administration (ENA) to French ﬁnancial elites (Frank and
Yasumoto 1998:649), I argue that the premier Indian institutes like the IIT(s) not only
provides students with an excellent engineering education and recommendations and
contacts for migration, but also cultivated the social structure for students to nurture their
common cultural capital. This sense of exceptionalism among the entrepreneurs from IIT
might have transformed lasting friendships formed during undergraduate years into
business partnership. This sense of continuity of experiences among the technology
entrepreneurs in India, from their young student days then to their later careers as
businessmen, primarily among the graduates from IIT, was a departure from the
transnational business experience among other immigrant entrepreneurs in the United
States. Ravi Gandhi explained the transnational business partnership with his friend:

My business partner, Y and I are high school classmates and buddies. We used

to sit on the same bench from class 8'” — 11’”. Then I went to IIT, Mumbai and he

went to IIT, Kharagur. We left for the U.S. together. We have been in constant

touch with each other during my stay in the U.S. and later aﬂer my return to

India. We grew up professionally together, although we started working

together only when we started this enterprise. My friend and business partner

lives and works ﬁom Chicago. Q... Pvt. Ltd. is India based private limited

company and registered in Pune and it has 100% subsidiary in the U.S. (sic).

Further, the trust-based entrepreneurial teams of strong ties facilitated by the IIT

alumni network’s social structure, which can be regarded as a sub-group with well

deﬁned boundaries, provided the social context for graduates to experiment with new

business models, including cross-regional start-ups18 between India and the United

States. This was feasible because of the very high trust quotient in the cohesive subgroup

 

18 Saxenian (2006: 313) deﬁnes a cross regional technology start up as those technology ﬁrms which
combine the Silicon Valley—in this research the United States—ecosystem with India’s low-cost
technological capabilities. It is unique because it serves the fast growing technology market in India and
Asia and those in the United States and Europe.

199

of ex-students from IITs, but which allowed for the growth of important business ties to
develop, as well. Adhering to the line of reasoning put forward by Frank and Yasumoto
(1998), the enforceable trust (Portes & Sensenbrenner 1993) that prevailed among dyad
or triad business partners who were good friends resulted in the requisite social capital for
transnational business actions. It was an outcome of the social context created by the IIT
alumni network. To quote one co-founder of such team entrepreneurship in India:
The networking that happens in Pan IIT meetings is helpful. These are actually
old friends (old boys network) who look out for you all the time. We give each
other information—you see, we had studied, played hanged out, saw movies,
sometimes even courted the same girl by turn—about industry trends, and
enormous trust that exists right oﬂ the bat. This trust factor is tremendous.
Somebody from the network gives you an introduction, you don ’t go about doing
checks and when people give references they are also very clear. If someone has
violated this trust it goes around equally quickly in the network The best kind of
trust is established while you are going to school. And you retain the connection
and continue behaving with people the way you did with them in school with no
vested interest. You interact with such peers and friends because either you need
something ﬁom them and you are upﬁont about it or help someone without any
expectations. So that continues to operate . . . among IITians, that is why the
whole transnational business among us is booming (sic).
Hence, besides illustrating the relationship between social context and the supportive
business actions, the above quote points to the general norms that had to be present to
generate social capital for the members of this subgroup of technology entrepreneurs.
Very often the social capital present in these trust based strong ties of friendships in
the Pan IIT networks or this cohesive subgroup provided the leads or information about
potential transnational customers, thus functioning as bridging ties to multiple diverse
external professional, trade, and personal networks like TiE, NASSCOM, U.S. graduate
school networks, previous professional, and work colleagues in the United States. In

other words, Pan IIT networks can be thought of as exclusive internal networks of the

peers and alumni of this premier engineering institution. Thus IIT technology

200

entrepreneurs had access to information within the network of this powerful subgroup as
well as external networks that are commonly used by any of the technology entrepreneurs
in India and the United States. Moreover, team members of such entrepreneurial
partnerships could acquire more resources, information, and knowledge from other team
members and increase the volume of interactions many fold because they could work
together more effectively and efﬁciently when they knew each other so well (Chen &
Wang 2008). When I interviewed Amar Kelkar and Kapil Dua, co-founders of two
different transnational entrepreneurships in Pune, and asked about the process of
procuring business clients, and in what way did the team entrepreneurship give them a
competitive edge in a complex environment, they patiently walked me through the ﬁrst

few business deals:

Kapil”: We took a whole lot of help ﬁom IIT alumni association in India to
establish and get ahead in our business. Let me tell you about the ﬁrst few deals.
In all the deals either the buyer or the seller had something to do with IIT. For
instance, we sold a Bangalore based company in France. The French company
who bought the Bangalore company was 1/3'd owned by private equity fund in
California. And one of my classmates had set up this fund. We could locate the
buyer because my classmate part owned the French company who was looking
for a subsidy in B ’lore. The next deal we did was at the Pan IIT conference at
Washington D. C. Such a meeting happens every year. Now I met this guy from
IIT, Delhi and few years later I sold him a company. I am sure it happened
because of IIT network Look first you cultivate a relationship and then the deal
happens. The third guy was a Boston guy, who was the neighbor of a graduate
buddy of mine. I and my friend overlapped about four years in graduate school.
My ﬁiend introduced me to this customer (sic).

Amar: In addition to [IT network, my U.S. graduate school network at V. . . and
later working for A . . . in the U.S. is extremely helpful to do this sort of
business. All my customers have come from my involvement in various networks,
except for one which went through RF P [request for proposal] process. Let me
think. . . our ﬁrst customer was a company called D. . ., which was founded by
X, who was my co-founder ’s colleague at S. . . Besides, he was also my co-

 

l9 . . . .
The respondent rs the co-founder of a full servrce investment bank focused on cross-border transactions
Source: From the respondent’s company website.

201

founder’s buddy and a contemporary graduate student at P . . . Then, our third

customer F networks was founded by L, who was with me at IIT, Mumbai for

ﬁve years. So, between the both of us, we manage to cover a many more

networks . . . Look just being a member of networks does not deliver goods in

tangibles, but you make the ﬁrst contacts in these networks, who then introduce

you to someone else and it just snowballs like that and it certainly helps. We

have got a few potential customers that way whom we both have met at these

Pan IIT meetings. But, more than that these networks are venues for branding

exercise, people get to know about the company and we get to target the right

kind of people as potential customers (sic).
Consequently the strong tie team entrepreneurship became beneﬁcial because
information about market opportunities and knowledge about latest innovations were
likely to be passed on by intermediary individuals (weak ties) which would eventually
reach the core team. The internal networks also created more value to their technology
business because of inner core team members’ access to more knowledge from
interactions with each other, where oﬁen the two co-founders had blended their IT skills
with their competency in Information Technology enabled services (ITES) like ﬁnance,
construction, or medical technology. The team entrepreneurs in the technology domain
adhered to the similar practice of economics of synergy that had been adopted by the
senior technology entrepreneurs in the United States. So, there was evidence of
intergenerational transfer of business practices among technology entrepreneurs, although
in different locales.

The collective entrepreneurship of talent, energy, and skill integrated into a team of
two or three co-founders was also true of technology entrepreneurs who were not alumni
of IIT(s), except in three instances where the ownership of the transnational business was

the respondent himself/ herself. Notably, among ﬁve non-IIT technology team

entrepreneurs the co-founders were family members who shared a strong emotional bond

202

with the interviewee: brother/sister or spouse or father. As described by one such
entrepreneur:
My sister and I have a good business relationship. We are kind of a unique
company, as we started our company in India and the U.S. at the same time.
Stanford University did a case study on us and called it a start-up globalization
strategy. We believed in global delivery model in which much would be done in

India but the face of the company was in the U.S. One of the advantages was
that we both [the sister and the respondent] had similar vision and believed in it

(sic).

Inclusion of family members in the transnational entrepreneurs’ team highlights
complexity of the origin of social capital. In the example above, social capital is not
created intentionally, as might have been the case with the technology entrepreneurs from
IIT(s). It was not an outcome of consequences of having made planned investment as
asserted by Nan Lin (2001 :6 cited in Gold 2002:89) that is, “investment in social
relations with expected returns”. Family members’ involvement as partners or co-
founders had more to do with the easy availability and maximizing of the right kind of
resources within their family, and because of their family’s middle/ upper class position
in Indian society, which unintentionally had brought rewards—e. g. connections to
powerful bureaucratic elites—to their functioning as transnational businesspeople in
India.

Therefore the channeling of transnational business information, knowledge, and
contacts often happened because of the presence of the inﬂuential Pan IIT subgroup,
where economic gains are affected by the cultural and institutional context in which the
business ties of IIT entrepreneurs were strongly embedded (Uzzi 1996). However the
non-IIT technology entrepreneurs did not state feelings of exclusion or a limitation of

business options as individuals who were outside the [IT subgroup and therefore deprived

203

of equivalent social capital. The experience of these highly skilled technology
entrepreneurs contrasts with the ﬁndings of other researchers (Gold 2005:269; Sanders
2002; Portes and Sensenbrenner 1993) where distribution of network-based social capital
because of closure or network boundaries (Coleman 1988: 105-08; Ibarra 1992) has led to
inequality in accessing different amounts of communal resources, although they had
similar levels of human capital (Meyers 2001; Gold 2001; Frank & Yasumoto 1998). I
found that the uneven distribution of social capital that existed within the college peer
and alumni networks of IIT(s) and among other undergraduate state intuitions was
remarkably apparent in speciﬁc situations, mainly when the [IT alumni network has
served as a bridgehead for college peers in both migrating to the United States as well as
in facilitating their return to India. In that sense the inequalities in social capital within
networks of various undergraduate colleges/ institutions in India remain uneven as
enablers for circulatory migration of technology entrepreneurs.

The technology entrepreneurs without the membership of Pan IIT subgroup relied far
more heavily on more inclusive organizational networks like NASSCOM, the local
chapters of TiE networks, trade fairs, conference venues, company presentations, family
business connections, customer referrals, work colleagues and graduate school alumni
associations in the United States, the internet, and personal professional reputation for
acquiring transnational customers. The organization NASSCOM acted as the springboard
for transnational activities and a business platform where strong and weak ties were
nurtured, adhering to personal interests and aptitudes. Here is a narration from an
interviewee in the technology domain, who had decided to make a living from writing

books. Nonetheless, he became a technology entrepreneur as business opportunities

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became available from several transnational networks he was plugged into, which also
offset the advantages of membership in the powerful IIT alumni network.

Q. How did you obtain your ﬁrst client in the U.S. after having made the
decision to relocate in India and take a break from the rat race in a corporate
career?

Mathur: Hmmm . . . It was from my own personal connection in the U.S. In the
early 90’s, I had started writing technology books and one of my publishers was
McGraw Hill in the U.S. I had direct access to the publishing community
because I was published myself So when I came up with a product idea which
was a virtual computer lab to allow people to learn computer programming in a
web browser, I gave the idea to the publishers who had books on programming
and I said rather than read a book on programming, what if they can practice
what the book talks about? So I literally emailed my publisher and said look I
have this prototype would you be interested in looking at this as a solution? So
that ’s what sucked me back into working, at that point. Another thing that
happened was when this investor called me out of the blue, actually Bank of
America. They called me and said we ’re trying to put together a fund to focus on
companies in the product space and they had my background. In ’99 there
weren ’t many people with similar backgrounds as mine.

Q: How do you normally get clients for your business?

Mathur: We have 2 business models. One is we license our technology platform
to publishing companies in the U.S., so that started from publishers I knew
directly and once I got into 2-3 big publishers, they put you into a platform for
the rest of the companies. So it ’s a platform licensing revenue model. In India,
we sell directly to corporate customers, mostly companies in the IT sector.
There’s 2 ways, either direct contact with a c-level executive or word of mouth.
I ’ll clarify both. Most of the c-level executives in India are probably my peers,
so you either run into them at a trade show or seminar or you have heard them
talk, or they ’ve heard you talk or they ’ve read my books. So it’s easy to create
individual branding in the IT industry. In India, there are probably 200-3 00
individuals who have some level of branding because of this network The
second thing is that there’s probably 50 IT companies to talk about in India and
once you acquire the ﬁrst 2 or 3 of them, others go in and see what they ’re
doing for their training. So they ﬁnd out that you ’re cutting cost by using E-
learning for 5 0% of training, therefore the logical path to follow is what they do
diﬁerently and we get a solution for them and we get referred. Besides, my
company is well known at NASSC OM (sic).

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From the information shared by this transnational entrepreneur and others like him, it
is clear that it was their middle/upper class position, occupation status, human and
cultural capital, and social and professional relationships in the United States and India
that were absolutely crucial for the relative ease of functioning as transnational
entrepreneurs in India. All these attributes helped in overcoming the constraints of
accessing valuable resources (business information and contacts) in collectives like Pan
IIT networks. The role of being a member of a privileged class, caste, and having the
requisite human and cultural capital for engaging in skilled economic transnationalism is
borne out by Gold’s (2001) ethnographic research on highly skilled Israeli émigrés and
returnees. These ﬁndings add to the disagreement about whether or not high or low
skilled emigrants are likely to be involved in business ventures in their home countries
(Gaurnizo 2003). Put differently, is it the lack of human capital or the possession of it
along with social capital that encourages transnational business activities?

While it is likely that educated immigrants from rich host countries are more inclined
to relocate with well-paying jobs in their home country (Gold 2001: 65), and are prone to
make philanthropic contributions to their hometown or university, there is now
substantial amount of evidence that high skilled immigrants, similar to unskilled or semi-
skilled migrant entrepreneurs perceive transnational entrepreneurship as an attractive
source of income and an opportunity for career growth (Saxenian 2002). What really
matters is the resource content and nature of ties within the social networks to which
transnational entrepreneurs have access along with investment policies and market

Opportunities in the host and home country. Country-speciﬁc factors account for the

206

differences in the scope, density, and level of economic transnational activities (Lowell &
Gerova 2004; Gold 2001).

In sum, the technology entrepreneurs in India, who were mostly below 50 years of
age functioned as interest maximizers to remain competitive in a tough global
environment. They used strong and weak ties simultaneously and sometimes selectively
to obtain transnational business. What was noteworthy with this group of technology
entrepreneurs was their sustained group solidarity over many years, like afﬁliation to an
undergraduate college network that is Pan IIT. This solidarity provided access to business
information and recommendations, counsel, and contacts with transnational customers.
While using trust-based strong ties of friendship, as in being a co-founder in a dyad/ triad
entrepreneurial team, and/or having the status of alumni of IIT(s), they also diversiﬁed to
avoid the “blinding aspects” of strong ties, and enlarged their networks for fresh
information by exploiting the structural holes in their subgroup. For example a classmate
or college peer gave them access to occupation-based weak ties with others not in their
subgroup. The presence of intermediary or mediating organizations like the Pan IIT or
more inclusive organizations like NASSCOM—similar to TiE among their counterparts
in the United States—acted as most important hubs at the meso-level for transnational
entrepreneurs to access common intellectual capital20 created from social capital

employing strong, weak, and ambiguous ties in different combinations. For that reason,

no common framework emerged as to how technology entrepreneurs chose to activate

 

20 Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998: 245) argue that social relationships and the social capital therein are
important inﬂuences in developing intellectual capital. The authors refer to intellectual capital as “the
knowledge and knowing capability of a social collectivity, such as organization, intellectual community or
professional practice . . . Intellectual capital thus represents a valuable resource and a capability for action
based in knowledge and knowing.”

207

one set of ties over the other or how these entrepreneurs balanced the demands of ties
within the subgroup with those outside the subgroup. But belonging to different
collectives beyond their sub group was critical to advance their transnational business.
4. Senior Transnational Nonmigrant Entrepreneurs in India:

My conversations were with the six senior nonmigrant transnational entrepreneurs—
four older than 50 and two who were not yet 50 years old dealing with material goods
such as hand crafted textiles, craﬁworks, metalwares, processed food products, and
specialty and organic teas. For this group of nonmigrant businesspeople very dissimilar
trajectories were followed in transforming mostly personal existing businesses into
transnational entrepreneurship soon after the ﬁrst phase of economic reforms was
implemented in 1985. Out of six entrepreneurs, three of them had inherited and now led
family companies, whereas the other three interviewees were ﬁrst time entrepreneurs.
The latter had completed at least 10 years of professional life as corporate executives in
multinational corporations in India. All of them had traveled to the United States and to
other countries in Europe, Asia, South and Central America, and Aﬁica for their business
and continue to travel extensively.

Unlike the transnational entrepreneurial groups discussed so far, the entrepreneurs of
this group had not migrated to the United States, some of them by design. None had
studied in a foreign country. All the respondents in this category had attended English
medium private schools, while two of them had spent their school years in an elite
residential school. Relative to other transnational entrepreneurial groups in the study, the

non-resident transnational businesspeople had lower levels of human capital. While all

208

had an undergraduate degree from 3 year colleges in India, none had post graduate
education except for one woman entrepreneur.

To compare and contrast with the experiences of migrant groups of transnational
entrepreneurs it was important to learn how the indigenous factors might have facilitated
transnational entrepreneurship among nonmigrant respondents. For example, how did this
group of transnational entrepreneurs compensate for the lower levels of formal education
as compared to other transnational entrepreneurs in the study? How has the success of
India’s IT sector and the growth of software exports impacted the business climate for
entrepreneurs in nonservice sectors? How did these nonmigrant entrepreneurs form
transnational ties without migrant experience?

It was apparent in my interviews with nonmigrant entrepreneurs that the practice of
transnational business had to be understood using a much wider lens. It had to be situated
in the context of India’s colonial past, along with the current nature of global capitalism,
where nonmigrant Indian entrepreneurs equally desired to participate as actors in an
emerging economy. From nonimmigrant interviewees’ perspectives, economic
transnationalism was not limited to the scale of the individual where “occupations and
activities that require regular and sustained social contacts across borders for their
implementation” (Portes et al. 1999: 219), which distinguished it from other dimensions
of globalization, but involved incorporating global structures of inequality, dependence,
and power. Thus, the nonimmigrant transnational entrepreneurs called attention to their
lived experiences in India before and after the implementation of economic reforms since
the mid 19805, and incorporated the dimension of structural power relations in their

understanding of transnational business practices. So, when I asked what had inspired

209

Gauri Rao to leave her lucrative job at Taj Group of Hotels to become an entrepreneur in

craftswork, she stated:
I had got fed up with my job and so I had joined an organization that dealt with
high fashion and craﬁ-based women’s clothing who exported their creations. I
was managing their retail stores in Mumbai which exposed me to the whole
industry of hand made textiles and crafts. That’s where I got my idea of working
together with the craft people to showcase their products in the global market to
get the best deal for them. It was also my concerns with livelihood issues of
rural communities in India. My enterprise focuses on the use of capital that is
already there with the crafts-people in terms of skill, competencies and not
moving them out of their natural environment into captive units in the cities or
in sweat shops. That meant getting connected with organizations world wide.
Thankfully, I ran into networks which created marketing organizations/
platforms for initiative such as mine. During the 90s this evolved into a new way
of doing business with the setting up of International Association for Fair Trade
(IAFT') a whole network for marketing crafts and textiles around the world (sic).
All the 6 nonimmigrant respondents made prudent use of their upper middle/rich class
capital, which had provided them with a western-oriented embodied cultural capital.
Bourdieu (1986) deﬁned this as “their long lasting dispositions of the mind and body.”
For example, their knowledge of western cultural tastes was important for marketing their
products—like handicrafts or organic tea—to mainstream Americans. Their accent and
proﬁciency in English and in western cultural practices compensated for their lower
levels of human capital (i.e. university certiﬁcation of technical education). Their
strategic use of social skills and cosmopolitan interpersonal competencies helped them to
give meaning and add economic value to their merchandise in overseas markets, mostly
within particular social and spatial contexts in keeping with Bourdieu’s concept of
habitus. For instance, Radha Agarwal sold her handcrafted textiles and clothing only in
very upper end markets in the United States—designer shops, museum stores, and trade

conferences. Kunal Singh markets his organic Darjeeling green tea by co-branding under

the Stash Tea banner. It was clear that the various types of capital possessed by these

210

entrepreneurs were evaluated similarly in the transnational habitus. This was true even
though the capital originated in different nations with dissimilar political economies
(Kelly & Lusis 2006). Mohit De, founder of a food solutions company that caters to the
global processed foods market, grew up in upper middle class milieu in urban India
during the 1960s and 19705. This gave him the necessary social skills and sensibilities of
western and Indian cultures simultaneously, allowing him to straddle both worlds with
ease and particularly in business matters:

I can say to have been raised in a cosmopolitan, open, liberal and pluralistic
and diverse atmosphere from my childhood. In that sense the defense services of
India [the respondent father’s career] is a wonderful example where you rise
above religion, race, color, ethnicity, or whatever. . . so we grew up as Indian
kids. From my mother I got the richness of Bengali culture and the army
environment provided the British colonial exposure with whisky soda at home,
the food to be eaten with fork and knife at the dinner table, etc. Added to that
mix, I had a very English education in a missionary school and was taught by
Irish teachers in my formative years. In some sense without being formally
planned as India moved into globalizing world, I and many others like me are
able to use these latent skills of being able to relate on the one side with insular
rural communities in India, who did not have the same opportunities as I did,
let’s say a villager in Bengal or Maharashtra, while on the other side with a
westerners let’s say an importer in New Jersey, or a customer in Hamburg. I
can drink beer and talk baseball with one and with equal ease sit on the ground

and have “bhat ”21 with the other, which in some sense I think India of that
period created in terms of social skills in us of my class background. So we had
the backbone of our ethnic origins at home but in public life we were Indians. It
is my personal background that has evolved me as a globe trotting
businessman—‘transnational” as you deﬁne—that I am today. At a very
subconscious level, I have an understanding as an Indian and as a non-Indian
and am able to work with both eﬂ'ectively (sic).

The favorable economic policies and easy availability of bank credit for export-
oriented entrepreneurship since the 19903 acted as an incentive for the nonmigrant

respondents. Either they took their domestic business to the next level and participated in

 

2' Rice in Bengali

211

global markets, or they were motivated to resign from their present salaried positions to
start their own enterprise. Even though India’s rise as an economic power has been
credited with the success of entrepreneurs in the IT industry and the role of Indian
expatriates in the United States, the six nonresident entrepreneurs dealing in tangible
goods felt enthused to participate in the country’s dynamic business atmosphere. This
was the ﬁrst time the Indian banks had shifted their orientation from big industrial houses
and were open to work as allies to ﬁrst time and smaller businesspeople. Additionally,
India’s sustained economic growth and expansion in international services and
manufacturing transformed attitudes towards market openness across Indian industries
(N ilekeni 2009:135). Summarizing the “feel good” factor that accompanied the
expansion of business opportunities, Kunal Singh recounted how credit facilities had
changed the scale of operations of his tea business and enabled him to create jobs in a
stratiﬁed Indian community with restrictive of social structures:
The line of credit and the credit facilities has improved tremendously. Before the
economic reforms it was diﬁ'icult to get credit. So, that ’s a major change. You
almost feel competitively at par with any other country in the world. Look I
could not have dreamt of having a factory to pack tea for the U.S. market
earlier. We are doing it now. Quite honestly, I don ’t feel deprived in any way
because the IT sector has received special favors from the government. Or,
Government of India is promoting IT exports as opposed to land based products/
produce. The Central and the state government have been very favorable to
exports of all kinds, particularly in the last ﬁve years. I consider that to be a
dramatic change in India’s policies. The government mind set has changed.
Earlier if you wanted to become big and successful in your domain, you had to
belong to one of the well established business families. Today it is solely by
ability and the harbingers of this change have been the leaders of the IT sector.
But, people like us have a bigger advantage because we never built our business
by taking government support. We built it by our own virtue (sic).

Consequently, my conversation with nonmigrant transnational respondents revealed that

their transnational entrepreneurship and push towards more economic reforms in India is

212

a story of opportunity. They asked for more market openness to continue to act as change
agents and bring about social justice.
5. Type of Networks used for Transnational Business by Senior Transnationals:

The entrepreneurs trading in material goods were much like their counterparts in the
technology sector. They used a mix of strong and weak ties to obtain transnational
business assignments and contracts from their customers residing in the United States.
However, there exists variation between ﬁrst-time entrepreneurs and those who had
upgraded their family-owned business. As before, I asked this group of nonmigrant
respondents: How do you get transnational customers for your business? The three
ﬁrst-time entrepreneurs, with notable track records as corporate executives in
multinational companies in India, had a great interest in the topic of networking. This
perhaps accounted for their success as transnational entrepreneurs. They did not,
however, have the support that accompanies the resource-rich and well-organized
undergraduate college alumni organizations entrepreneurs in the technology domain
possessed, or the collaboration and co-operation of professional ethnicized networks like
TiE and SIPA. Interestingly, none of the nonmigrant entrepreneurs mentioned
membership or afﬁliation with religious or ethnic community-based diasporic networks
that were so important to the senior Indian material goods entrepreneurs in the United
States.

They aggressively employed international all-inclusive networks in structuring
business opportunities for promoting and selling their products, as well as for advancing
their careers as transnational entrepreneurs. Interviewees in this group of nonmigrant

entrepreneurs judged trade-based networks or international networks based on a common

213

interest to be perfect transnational platforms for vertical integration of markets, that is,
from the local/ grassroots levels in India to the consumer in the United States. For
instance, connections made in one context, for example at an international trade fair, very
often became the conduit for information for another context, like information about the
organic food sector in the United States, non-tea companies like traditional medicine to
market ginger and black and green tea for their therapeutic value. By adopting this way of

accessing the international and the U.S. markets, the nonmigrant entrepreneurs

deliberately resisted the strong tendency towards “homophily”22 (Nan Lin 2000:787)
oﬁen exhibited in the network functioning of other transnational entrepreneurial groups
in this research. Kunal Singh, the owner of multiple tea gardens in eastern India,
summarized the strategies and beneﬁts of reaching U.S. buyers directly, even if mediated
by global trade networks:

We don’t sell our products to any exporter. We are able to sell directly to the
consumer. We dismantled the colonial model. There were 8-10 intermediaries
between the producer and the consumer in the tea business. So, the
appropriation was very small—only 5 percent—of what the consumer pays to
the grower if you go the traditional route. We have totally collapsed the value
chain market and re-done the appropriation system. This way the business
contacts in the U.S. can source the tea ﬁom us at a cheaper price and we can
get a much higher realization because the intermediaries are out. We have gone
ﬁom zero proﬁt to one hundred percent proﬁt.

As you can see, we have this complex of one and half acres—one of the ﬁrst of
its kind in India. Our corporate oﬂice, our tea tasting department, our
warehousing, blending, is all under one roof This was not the case before. We
have complete control over our tea. They buyer can come to us; he/she can see
the tea being packed and shipped directly. In today’s world, especially in the
food sector, one has to be very careful of food safety. So we worked on that side
seriously and put some systems in place to access the market by having full

 

22 Homophily is the tendency for individuals to share and interact with others with similar characteristics.
In other words, members of a social group tend to form networks involving other members of the same
group, or establish relationships with others who resemble them along one or more dimensions such as age,
class, gender, occupation, sexuality, family status, preferred leisure pursuits, etc. (Homans 1958; Lazarsfeld
and Merton 1954; Laumann 1966; Nan Lin 1982 cited in Nan Lin 2000:787).

214

clarity and transparency on food safety. By selling organic tea I moved up the
value chain and transcended the barriers usually associated with selling a third
world commodity in terms of product packaging and design (sic).

Each of the six nonmigrant entrepreneurs emphasized building network diversity to
extend their outreach to different segments of customers in the United States. For that
reason, they simultaneously participated in a multitude of international networks. No
network had a priority. Varied and multiple memberships in associations helped avoid
redundancy in the information exchanged in the networks of these associations, garnered
international support and legitimacy for their enterprises, and increased business
opportunities worldwide (Hanson 2000:754). In my conversations with Radha Aggarwal,
she laid out the virtues of networking at such public international events, where buyers
and sellers converge because of common interests. She enthusiastically talked about the
unprecedented methods espoused by new nonmi grant entrepreneurs for entering the U.S.
market recently:

Networking was how I could get into exports [transnational] business. I became
a member of World Craﬁ Council, Surface Design Association of United States
Museums Store Association, U.S.A., and Craft Council of India. My ﬁrst
international export was to West Japan, with the two people I had met at World
Shibori Conference in India. Then ﬁ'om there I happen to go to the U.S. for a
conference of Surface Design Association at Kansas City in 2001. At the
conference I met so many people. At the conference they give us a table, where
we can do a trunk show of our stuﬂ we can bring to the conference as
participants. I managed to sell almost 95% of my stuﬂ at the conference. I
realized that the people in the U.S. appreciate hand-crafted things. The U.S. has
a very upper end market, while there is a regular market. In the U.S., I started
supplying garments at small exclusive boutiques, who had attended the
conference, like Asiatica, World’s Window at Kansas City, Weaving Gallery at
Santa Fe, then for the shops at Museum of Modern Art at New York Peabody
Essex Museum at Salem, Massachusetts, The Textile Museum, Washington D. C .,
and the Folk Art museum at Santa Fe. All the museum stores are my regular
customers now. I have individual designers also as my clients in Canada and
other places.

215

Then, one of my best ﬁiend who lives in the U.S., mentioned about the Santa Fe

International Folk Art market in New Mexico. This event brings together folk

artists ﬁom all over the world as well as business people. So for the last three

years I have gone to the folk arts market and we are one of the top sellers. For

the last couple of years we have done pretty well in the U.S. market. 1 supply

directly to the markets in the U.S. We use UPS commercial shipment or any

other way depending on the buyer. There ’s a lot of merit to networking. I

participate at these venues to use them as an opportunity for communication and

networking (sic).
So, while there was heavy dependence on occupation based weak ties by the nonmigrant
transnational entrepreneurs, they nurtured an inner core of strong ties of farme members
and ﬁiends. These were activated from time to time as foundations for effective
networking, as illustrated in the passage above. The contributions of the trust based
strong family ties take on vital signiﬁcance in family based businesses that had scaled
their domestic business to a transnational level since the reform policies. For Dilip Jha,
the long-term strong bonds of understanding, trust, and reciprocity with his daughter and
son-in-law, who resided in the United States, enabled the smooth functioning of networks
across international borders, even if the conceptualization of these networks was
inherently local in nature. The strong family ties located in the United States helped
enhance the knowledge of the U.S. context and changing tastes of American society. This
encouraged the nonrrrigrant entrepreneur to make relatively large-scale business
investments for the ﬁrst time in the U.S. market (Mitchell & Old: 2000). In the words of
Dilip Jha, who lives in Darjeeling, India:

My daughter is a textile designer. She got further degrees ﬁom Philadelphia

University. I arranged for her marriage with a soﬁ‘ware engineer in the U.S. and

both of them continue to live in the U.S. I made my daughter one of the local

sales representatives of the company I started in the U.S. with the same name

C . . . Inc. People are more conﬁdent to do business in the U.S. if there is some
person ﬁom the company in the U.S. Both my son-in-law and daughter have

been helping me out and I have been participating in trade fairs regularly. We
have participated in fancy food shows in SF 0, New York, Chicago, and

216

Baltimore. The whole idea was for the initial 2 years was to participate in every
possible trade fairs. That is the only way major players come to know that you
are there for sure and not something temporary. Like, last year I was at Private
Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) in Chicago. I am again going to
attend the same fair this year. I regularly visit the major cities in the U.S. and
Vegas. So far I have been successful with bulk and existing customers, but now I
am going to focus on small tea customers in the U.S., because tea is becoming
fashionable in the States.

Endorsing the concept of transnational social ﬁeld (Fraser 1991; Mahler 1998; Glick
Schiller 2000 cited in Levitt 2001: 197-99), I argue that the transnational economic
initiative of nonmigrant entrepreneurs was a result of being embedded in an increasingly
dense and diverse transnational entrepreneurial social ﬁeld. This social ﬁeld has been
created between India and the United States, by active and ongoing participation of
technology transnational entrepreneurs in both countries, in addition to the political
patronage of the Indian state for export-oriented activities. The phenomenal growth for
more than two decades of the Indian IT-led service economy has impacted many other
businesses, including medical diagnostic, manufacturing, ﬁnance, education, and the
under-performer agriculture (N ilekeni 2009: 129). Consequently, for the nonmigrant
entrepreneur in the agro industry, being embedded in the transnational entrepreneurial
social ﬁeld was a unique opportunity for using this labor-intensive industry to position
themselves in the global markets. As Levitt (2001:198) points out, these nonmigrant
entrepreneurs calibrated their production systems and their lives to advance the formation
of a transnational entrepreneurial social space between India and the United States that

extended beyond the IT sector. Describing a transnational process that is ﬁrmly anchored

in a particular location (Zhou & Tseng 2001), Dilip Jha—a nonmigrant entrepreneur—

217

credited his success in the United States with his break from traditional tea growing
practices and the socially isolated tea planters in India:
One significant change we made in 1992-93 was to convert our tea gardens in
Darjeeling to organic farming. A ﬁer my travel to Germany around that time, my
belief was conﬁrmed that the organic movement is going to gain strength in

future years. Today, we are the largest producer of organic tea ﬁ'om north

India. I export more than 1.2 million kilograms of organic tea. My last customer
was COSTCO Departmental Stores in the U.S. It’s like having a club
membership. Many small shop keepers and retailers purchase tea in large value
packs ﬁ'om COSTCO. My tea garden workers supply ‘specialty ’ tea for tea
drinking population in the U.S., which is still very small (sic).

In summary, the nonmigrant entrepreneurs in transnational tangible goods businesses,
like other transnational businessmen in India and the United States had used both strong
and weak ties, although weaker ties appeared to be far more dominant in the networks of
ﬁrst-time nonmigrant entrepreneurs. I assert that nonmigrant entrepreneurs’ distinct
inclination for weak ties was partly because they were breaking new ground. None had
the support of mediating or intermediary organizational/ social structures formed out of
shared past experiences in speciﬁc social contexts, like having attended the same
educational institutions or having familiarity as work colleagues. They were compelled to
search beyond the strong ties of their ﬁiends and family by using the contacts of their
ﬁiends to meet their business needs. They participated in international trade associations
where the focus was on obtaining transnational businesses by setting up connections of
occupation based weak ties. In a slightly different manner, the family-owned
businessmen, who felt encouraged to take the risk of initiating transnational business—
particularly with the United States—depended on trust based strong ties embedded

within immediate and extended family networks who lived in the United States. These

entrepreneurs were dissimilar from their counterparts in the United States as they did not

218

count on assistance of any kind from the diasporic Indian community. The emphasis of
family owned businesses on personal family networks dominated by strong ties in the
United States was intentionally managed, to act as bridging ties and create networks rich
in weak ties. This two-phase network formation served to make inroads into the U.S.
market (Hite & Hesterly 2001 cited in Elﬁing & Hulsink 2008:1851).

6. The Role of Place within Transnational Space:

Finally, I asked the transnational entrepreneur why it mattered to be at a particular
location given the transnational nature of their business. How did their present
transnational business site/place constitute the diverse social and business connections
and networks that bind different parts of the world”?

The situated nature of transnational business was felt intimately by the transnational
entrepreneurs, and more precisely by respondents in the material goods domain both in
the United States and in India. They conceived the physical sites of their business
operations to be the locus from which transnational networks originated, which in turn
transformed the dynamics of the “place” as projects of capitalist forces and modernity. I
quote Kapil and Radha, both nonmigrant transnationals, to highlight how they understood
place—or their locality in the global scheme of things—as well as the deﬁnite
transnational actions they had taken as entrepreneurs to shape and transform that place in
transnational social ﬁeld (Gille & O’Riain 2002).

Kunal Singh: Logistically, it boils down to the following: we are in business
where there are tangibles... tea estates etc. The practical part of the business ties

me to this place. My company is sustainable so I don’t have to be involved in the
daily operation of my company. I can give that direction ﬁom being anywhere in

 

23 Featherstone, Phillips & Waters (2007:383) deﬁne this phenomenon as spatiality. By spatiality these
authors mean “the diverse ongoing connections and networks that bind diﬁ'erent parts of the world together
and that are constituted though (and in fact constitute) particular sites and places.”

219

the world to the departmental heads. You can say my software is coming ﬁom

my hardware. It ’s the other way round. My hardware is the specialty tea, the

soil, and my software is the organic agriculture, the packaging, the food safety

and all those issues. We are all the time aware of the hardware quality and that

binds us to the land or place where we are situated, as well as to the tastes and

fancy of the overseas customers.

Radha Aggarwal: My parents and my team of workers with whom I set up this

business, were located in Y . . . I have never dreamt of taking my business

anywhere else. If I had to set up my business in any other city in India I would

have faced major competition. Besides, I am close to all the villages where I

work and live close enough to factories where all the stuff [hand crafted textile

and crafts] that I sell is made. You may say it was the comfort zone which made

Y. . . the headquarters of my company. The familiarity and established network

of the place mattered to me (sic).
These transnational entrepreneurs were deeply embedded in place, unable to escape the
local context which had shaped and affected their transnational enterprise with the United
States and other countries. This echoes Guarnizo and Smith’s (1998:11) argument of
local speciﬁcity as central to economic transnationalism, “transnational practices, while
connecting collectivities located in more than one national territory, are embodied in
speciﬁc social relations established between specific people, situated in unequivocal
localities, at historical determined times.” In other words, the power of the place, as seen
in the above examples, does not exist in the location itself, but in the reciprocal pattern of
social relations between the transnational entrepreneur and the processes within the local
context (Zhou and Tseng 2001:135).

Both Radha Aggarwal and Kapil Singh had established new territorial forms of the

division of labor that gave local actors opportunities to form new alliances and negotiate
their identities. For instance, in transnational agro businesses, factory employees in small

towns in India engaged and communicated with buyers from Germany, the United States,

and Russia on a regular basis as part of their jobs. This would not have been possible

220

without the transformation of their workplace (Cox & Mair 1991 cited in Zhou & Tseng
2001 : 1 3 5)

In a similar vein, when locating their transnational businesses in India, the retumee
entrepreneurs opted for sites where they could visualize large scale transnational business
activities that would mutually complement their social and personal sets of connections
and ties at local contexts, which were wider and deeper. These considerations often made
them choose urban locations in India other than Bangalore and Chennai. Examples are
Pune, Noida (close to New Delhi), Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Mumbai,

and Kolkata This widening and diversifying incorporated far more locations and can

now be said to be truly global in extent24. In addition, these ﬁndings regarding the choice
of alternative locations for transnational IT enterprises is a distinct departure ﬁ'om earlier
research on transnational entrepreneurship among Indian software engineers (Saxenian
2006; Biradavolu 2008), where the overwhelming concern has been with migration and
entrepreneurship between narrowly conceived regions in India and the United States,
particularly Silicon Valley and Bangalore. Sharing details of what led Ved Iyer to locate
his transnational technology business in Pune, he stated:

I grew up here, my folks live here. So if I were to come back to India, living in

another city wasn’t even an option. I think place matters, and the networking is

related to the place. It was easier to set up my business in Pune because we had

established networks and some people who could assist us. . . basically

networks of family and ﬁiends and associates.

Honestly, it didn ’t matter to me that Bangalore was an emerging IT town in the

mid 903, which continues to seem to be the hotspot. Bangalore was for big

companies, it would be very hard for entrepreneurs like me to get in. First, I
would need more capital and second people wouldn’t want tojoin unless you

 

24 Saxenian (2006:293) mentions that Bangalore at present is experiencing human resource constraints as it
has matured, where the attrition rates are 20-30 percent per year (and up to 60 percent for ﬁrms doing BPO
services) and wages rising almost 15 percent a year. This has led IT services and software ﬁrms to seek
alternative lower cost, talent-rich locations, such as Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Pune.

221

are a multinational brand. Once they get the oﬂer, they go next door and shop
the offer around. I really needed people whom I could depend on. Why would I
choose an alternate location when we [his co-founder and he] had everything
going for us at Pune. Today Pune ’s growth rate in the IT sector is outstripping
Bangalore. For me, the biggest help has been the exemption on export duty
[Government of India policy to encourage software export], because my

company is located in the STPIpark25. That way I could oﬂer competitive salary
to my staﬂ and yet it allowed me to think about expanding (sic).

In addition to the presence of a network of local strong and weak ties, the source and
nature of funding for transnational business and the life stage of the respondents were
major considerations in making decisions about the location of their entrepreneurship, as
discussed earlier. For some of the younger transnational technology entrepreneurs in the
United States, being located in the United States was associated with venture capital they
received for their companies, as Poonam Sharma said:

If you ’re a venture-backed company in the U.S., they would expect you to be in
the U.S. There are a lot of legal implications that one has to comply with. We
have 85 percent of our customers in the U.S. and our biggest share of the
revenue is from the U.S. My company is very customer focused. This makes it
necessary for us to be with the customers 24hrs. It is good to be close to the
market. Bear in mind the largest amount of outsourcing work in the world is
done in the U.S. I see no reason to want my company ’s headquarters somewhere
else (sic).

The technology entrepreneurs in the United States chose suburban locations for their
companies’ headquarters, which contrasted to the traditional “Little India(s)” in many
U.S. cities. From the point of view of Rogers (1992:244-47 cited in Zhou & Tseng
2001:136) these transnational business enclaves in the suburbs of U.S. cities were

products of internationalization of the urban economy, middle class characteristics, and

status which had assisted in entrepreneurs’ adaptability to American urban conditions,

 

25 Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) is an autonomous organization under Ministry of

Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. For more on STPI, see Appendix
no.6.

222

and transnational business connections to the homelands. Li (1998 cited in Zhou & Tseng

2001:136) calls this kind of settlement among middle class Asian communities an

“etlmoburb”,26 which represented some of the features of ethnic enclaves but also those
of a suburb without the minority-majority27. Ethnoburbs, therefore, are unique places
because they capture the essential spatial distinction and dynamism true of transnational
centers and are at the same time concentrated physical locations of human and ﬁnancial
resources. These served as anchor points for transnational businesses of technology
entrepreneurs in the United States.

As a result, high-end transnational technology businesses in the United States, like
their counterparts in India, survived on local and sometimes lower-end business
connections and networks, which provided the crucial conditions for transnational
practices. Research by Zhou & Tseng (2001) highlights in a similar manner how trans-
Paciﬁc business activities of Chinese-American professional services in Los Angeles
were heavily dependent upon the territorial division of labor and the local community
networks in immigrant sending and receiving countries.

Thus, both in India and the United States, local pre-existing networks and
opportunities, policy directives, and locally-available social, ﬁnancial, and human
resources mattered in grounding the transnational entrepreneurship of the respondents.
This phenomenon conﬁrms Ley’s (2004) observation that transnational actors/migrants

are not always in the air—they must necessarily touch down somewhere. In this research,

 

26 Wei Li (1998 cited in Zhou 2009281) a Chinese geographer ﬁrst proposed the notion of “enthoburb”,
which refers to the hybridity of inner-city enclaves and middle class suburbs, that is, suburban ethnic
clusters of people and businesses. Thus, ethnoburbs are affected by combination of global and local forces,
which includes the dynamics of community and networks, as well as movement of people and capital.

27 Majority-minority is a term used to describe a jurisdiction or a U.S. state whose racial composition is less
than 50% white. “White” in this context almost always refers to “non-Hispanic whites”.

223

the ﬁndings on the trans-local nature of entrepreneurship among Indian respondents
deviates from Ong’s (1999) and Ong & Nonini’s (1997) notion of the “ungroundedness”
or “deterritorialized” aspects of ﬂexible accumulation of wealth and resources by the
hyper mobile transnational entrepreneurs. None of the Indian entrepreneurs occupied
virtual undifferentiated spaces, nor did any transnational respondent espouse the life
world of an “astronaut family.” This is regarded as one of the outcomes of the
hypermobility of this capitalist class, where the heads of immigrant households situate
their spouses and children in the United States or other western nations, joining them for
a couple of weeks after long stays at their business bases in East Asian countries (Ong
1999). Yet they appeared to live with another version of the global-local dichotomy, the
dualism of a cosmopolitan-local life (Hannerz 1990), which I discuss in Chapter 6.
Summary and Conclusion:

In this chapter I have focused on the importance of network conﬁguration and the
relational and normative content of strong and weak ties, the capital derived from such
connections, and how this affected the business performance of transnational
entrepreneurs located in India. I examined 15 transnational entrepreneurs in the
technology domain (12 returnees and 3 nonmi grant) and 6 nonmigrant transnational
businesspeople in the material sector situated in India. The two domains of the
transnational enterprise reﬂected the generational divide among respondents in India,
with younger interviewees having a dominating presence in the service-oriented
technology sector, and relatively older transnational entrepreneurs engaged in land-based
or handcrafted tangible goods. As compared to the immigrant transnational entrepreneurs

in the United States, the gender ratio among the respondents was less skewed in India.

224

Five women (24% of 21) transnational entrepreneurs were found within both sectors of
entrepreneurship. Although the very small number of women respondents in the study
does not allow for any conclusion, the higher proportion of transnational women in the
Indian context could be indicative of changes in traditional gender relations.

Retumees (12) comprised 80 percent (out of 15) of the technology entrepreneurs in
India. My research found that the dynamism in transnational networks of college peers—
especially among the ex-students of IIT(s)——that was initially responsible for migration to
the United States also facilitated the return of technology entrepreneurs from the United
States to India. The alumni networks acted as bridgeheads for returning to India, where
the business atmosphere had been signiﬁcantly transformed since economic reform
polices were implemented in the 1990s.

In addition, my research revealed the predominance of intense transnational
networking among retumee entrepreneurs prior to their actual return to India. This
networking was aimed at leveraging, utilizing, and sharing business information,
contacts, and trust with the co-founders of their jointly formed companies registered in
India—or with college peers, friends, and family members in the network. Being
embedded in transnational networks, e. g. in the Pan IIT network, exempliﬁed largely by
trust-based strong ties gave the retumee entrepreneurs—particularly the ex-students of
IIT(s)—a competitive advantage over other technology entrepreneurs who lacked
affiliation with this cohesive and exclusive sub-group. Such an internal network of peers
from IIT(s) was formed on long-standing identity, which acted as a critical meso-level
organization that created new ways of functioning for its members as well as developing

a new entrepreneurial context.

225

The retumee entrepreneurs without strong college peer networks compensated for this
lack by their active participation in diverse inclusive transnational networks both in India
and the United States. Examples are local chapters of TiE, NASSCOM, and the like. The
technology entrepreneurs in both countries had notably similar patterns in network
structures that used social collectivity or intermediary organizations as platforms of
common intellectual capital. This was derived from the conﬂuence of strong and weak
ties to improve business performance through access to markets beyond those of the
home or host country. Membership in these association networks also brought the
technology entrepreneurs a certain prestige and reputation, particularly those in which
membership was restricted, such as the Pan IIT networks (N ahapiet & Ghoshal
1998:243).

Further, in this chapter I attempted to understand the way transnational network ties
were conceptualized and why they were important to entrepreneurs in India. My inquiry
found dyad or triad “team entrepreneurship” formed by trust-based strong ties with
college peers or family members with whom the technology entrepreneurs had on-going
personal relationships (Granovetter 1992), or a social context, like class or educational
institution (Bourdieu 1986). For instance, the intra-team trust and reciprocity between
two co-founders of a technical ﬁrm gave the team access to resources and information
that was crucial for their high performance. These resources would have been difficult to
transfer via usual market ties (Uzzi 1996). But, to avoid redundancy of information and
the blinding aspects of strong ties, the technology respondents likewise made efforts to

expand their network conﬁgurations by exploiting weak ties or structural holes.

226

In a slightly different manner, nonmigrant transnational entrepreneurs relied heavily
on the cultural capital of their upper class backgrounds in Indian society. Examples
include English proﬁciency, familiarity and knowledge of western cultural tastes, and
other cosmopolitan lifestyle choices. These traits helped develop a foothold in American
markets through memberships in numerous international trade-based organizations.
Lacking the migrant experience of technology entrepreneurs and the social capital
derived from sustained peer group solidarity, the nonmigrant transnational
businesspeople suffered from resource scarcity. Therefore, in order to secure
transnational business opportunities and resources, and to test novel marketing and
product ideas, they relied heavily on occupation-based weak ties in external trade or
interest-based global networks that extended beyond their boundaries.

While there were parallels at a broader level of network structures for both these
groups, entrepreneurs in India engaged in transnational businesses in dissimilar domains.
The discrepancy in resource content, i.e. the human and social capital within the two
categories of transnational respondents, inspired the entrepreneurs to differently engage
in activities of transnational networking. The returnees were mainly involved in
professional and business associations and college networks, while the nonmigrant
participated aggressively in international trade organizations and maintained strong ties
with members of immediate family in the United States.

Finally, my research points to the unique spatial setting or the groundedness of place
in economic transnational activities of the entrepreneurs in both sectors. For the
economic transnational practices to happen, it was necessary to have the support of

powerful local networks and resources to complement the transnational connections. This

227

included the availability of the kinds of human, physical, and ﬁnancial resources that are
necessary for transnational enterprises. This resulted in lower rentals, accessibility to
bank credit, minimal bureaucratic snags, uninterrupted power and water supply in STPI
parks, and the like. Therefore, although Indian transnational entrepreneurs were agents of
global capitalism, they were also bounded by territorial material speciﬁcities, which
made them distinctive and their actions differentiated the sameness of global space (Ley
2004; Levitt & Jaworsky 2007). Similarly, their economic transnational practices and
citizenship participation, contrary to the theories of hyper-mobility, can be seen as

expressions of local belonging and settlement, which I discuss in Chapter - 6.

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Chapter — 6

Life between Two Worlds—Re—articulating Identity as Transnational
Entrepreneurs

Recent scholarship on globalization and international migration has identiﬁed the
emergence of forms of citizenship that are no longer bound by the borders of a single
nation state. New deﬁnitions of cross-border citizenship defy the traditional notion of
citizenship,1 which is membership in a particular geographic and political community.
This conventional deﬁnition of citizenship consists of four dimensions: rights, legal
status, political and other forms of participation in society, and a sense of belonging.
Immigration and associated political and economic transnational activities challenges—
even as it reafﬁrms—conceptions of national identity, state control, and sovereignty that
have been linked to the time-honored understandings of citizenship (Bloemraad et al.
2008:154).

In the context of globalization, some emigrating nationsz—and migrants—have called

for changes in the legal articulation of citizenship (Itzigsohn 2007; Fiast 2008) and many

states have legitimized and promoted dual or multiple citizenship/membership3 (Baubock

 

1 According to Kymlicka and Norman (1994:354) the traditional understanding of citizenship is a postwar
conception of citizenship—as—rights, which was put forward by T. H. Marshall in his book “Citizenship and
Social Class” written in 1949.

Emigrating nations (and also host countries such as USA, Germany, France etc.), have come to view
continued engagement by their emigrants as an avenue for ﬁnancial and social remittances, and investment
in the country of origin. Change in the traditional deﬁnition of citizenship is seen as a means to expand
their political, social, and economic borders to the diaspora.

3 According to F aist (2000:202-03), “Citizenship in a state is an institutional form of solidarity. It
constitutes an expression of full and formal membership. State and citizens can claim a set of mutually
enforceable rights and duties. Citizenship also connotes the public representation of ties between members
and corresponding nation-states. It is based on the perception of common belonging to a state—or a nation
or both—and it confers the identity ‘citizen’.” Membership in nation-state politics is less often tied to
formal citizenship, but to rights arising from settlement and socialization. Formal membership in the nation
state does not have the same scope or range of meaning as with granting of citizens’ rights. Membership is
the recognition of social ties and economic contributions of long time resident aliens. The ties between the

229

2007; F aist & Kivisto 2007). Dual or multiple citizenship extends the ability of people to
participate in and belong to more than one territorially-based political units, which
facilitates regular ﬂows of social and cultural practices. These practices include buying
and selling pre-packaged Indian dinners at Indian grocery stores or encouraging migrants
to engage in cross-border civic organizations and actions—which resulted in the high
level of aid in response to the 2001 Gujarat earthquake (Gandhi 2002: 360). As a result,
commonplace transnational activities by migrants promote emotional ties and actions
across national boundaries, leading to more cultural autonomy.

In this chapter, I examine how—in the context of a more accommodating notion of
citizenship—recent changes in Indian citizenship laws and policies4, a major legislative

provision, have inﬂuenced the self-perception and day-to-day lives of immigrant
transnational entrepreneurs, many of whom were returnees in India. To evaluate the gains
from multi-state membership of immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs and the impacts on
identity, I contrast the experiences of immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs with their
nonmigrant counterparts in India, who could not avail this legislative provision.

To that end, I study the ways immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs employ their dual

membership of the United States and India as a social practice—that is, by engaging in

 

members and the state are not as thick as that between citizens and the state, but not as thin as between
aliens and the state (Faist 2000:207). On citizenship and immigration debate see Bloemraad et al. (2008)
and Leitner & Ehrkamp (2006) and on citizenship theories see Kymlicka and Norman (1994).

4 The constitution of India does not allow dual citizenship, i.e. holding Indian citizenship and citizenship of
a foreign country simultaneously. The Government of India decided to grant Overseas Citizenship of India
(OCI) which most people mistakenly refer to as ‘dual citizenship.’ Although it does not grant full
citizenship rights, people who migrated from India and acquired citizenship of a foreign country other than
Pakistan and Bangladesh, are eligible for OCl as long as their home country allows it under their local

laws. Possession of an Indian Origin (PlO) card allows visa-free travel to India and gives several beneﬁts to
the card holder. The PIO card is valid for 15 years from the date of issue and must be accompanied by a
valid foreign passport . A PIO card holder has to report to police authorities if staying for more than 180
days in India. There is no restriction of stay in India for an OCI card holder (Ministry of Home Affairs;
Government of India).

230

civic and personal actions across national boundaries—in formulating their unique
identity. In particular, I examine the transnational expressions of national loyalties and
patterns of sociability associated with or generated by the transnational business actions
that have brought new meaning to their lives, and thereby altered their self-perception.

I asked interviewees the following questions: What is your present citizenship? Why
did you want to become a U.S. citizen? Do you possess the OCI or PIO card of India?
How does the OCI/PIO card or U.S. citizenship help your business? How have your
social activities and personal preferences—e.g., relaxation and fun activities with friends
and family members, choice of music, food, and clothes—given meaning to your life?
What percentage of your friends are Indians? Does having an identity (American or
Indian) come up in your conversation? Do you discuss Indian versus American values
with family members or friends? Give me examples.

My inquiry on identity was towards the end of the interview after the interviewee had
shared his or her achievements and success as a transnational businessperson.
Surprisingly, the questions on identity on many occasions changed the tone of the
dialogue as it brought an aspect of subjectivity to the interview that evoked both
excitement and emotional responses from the respondents. It moved our conversation to a
personal level, where interviewees reﬂected about their life and lifestyle and were
generally happy to be alive to witness and participate in a rapidly changing world. From
the time taken to answer these few questions it was obvious that respondents, although
comfortable and communicative in sharing their thoughts and feelings, had not taken time
in the past for soul searching of this nature. Some respondents even stated by articulating

their feelings during the interview it had made them feel gratiﬁed.

231

By exploring the “ways of belonging” of respondents who are embedded in various

social ﬁeld(s) as opposed to merely “ways of being,”5 here I present cases of how
personal identity is reconstructed by the respondents, who are anchored but pivot
between a new world and a transnational incorporation (Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004).
The multi-local life-world of these respondents offered a complex set of conditions that
shaped the negotiations, reproduction, and construction for both personal and collective
identities, as noted by Vertovec (2001).

The responses of the interviewees covered a wide range of emotions—love for the
home and the host countries, personal ambition, optimism, altruism, ideology,
spirituality, collective responsibility, love of adventure, and risk taking ability—which I
have grouped together under two major viewpoints: nationalism/nation—building and
patterns of sociability. Further, wherever relevant I have drawn contrasts with
experiences of identity construction by settled migrant Indian population in the United
States and with those living in the diaspora. The comparison throws into sharp relief what
is different and similar about the identity of transnational entrepreneurs whom I have
considered here. I end the analysis by describing how Indian entrepreneurs, particularly
immigrants and returnees, come to terms with the feelings and loyalties closely
associated with their life experiences in the transnational space between the United States

and India.

 

5According to Glick Schiller & Levitt (2003; 2004:1010) there is a difference between “ways of being” in a
social ﬁeld and “ways of belonging.” “Ways of being” are the actual social relations and practices that
individuals engage in rather than the identities associated with their actions. In contrast, “ways of
belonging” refers to practices that indicate or enact identities which demonstrate a conscious connection to
a particular group. Ways of belonging combine action and an awareness of the kind of identity that action
signiﬁes.

232

All forty-two transnational entrepreneurs described themselves as being “Indian”
from South Asia as the most inﬂuential and powerful base for expressing their identity,
which they did not ﬁnd problematic to incorporate with their American citizenship and
transnational way of life. Without exception every one of the respondents expressed
nurturing an innate sense of common identity born out of recent memories of India’s
signiﬁcant anti-colonial struggles, which had infused in them a sense of nationalism and a
common heritage. To cite Shukla (2001:553) “the realities, memories and rebuttals to
British colonialism has created a language in which to understand the development of
nationalism in India and abroad.” Moreover, familiar life experiences of belonging to a
poor country with limited economic opporttmities, and achieving success professionally
in the United States and thereby becoming resourceful, encouraged a shared political and
economic transnational interest. In addition, the cosmopolitan cultural traditions—a very
speciﬁc kind of colonial and postcolonial modernity, an ethic of cultural tolerance and of
the survival of various cultures—assisted in building solidarity among the entrepreneurs.
Nearly every respondent had the ability “to cite and quote and relocate, repeat and revise
cultural styles, traditions and identities” with remarkable ease (Bhabha 1994:187-88).

Therefore, notwithstanding their diverse ethnic and regional origins, the interviewees
deeply valued their well-deﬁned Indian identity and treasured a sense of belonging to one
nation state, which manifested in their ideas and deeds despite their territorial locations.
Accordingly, the nation—India—remained the basic building block for constructing
subjectivity for the immigrant, retumee, and nonmigrant transnational Indian

entrepreneurs.

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“T 0 give something back to India. . . an act of social entrepreneurship”

The migratory experience of leaving India as young adults for higher education or job
assignments in the United States for extended periods compelled the immigrant
transnational respondents to recognize India’s strengths and weaknesses in a different
perspective and more objectively than they had before migrating to the United States.
They were quick to point out that the change in their psychological universe was due to
having studied, worked, and lived in the United States, which had made them acutely
aware of global standards and expectations to which they had not given much thought
before migration. The immigrant and retumee transnational entrepreneurs recognized that
India had to change in many ways to compete for earning a rightful place in the global
economy, a sentiment captured by Partho nostalgically one evening in India.

Once you have lived in the U.S. for a while and not as a visitor and traveled to
other advanced countries in the West, Japan, and emerging economies like
China, Singapore like it or not, you see India ﬁ'om a different lens and hold the
country to a diﬂerent standard. The ﬁrst time I visited India after completing my
graduate studies, the open dust bin three houses away ﬁ'om my house used to
make me angry and upset. Hey! this was the house in which I had lived all my
life before leaving for the States (laughs and sips chai). I continue to feel
uncomfortable and upset in the streets of Kolkata, where traﬂic rules are
routinely flouted. . . but India gave me the ﬁrst breaks in life, my school and
undergraduate college education. India is always in my thoughts. I feel an
urgency to “give back” to this country (sic).

This core sentiment “to give something back” to help transform India as a global
competitor—whether it was in the attitude and work ethics of technology workers
providing business/knowledge process outsourcing support to developed countries, or
infrastructure development, or creating globally competitive jobs in the IT sector—was

the primary motivation for many immi grant transnational entrepreneurs to launch their

technology companies. Besides making sound business sense, tapping into India’s vast,

234

inexpensive, skilled, and English-speaking labor pool, these entrepreneurs expressed a
sense of pride at having arrived at a place in their lives where they were able to give
economic opportunities to their brethren. Expressing this desire for nation-building, here
is a response from a pioneer twice migrant Indian entrepreneur, who founded his global
info-tech outsourcing ﬁrm in the United States in 1980.
Q. Why did you choose to do business with India?
I have always felt a strong bond with India. I have always felt drawn to the
country whenever I lived outside. I felt when we were uprooted ﬁom Kenya
people went all over the world, and I felt even though we had several very
challenging experiences, India received as well. India always received us with
open arms and I have always felt to give something back to India. There was
sense of obligation, to India. I had to do something for the country. Secondly, I
saw even then that this might be the ﬁeld in future, and therefore took measured
steps in getting there. I always thought the education system in India will have
and impact in these ﬁelds over time. And that it would be a way for Indians to
ﬁnd ways uplift or advance themselves economically. So, that was the feeling
when we started the company. We are fortunate that we were able to overcome
the significant hurdles to establish this organization. We have had to reinvent
the company several times (sic).
For these immigrant transnational entrepreneurs, the inspiration for investment in

India was due to being embedded in a web of social expectations and obligations tied to
their place of origin. Their business investments therefore fulﬁlled one of their main
objectives of bringing about local economic development with a difference6. In their role
as transnational entrepreneurs and as development agents since the 19805, socio-
economic development of this sort has not only been via ﬁnancial remittances and human

capital, but also through social remittances and knowledge ﬂows (Maimbo and Ratha

 

6 Since 1990, the idea of co-development has become increasingly popular, best described as public policy
approaches of immigration countries to the migration-development nexus. This recent shift in the focus
towards development is circulated by several nation-states like France, the Netherlands, the U.I(. and
international organization like the World Bank. In this view international migration is suppose to fuel
development in the Global South—not only via ﬁnancial remittances and human capital but by social
remittances and more generally knowledge ﬂows (Faist 2007226).

235

2005). The underlying belief of these business actions is that more circulation of labor
fosters more development by way of remittances and knowledge networks (Faist
2008226). In a similar study Landolt et al. (1999) found that transnational business
initiatives by elite immigrant Salvadorians in Los Angeles and Washington DC had
cumulative transforrnatory effects on local enterprises in El Salvador because each
exchange and interaction sharpened the business acumen of the nonmigrants, and
provided for a steady income in lieu of remittances (Landolt et al. 19992313).

Levitt’s (1997) research on immigrants ﬁ'om Miraﬂores, a village in the Dominican

Republic, to Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood shows a similar pattern of emotional

bonding with the homeland through developmental proj ects7. Regardless of the size or
scope of the transnational activities, the immigrant ethnic groups who engage in cross-
border development are driven by a passionate motive to be agents of change to improve
the standards of living for the people in the home country.

In order to keep transnational links alive and identify with the people of India, for
Sudip Choudhury it was, “never about making money . . . I have so much joy from the
fact that my organization has taken roots truly in social aspects. I consider that to be
greatest success in life.” Mr. Choudhury, an eternal optimist and now 63 years old had

migrated to the United States as a graduate student in economics in 1972. He had waited

 

7 Similar examples of transnational development engagements are seen Los Angles. Hundreds of home
town associations, many organized under umbrella organizations, are actively involved in supporting or
promoting development initiatives in the home towns and cities of migrants in Mexico and countries of
Central America (Gaurnizo 20032678).

236

patiently for an opportune moment to fulﬁll his dream of starting a global “knowledge

process outsourcing solutions” ﬁrm in 19888.

The ﬁrm gave him the platform for experiments in social engineering to bring a
transformation in the work ethics and attitudes of Indian workers. The son of a well-
established business family in India, he had come to the United States to become a
professional and, to his surprise, had worked long enough in the “most capitalistic
country to realize my communistic leanings,” which he had acquired as a young adult in
commrmist West Bengal, India.

Q. How have your transnational business activities given a meaning to your

life?

Do you really want to know? (Laughs loudly... yet serious) Very soon aﬁer
graduating with a PhD in Economics, 1 had a job and within the next two to
three years I had everything going for me. So, my thoughts of making an impact
on India came back Thankﬁrlly, this was the time when the IT revolution was
taking oﬂ in India. So with the coming of Information Technology age, I felt I
got the opportunity what I had long since wanted to do, that is to integrate work
with other aspects of life—a holistic approach to living. In order to make the
broadest impact I settled on doing what one would consider low tech work
which in my mind always was to do in a scientific way. It allowed me to create
plenty of jobs in those segments of the population which was unemployable in
India at that time. These are people with bachelors’ degree in mathematics,
geography, English etc. I felt I could get into the lower end of business and give
jobs to the maximum number of people. Our goal was to make a difference in the
Indian society, where unemployment was endemic then—one of them was hard
work the other was integrity or truthfulness and the third was to break the
hierarchical structure of control and command. So my business was to create a
social context in which we can achieve these social changes at a human level.
My organization is a social experiment which uses business as a contract (sic).

 

8 Quite a few U.S. transnational entrepreneurs above the age of 50 years mentioned they had endured the
long wait period before starting their transnational businesses with India. This was because the Indian
government’s policies before the 19805 were left-leaning and more re-distributive. The years ﬁ'om 1947 —
1990 are popularly known as the “License Raj” in India. License Raj refers to the elaborate licenses,
regulations, and the accompanying bureaucratic permissions that were required to set up business in India.
The License Raj was a result of India‘s decision to have a state controlled (planned) economy, where
licenses were given to a select few, which often led to political corruption and nepotism.

237

His preferential option of initiating a transnational business over local strategies of
economic and social incorporation was a means to articulate a personal ideology, which
he had cherished from experiences in India and his life in the United States. Mr. Sudip

Choudhury’s behavior ﬁts Appiah’s (1998) description of a cosmopolitan patriot, and

what Glick-Schiller and Fouron (2001) call long distance nationalismg, deﬁned as “as a
set of ideas about belonging that link together people living in various geographical
locations and motivate or justify their taking action in relation to an ancestral territory
and its government” (in Levitt & Glick Schiller: 2004: 1020-21). In Mr. Choudhury’s
words,

I wanted my workers to excel in everything they did. I instilled this sense of

excellence in my Indian workers. 1 can say with pride that one of our

accomplishment is that we produce data which is 20 times more accurate than

anywhere in the world. So, we completely changed the expectations of the

market in the ﬁeld in which we were working and elevated it to a di/ferent level

and that came ﬁom India and Indian people (sic).

Similar to Mr. Choudhury in 1988, many other Indian immigrant and retumee
transnational entrepreneurs were able to express their lifestyle and point of view because

of transformation in the macro economic environment ushered by changes in India’s

citizenship laws towards acquiring membership in the Indian state by people of Indian

 

9 Waldinger & Fitzgerald (200421 178) deﬁne it much more subjectively as “extending beyond loyalties
that connect to any speciﬁc place of origin or ethnic or national group” (emphasis in original). The authors
make a strong claim against the notion that long-distance nationalism inherently tends to be
“particularistic,” which 1 found to be true among Indian transnational respondents. The respondents’ long
distance nationalism was go_t targeted towards a particular group or place in India because their nationalistic
actions took into consideration capital accumulation. The examples mentioned in the text—home town
associations in Los Angeles, Levitt’s (1997) research on Dominican Republicans, and Landolt’s (1999)
study of Salvadorians—are slightly different because the development initiatives were targeted towards a
particular place and people in those countries.

238

origin in the diaspora“). The expansion of the legal status of Indian citizenship went hand
in hand with changes in the policies of NR1 (Non-resident Indians) investments, which
presented opportunities to express ways of belonging for cultural production of
nationalism, along with transnational economic engagement. These policy amendments
were momentous for immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs.

Much is documented in a similar vein by scholars of trannationalism—Levitt &
Glick-Schiller (2004); Vertovec (1999, 2001); Portes et a1 (1999); and others—who
emphasize that immigrants build cross-border lives that go beyond the territorial
constraints of one nation state. These authors mention that dual or multiple memberships
in states widens irmnigrants’ social, economic, and political afﬁnities to more than one
sovereignty or territory, thereby creating fertile ground for non-unitary political identity
and multinational afﬁliations. India, like Ireland, the Philippines, Turkey, and Barbados,
developed global and national policies to encourage lasting links with permanent Indian
settlers abroad (NRIs) to ensure their continued loyalty and membership rather than their
return (Levitt & Glick-Schiller 2004). The extension of the Indian state membership
brought a change in self-perception among expatriate Indians justifying their longing for
the home country. For Shiv, a second generation Indian and a transnational entrepreneur
in an Indian ethnic food business located in Devon Street, Chicago, it was a chance to

express his emotional commitment to “Indianness” through transnational economic

 

10 As stated in footnote no. 4 the constitution of India does not allow dual citizenship. The ﬁrrthest that
Government of India could go was to grant the CC] to foreign passport holders. With this legislation the
Indian state wants to encourage some form of long-distance political and economic nationalism, yet wants
to control and manage what immigrants can and cannot do. It fulﬁlls this objective by offering partial and
changing packages of tax beneﬁts and services but never granting the legal rights of citizenship or
nationality or the ﬁ‘anchise. Levitt & Glick-Schiller (2004:1023—24) deﬁne these nation-states—India,
Barbados, Ireland, the Philippines, Haiti, and Turkey—as “strategically selective states” that do the
balancing act of providing just the right level of incentives to reinforce long distance membership while not
being overly attentive to migrants needs lest they make their nonmigrant resentful. For more discussion on
variations in the global national policies of sending nation-states see Levitt & Dehesa (2003).

239

engagements, and in turn his Indian identity. In the quote below he describes how

obtaining the OCI card narrowed the psychological distance between India and the

United States, making him feel secure and at ease in both countries.
Q. Why did you want an OCI card?
First, OCI gives me the ease of traveling to India at a moment ’s notice. I could
do that with ﬁve or 10 years Indian VISA, but 0C1 has made my travels hassle-
ﬁ'ee at any port of entry in India. After 9/11 everyone is a suspect. Liﬁz is not
easy as it used to be with a U.S. passport. It made perfect business sense as my
manufacturing unit and primary vendors are located in India. Second, without a
time constraint 1 have the liberty to learn and get acquainted with the top of the
line products in Indian food for exports to the U.S. market. I can personally
communicate with my food vendors and suppliers a lot more now. I usually
spend four to six months a year in Bombay. It gives me a sense of security in
India. Previously there was a rush to get a Green card by Indians in the United
States, now it is the other way round... (sic).

Indian entrepreneurs in the United States involved in the Indian ethnic transnational
businesses (e. g. Indian spices, food grains like Basmati Rice, produce, packaged Indian
food, fashion and designer jewelry, clothing, and services like travel, tourism, and
entertainment) and those in technology or IT businesses consider the provisions of OCI to
be the Indian government’s appeal to immigrants to maintain a “love for their homeland”.
Especially for immigrant Indian transnational entrepreneurs in ethnic businesses, it offers
them an avenue to fulﬁll the ever-growing desire of the local ethnic community to
reproduce their cultural practices and customs to maintain their regional and national

identities in the United States. While in the United States, their business establishments—

like the shops on Devon Street, Chicago or on Orchard Lake Road, Farmington Hills,

240

Michigan—create a niche for consumption of Indian ethnic goods and services by the

general American public1 1.

Further, membership of US transnational entrepreneurs in two or more countries has
created new networks and enlarged the existing universe of the social ﬁeld(s) for
nonmigrant producers in India to participate in the cultural production of nationalism
among the resident Indian community in the United States. The cheap and easy
accessibility of all sorts of information communication technology has released the
nonmigrant entrepreneurs from being territorially constrained, enabling them to have an
ongoing dialogue with customers in the United States and India on a regular basis. The
multi-state membership therefore allowed for participation in the reproduction of the
Indian social and cultural life for all the constituents in the social ﬁeld (Levitt & Glick-
Schiller 2004; Guarnizo 2003; Vertovec 2001).

Another deﬁnitive way of expressing bi-cultural U.S-Indian identity—best described
by the metaphor of a “salad bowl”—for some entrepreneurs has been to take their
business to India, for no apparent ﬁnancial gain. The self-conscious act of forging
business ties with India was for nurturing their personal identiﬁcation and the satisfaction
of doing something for the home country. Here is an example of such altruistic and yet
nationalistic actions by an immigrant entrepreneur:

Q. It appears your transnational business is proﬁtable without trading with
India. Why did you start a business relationship with India?

We are a little bit diﬂerent from the rest of the transnationals, maybe. We do not
purchase anything ﬁom India. We sell in India. We export to India. We sell to
China. Some of the products we make are little bit dijfkrent in technology. We

 

ll . . . . . . . . .
For instance, “Corona beer, WhICh has Mexrcan origins and rs consrdered 1n Mexrco to be “humble and

even low rent beer” has become very popular among foreign beers in the United States (Guarnizo
20032682). Similarly, Chai, which means “tea” in Hindi is a popular beverage in Starbucks coffee shops in
the United States.

241

export to 30 different countries—to countries in South America, Australia, New
Zealand, India and China. India is my own country. It’s my home country. So,
we decided if we have to do business, India has to be a part of it. We have the
technology of this product which is not available in India, so now we can sell to
India. Our 90% suppliers are in the U.S. and one is in the UK. It was for
emotional reasons we entered the Indian market. I and my partner feel a
tremendous love for the homeland. We got burnt initially doing business in
India, people did not pay us. So, we even thought of deleting India ﬁom our list.
We did not need the business in India for our survival or to make proﬁts. We
were doing business with Germany, Brazil, Argentina etc. But, in our hearts we
cannot detach ourselves ﬁ'om India. To make peace with ourselves emotionally
we had to do business with India. Now we are Ok We have a good team in India
and a reliable Indian distributor (sic).

Similarly, investing in India’s stock market was a common strategy by which
interviewees identiﬁed with the tradition, interest, and economic growth of India, in spite
of registering their individual company and having made considerable infrastructural
investment for their cross-border businesses in the United States. It was a different route
taken to assert collective re-afﬁrmation of their Indian nationalism. When asked about
investments in India as opposed to investing in other emerging markets like Mexico,
China, Russia, Brazil, or countries in Eastern Europe, this is what Onkar Gupta had to
say:

India gives a higher rate of interest to investments made by NRIs. I have
invested my money in Indian ’s security market. I do believe at the end of the
day, the equity market system with all its ﬂaws, will boost start the economy

ﬁom where it is. I think Indians are ﬁmdamentally entrepreneurs and I think this

way you can encourage people and get the system moving. I am not interested in
my personal returns ﬁom the investment I make in India. I am keen in getting
the philosophy and the principles right for the Indian market so that people
understand, if we have a system it should work (sic).

Therefore the nationalistic practices by transnational Indian entrepreneurs in the

United States are manifold and emphasize the context-dependent nature of assimilation

into American society, while self consciously cultivating transnational business ties with

242

India, inspired by the spirit of long distance nationalism. Consequently, my ﬁndings
among immigrant entrepreneurs certainly do not imply identiﬁcation with national
polities and locales of the home country to be disappearing, contradicting the post-
national position which emphasizes that “globalization limits the sovereignty of states”
(Camoy & Castells 2001212), nor the sense of belonging to both host and home country
should be regarded solely a derivative of economic conditions, that has a tendency of
global homogeneity of coca-culture (Sklair 2001 cited in Ley 20042153). In fact, similar
patterns of forming bi-cultural identity where state policies matter have been reiterated by
studies on diverse ethnic migrant communities in the United States, for example Gold
(2004), Leitner & Ehrkamp (2006), Guarnizo (2003; 1998); Portes, Haller & Guarnizo
(2002), and others. In sum economic transnationalism implied a new deﬁnition of
spatiality of everyday life for the immigrant respondents, where at times territorial
meanings, identiﬁcation and attachment also prove to be a powerful incentive for
returning to the home country to fulﬁll nationalistic and other dreams, as highlighted in
the next section on retumee transnational entrepreneurs in India.

“Enormous opportunities had opened up in India . . . I wanted to be part of that
action ”

In my interviews with the twelve retumee entrepreneurs, which comprised 57 percent
of respondents engaged in transnational business in India, all stated nationalistic
afﬁliation was one of the decisive factors for their return to India from the United States.
Interestingly for the returnees it was the “timing” which provided him or her with a break
for demonstrating their loyalty to India. The act of returning to India was professed by

many as a show of national allegiance while being a naturalized U.S. citizen. The success

243

of Indian professionals in their individual careers in the Silicon Valley community (and

other plaoes)12 along with the substantial wealth that some of them had accumulated,
coincided with India undergoing a dreadful ﬁnancial crisis in the early 19905 and the
subsequent rejuvenation of the reform process. This created the supply and demand for
establishing a long-term and rewarding relationship by the returnees of getting the home
and host countries together”.

Abhinav Kelkar, while discussing his multiple reasons for re-locating to India at the
peak of his professional success with young children and wife—who too had to forego
her professional success in the United States—explained his longing for the homeland in
Hindi, “Janmabhoomt” (which connotes birthplace). For him the physical ties to India, as
the place of his birth, often competed for the emotional space of living his entire
productive life in the United States. Contemplating on his conduct as a catalyst for
transforming India into a global competitor in the technology space—regardless of the
knowledge ﬂow, social remittances, and creating high salaried employment for many in
the booming IT sector at Bangalore—he believes his greatest contribution has been in

motivating his peers in senior positions of U.S. corporations to emulate him as returnees

in India.

 

12 Silicon Valley leads in the United States in immigrant entrepreneurship in the technology sector, with 52
percent of its technology and engineering ﬁrms having immigrant as a key founder. Silicon Valley is
followed by New York City and Chicago. Immigrants from India, China, and Taiwan have a strong
presence within engineering and technology entrepreneurs (Wadhwa, et al. 2007).

13 I elaborated more on this aspect in Chapter Five. It is estimated that around 50 million Chinese and 20
plus million Indian live outside their home countries. Traditionally India has been unwilling to accept
money, energy, and good will from members of the diaspora for their country of origin and there has been a
tendency to maintain a distance from the Indian diaspora. Thankfully this attitude has changed in the last
few years. In contrast the Chinese diaspora has played a signiﬁcant role in linking the country’s internal
markets to the global markets. India is more of a protectionist in behavior and lobbies to keep foreign
investments out compared to China. However India has always been more open to ideas than China
(Khanna 2007).

244

The increase in return migrants to India ﬁom the United States has happened

because transnational executives like myself have been instrumental in

relocating many more Asian Indian transnationals back in India at senior levels

in global tech companies or to start their own enterprise. India is really moving

up the value chain as far soﬁware development is concerned. It ’s an opportunity

of us to leave a mark in an industry that is taking ojf. . . And companies like

mine are making it happen. It ’s not about being able to sell to foreign clients but

also the value we can bring ﬁ'om India. I ﬁrmly believe the relocation of human

capital and technical skills has contributed in sustaining the 9% economic

growth of India in the past decade. Personally, I am at a stage when I want to

apply the resources which I have been able to accumulate to help and assist the

underprivileged. I am working on these projects. Aaah! I will not head another

start up! (sic).
Mr. Kelkar’s endeavor to convince others like himself to return appears to have paid off.
A similar trend was noticed in recent research by Wadhwa (200722), which shows a shift
of research and innovation from the United States to India and China over the past seven
years aided by an increasing number of returnees to these countries from the United

States. In both countries, the study reported observing a growing number of expatriates

returning home and bringing extensive knowledge and experience with them”.

The presence of a larger proportion of younger (below 50 years of age) technical
returnees as transnational businesspersons in India, as stated in Chapter Three also means
these entrepreneurs are likely to think creatively or out of the box. To a great extent,
returnees attributed their ingenious outlook to their exposure to American culture and
day-to-day life as immigrants in the United States for more than a decade. An example of
such abstraction is Goutam Kohli’s vision to replicate the Silicon Valley in India, where
excellence in technological innovation would symbiotically thrive in close proximity to
centers of higher education. In the same vein, an illustration of Khanna’s (2007)

deﬁnition of entrepreneurship of “doing things in a different way, ahead of social norms

 

‘4 Wadhwa (2007) mentions from interviews with executives of multinationals and local ﬁrms in India and
China that the present trend with gaining momentum is for jobs in research and design to go offshore.

245

and customs, and establishing the rules and laws . . . and not just in the mainstream
business sector but in society at large and even in politics and civil society,” is Sanjay
Mathur, who wanted to “get out of the rat race in United States after fourteen years to
work on projects in India to help create opportunities for children via education. I wanted
to return to my roots in India.”

Since Mathur’s return in 1998 he has concentrated his energy and resources in
developing learning platforms, where learning happens at the learners’ own pace,

language, and social environment, and as their schedule allows them. In a country where

more than one third of the adult population (above the age of 15 years) is illiterate”, it
made sense for him to be in the “learning space” for building a new future for India.

Q. Tell me more about your decision to return to India, when you had everything
going for you in the United States? What does your present transnational
enterprise mean to you?

Mathur: For the ﬁrst year I did nothing. . . I even contemplated going back to
the United States. My company would have taken me back I suppose, but not my
girlﬁiend (laughs) . . . When I was growing up we lived in many remote rural
districts, because my father was an IAS [Indian Administrative Service] ofﬁcer
and I was the Sahib ’s [Hindi word for a high ranking oﬂicial in Indian
government] son. I had all the privileges of having an elite education and the
social rewards that kind of education bestows on you. . . but during my school
years I played with the children whose parents worked for my family as
servants. The children of our house help did not receive any form of education.
That reality of disparity which is easily visible everywhere in India has stayed
with me. It is ‘pay back’ time for me. I realized it was now or never. . .(sic).

The common trait in all the interviews with the returnees regarding their identity was
the intimate association of their formative years’ experiences in post colonial India, and

the notion of nation-building which was an all-encompassing credo during 19708 and

 

‘5 Almost one fourth of India’s male population and more than half of its female population is illiterate
(World Fact Book 2008 & Census 2001)

246

19805 in India’s history”. The inﬂuence and the signiﬁcance of nation building was

made clear to me in a discussion on this issue with another retumee in the following

manner:
My father like many others of his generation was born in colonial India and then
witnessed the transition to independent India. They made their life to set up the
various institutions in India, like judiciary, the bureaucracy, the army etc.
Coming into your own in a profession was not clearly the done thing . . . When
India got its ﬁeedom and transformed into a pluralistic and an electoral society,
people ﬁom all walks of life came together, particularly in Delhi who wanted to
change things. . . so in my home we had regular meetings/discussions of people
who were either senior or junior academics of military and bureaucracy. It was
an eclectic mix of intellectual people who were serious about conceptual
ﬁamework of large scale issues on how to build India and her institutions. That
was the environment in which I was growing up. . . I guess, it has rubbed of on
me (sic).

Although the Indian transnational entrepreneurs (returnees, immigrants, and
nonmigrant) have had the tremendous advantage of time and space compressing
communication technologies—pre-requisites for a dense and large scale social ﬁeld to
emerge—conversations with the returnees particularly pointed to the unique social and
political forces in local Indian contexts, along with their migratory experience in the
United States, to have generated the intense sense of loyalty for their home country. By
local context the returnees meant having attended school and undergraduate college in
socialistic leaning secular India in the 19703 and 19805, which played a critical role in
mediating their decisions for return, direction, and scope of economic transnational

activities. In comparison, the senior transnational entrepreneurs who migrated to the

United States in the 19703 or early 1980s often voiced their perception of being

 

‘6 Shukla (20012561) states in the Indian case after independence in 1947, the nation and the state were
ﬁrmly linked, as each of these two categories became variously engaged in the project of building a new
India. An intense anti-colonial nationalist sentiment lay behind the formation of the institutional apparatus
for the state and the forms of compliance produced among largely Hindu but also Muslim and Christian
populations. In fact the ﬂuidity between the concept of the nation and the possibilities for the Indian state is
a unique feature of the ‘Indianess’ created in the diaspora.

247

“unwanted” and their business initiatives to be “unwelcomed” by the Indian Government
before the reform in Indian policies in 19903. The attitude of neglect and “abandonment”
by the Indian government for the US migrants in the past years appears to have left an
indelible mark on senior transnational entrepreneurs, who prefer to fulﬁll their
nationalistic attachments for India from afar.

In the light of the differential experiences of India’s state policies among the two
generational cohorts of immigrant and retumee transnational entrepreneurs, the value and
expressions of nationalism are dissimilar and add to the internal heterogeneity of this
aspect in the transnational social ﬁeld. These ﬁndings run parallel to Gold’s research with
Israeli immigrants in Los Angeles, London, and Paris, where he has found a divergence
between Israeli and Diaspora Jews in their national allegiance because of Israel’s hostile
attitude toward Jewish people in the diaspora in spite of both these groups’ mutual
support to the state of Israel (2004).

The merit of local context was ﬁrrther emphasized, when a few of the retumee

respondents spoke passionately about the numerous public recognitions of their

transnational entrepreneurship by Indian organizations like NASSCOM”, their peers,
teachers, and alma mater. These sentiments of public acknowledgment held enormous
importance for their self-esteem and image. Explaining her reasons for returning to India
in 1999, Rukmini Mehta, a woman transnational entrepreneur in the life-science domain
living in Chennai, India stated, “It gives me peace of mind to be in India. I enjoy being

able to give back to my alma mater, that is IIT. I am recognized and applauded for my

 

'7 The National Association of Software and Services Companies. NASSCOM was set up in 1988 to
facilitate business and trade in software and services and to encourage advancement of research in software

technology. It is a not-for-proﬁt organization, registered under the Indian Societies Act, 1960. For more
details, see Appendix no 6.

248

work in India and by my teachers. My husband and I wanted to give our most productive
years to India.” The economic capital derived from engagement in transnational
enterprise is thus converted into substantial cultural and social capital in India and is
given much higher worth as compared to the United States by the returnees.

For the retumee entrepreneurs, daily experiences in India of transnational business
undertakings, as well as partaking in of all the changes in the Indian society, are essential
components in constructing their sense of belonging. However, the recent experience of
living in the United States is never far from their thoughts, as is suggested in the
following interview excerpt at Mumbai:

1 am an U.S. citizen and have the OCI card ﬁom India. I keep in touch with the

U.S. on a daily basis because of the kind of work we do. I consider the U.S. to be

my home too. I hate to say this but I am constantly comparing India to the U.S. I

think I have the best of both worlds. The U.S. is in my sub-conscious. For me it

really does not matter where I stay, or to which country I ofﬁcially belong (sic).
Consequently, for the immigrant and retumee transnational entrepreneurs, the American
and the Indian experiences are not perceived as binary opposites, nor are they thought of
as sequential or linear, but as the “simultaneity of connections” (Levitt: 2004).

On the other hand, a different and distinct point of view was stated by nonmigrant
transnational entrepreneurs about the meanings they had ascribed to their businesses with
the United States. Their self description as an “Indian” was ﬁrmly rooted to the
geographical boundaries of India as a country, but they perceived their Indian uniqueness
as a key element of the global society. All of the nine nonmigrant interviewees, who
comprised almost 43 percent of the transnational respondents in India, considered their

business ventures with the United States and other countries to be an outcome of changes

in their individual intellectual progression as Indian policies (especially dealing with

249

export and import policies) and the business atmosphere gradually changed from 19803
and onwards. When asked to explain how exactly the transformed business climate in
India had inﬂuenced Gauri Rao’s thoughts about her transnational enterprise—often
referred to as “export business” in India—in handmade textile and craft objects, she had
this is say:

Gauri: From ’98 onwards, India hit a stride . . . what ever you touched turned
into gold. It was not me; it was the nature of the environment. The environment
became conducive if you did it the right way. In a short time I have been able to
employ ﬁ'om 50 to 1000 - odd people. Whereas previously I could not aﬂord to
employ so many people. There was no capital investment in both businesses, so
something must have changed. It is India’s time in the Sun, you know! If you did
things right the environment would carry you.

Me: What does it mean for you to be able to employ more than 1000 workers for
your export business?

Gauri: India has lots of poor people. You and I have been exceptionally lucky. .
I look around and feel absolutely thrilled that I have been able to create 1 05 0
jobs for the people of India in such a short time. And, pay a fair and comparable
salary every month. Some of my employees are ﬁrst time white collar workers in
their families. We have been able to put proﬁts into an employee welfare fund. I
feel all of us have a collective responsibility to wipe the scourge of poverty ﬁom
India.

Me: How have your ideas changed about your business practices ﬁom before
considering your present enterprise is your second venture?

Gauri: I travel a lot more now and to more countries in Europe, South East
Asia, and to the U.S. in this line of work Now, when it comes to intellectual
choices or what I want to do with my business or life I think globally. I think
very differently now because opportunities have opened up in India. I aspire to
be in the global markets with my very own exclusive brand name. I will get there
before I hang up my boots. . .(sic).

Devoid of the migratory experience of the immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs, the
nonmigrant transnational businesspersons did not use the term “give back” or “pay back”
in their conversations to describe their spirit of nationalism. Neither did any of them

mention possessing dual or multiple memberships of other nations. Verifying this

propensity among nonmigrants entrepreneurs, Bloemraad, et a1 (20082167) and Conway

250

et a1 (20082374), state that countries apply different rules about dual citizenship. Often
countries more used to emigration than immigration change citizenship/membership rules
so that countries can target their own emigrants abroad, but don’t extend dual
citizenship/membership for those who live within their own borders, as in the case of
Poland (Faist 2007, Gomy et al. 2007 in Bloemraad et al. 2008) or in India Additionally
both of these authors mention the imbalance of empirical research centered on the United
States as the primary country of reception. Research on dual citizenship/membership is
still an emerging ﬁeld in Canada and Europe, because it is assumed that immigrants in
the United States are more likely to lead transnational lives.

Contrasting slightly from the previous two groups of respondents, expressions of
nationalism were unquestionably assumed as a natural conclusion of nonmigrant
entrepreneurs’ transnational enterprises. In interviews with them, especially those who
had created more than hundreds of jobs in rural and urban India, it became evident how
neo-liberalism and socialistic ideas of nation-building had intertwined and produced
unexpected conﬁgurations, exclusive of the migratory experience of returnees and

immigrant entrepreneurs. The forms of professional personhood espoused by the
nonmigrant transnational entrepreneurs were to engage in neo-liberal rationalities18 and
private practices of self-actualization19 along with a strong sense of caring mainly for the
socially disadvantaged communities, thus contributing towards developing the nation.
Although appreciative of the efforts of their retumee and immigrant counterparts,

these businesspeople liked to emphasize how their business efforts were more

 

l8 . . . . . . . .
By neo-lrberal ratronalrtles I mean choosrng to start private busrnesses as opposed to worklng for the
state or national government.

19 . . . . . . . .
Practices of self-actuallzatlon would include, for instance, making a decrsron to travel abroad for
training, or revamping the ofﬁce to encourage eco-friendly practices among employees.

251

redistributive in character and linked small towns and villages of rural India to the global
markets. Interactions with a nonmi grant entrepreneur in agro-product transnational
business underscored this new understanding of what it means to be patriotic while
performing everyday transnational business practices:
In our industry because we are working with the farmers directly we have much
greater moral authority as compared to other standard industries. The very fact
that I am working in rural India and with farmers mean I can take a few

principled positions. In my three factories, I employ directly 300 people, and we

have another 400 people on contract. I have no idea how many IT ﬁrms are in
rural areas. . .

Now I have the cash, which I have earned by being a successful entrepreneur to
do a crash course to improve my entrepreneurial skills at Wrton School of
Business, or at Harvard. I can fulfill my dream in one lifetime . . . is how India
has changed in the past two decades and changed the meaning of our lives as
Indians. Contemporary India does not demand that one sacrifice one ’sﬁrture for
the nation. Now patriotism is about fulﬁlling one ’3 potential through responsible
choices, while promoting national development (sic).

Examining the formation of personhood, particularly among the retumee and the
nonmigrant ideas of independent self-development and nationalism as being incorporated
into a single subject position did not cause personal turmoil. The personal dreams of
traveling abroad for higher education, or working as professionals in the United States, or
even just getting an opportunity to train in a elite business school in the United States
were rooted in the context of moving India forward in the world stage and toward
progress. One nonnrigrant entrepreneur even said, “all young people should go abroad for
training before starting their business.” For contemporary Indians, foreign education or
being located overseas and nationalist practices were not seen as contradictions.

Notwithstanding the internal differences between the three groups of businesspeople

because of their age cohorts, migratory experiences in the United States, or territorial

252

locations, the common nationalistic aspiration among these transnational entrepreneurs
was to raise the overall quality of life of their society and fellow nationals, primarily
through job creation. The retumee and nonmigrant entrepreneurs’ norms and values of
serving the country was central in their business undertakings, which challenges the
assumption that nationalism and national territories is often overshadowed by
transnational business activities (Ong 1999; Ong & Nonini 1997).

“We would like to introduce our children to Indian culture and heritage . . . ”

In this section I discuss several social expressions of the day-to-day life of the

transnational respondents, and how their class positionzo, travel, and communication
technology contribute to living in multiple worlds. These have overturned the older ways
of thinking of home and abroad. In my interviews with respondents, discussions on
patterns of sociability in their transnational life were centered on their family and
children. This was a departure from conversing about their feelings related to
nationalistic aspirations, which was expressed exclusively in individualistic terms. To
maintain the authenticity of the data, I have chosen to retain the informants’ focus on
family and children.

The predominance of “consummatory social capital” played a key role in the
formation of Indianness to varying extents among all three groups of transnational
entrepreneurial families. The immigrant and retumee transnational Indian families felt an
especially pressing need to retain what Portes (199827-8) calls consummatory social
capital, that is social capital deriving from “being thrown together in a common situation,

workers [members of transnational immigrant and retumee families] learn to identify

 

2 . . . .
0 In the United States and rn Indra the respondents belonged to upper economic class and therefore had
easier access to the materiality of American and Indian culture and artifacts.

253

with each other and support each other's initiatives.” For this reason, irrespective of their
current territorial locations, transnational business families felt a sense of bounded
solidarity, and thereby attached meanings to various aspects of life that cannot be
universalized to those who are not active participants in the transnational social ﬁeld(s).
The life style of these families created spaces of identity formation, which may be rooted
in local context (United States or India), but are nonetheless shaped by transnational
relationships, networks, and institutions spanning the social world that stretches between
India and the United States.

For the immigrant, retumee, and nonmigrant families the sustained—rather than
occasional—contacts and relationships with relatives and friends who had moved to
India/United States, and the powerful narrative to those who had returned to India/United
States, played an important part in negotiating their Indianness while being open to
American and World cultures. These families also worked out their transnational
relationships simultaneously with Indian communities located in the other diasporic
locations, like the UK, Canada, and countries of East Asia. My conversation with
Shabnam—a nonmigrant entrepreneur in India—makes visible the intensity and the scope
of circular ﬂows of information, symbols, and persons as a result of being rooted in a
social ﬁeld with various members of her family in India and the United States.

There is a lot of familiarity with the U.S. all the time. I have lots of family
members and ﬁiends who are residents or citizens of the U.S. and live there.
There is constant traﬁ‘ic of people and ideas in my household and in my
workplace between the two countries. Then, there is the media which bombards
us with information about the U.S. Finally, many buyers come ﬁ'om the U.S.
regularly to our retail center here. My daughter lives in the U.S., who is a young
mother. I speak with her at least once, sometimes two or three times in a day. I
watch and talk with my grand child using video cam every other day. For the

past 18 years my nephew has been living in New York He works for the
Citibank The U.S. seems much closer in our minds and thoughts than the

254

physical distance between the two countries. . . my sister and I visit the U.S.
regularly on work and holidays (sic).

These transnational connections, employing various and numerous telecommunications
channels like the telephone, faxes, Internet, and Satellite TV, have had an effect on
Shabnam’s family in India and those living in the United States as never before with
regard to practices of constructing, maintaining, and negotiating individual and collective
identities. For example, the traditional child care practices that were communicated daily
to Shabnam’s daughter in the United States were accommodated with the instruction she
received ﬁom her American doctors, or the arrangements for an Indian wedding

celebration for a bi-racial cousin in the United States were done adhering to the American

rules for ﬁre hazardsZI.

Although transnational experiences are certainly heightened by frequent and
extensive travel by transnational entrepreneurs themselves, it is not lost on those who do
not travel as much and live at home-—like as teenage children or elderly parents. They too
cultivate a transnational perspective from being at home (in the United States or in India)
by assessing their everyday experiences, the past and the ﬁrture, with a double
consciousness acquired from transnational relationships and a ﬂuid conception of self
(Globert 20012 717)”. A vision of such cross-border cultural ﬂows was described by a
retumee entrepreneur, who wants his sons to attend U.S universities. He wanted the U.S.
experience to become a part of his childrens’ lives in the same way as it is a part of his

life, yet he did not want to let go of his local culture, language, and the places he loves:

 

21 Fire plays a central role in Hindu weddings. The groom and the bride exchange marriage vows in front
of open ﬁre with the priest chanting the Vedic hymns.

22 Golbert’s (2001) ethnographic research on Ukrainian Jewish youth living at home in the Ukraine
establishes how these youth were able to locate their everyday experiences and relationships within
transnational space, thereby transnationalizing the local and localizing the transnational.

255

My acquiring an American citizenship was a pragmatic strategy to facilitate
ﬂexibility in transnational livelihood options for our family. I want both my sons
to have U.S. graduate educations. It will be hard for me to settle for anything
less. I don ’t want my kids to grow up thinking only as Indians. . . I tell my kids
not to be bogged down with the monster called “security”, which was so much a
part of my growing up. I suppose that tells you something about my identity as
well (sic).

In order to fulﬁll this dream the retumee had both his sons and a nephew—a local——
engage in the process of imagining themselves in a different location in the next two to
three years, besides orienting them to the academic and cultural demands of campus life
in an U.S. university. The life of this retumee and his children, like other transnational
families in the United States and India are located daily in two or more nations, which
includes multiple sites and communities that serve as sources of personal meaning,
deﬁned by Hannerz (1996) as “habitats of meaning” that are not territorially limited. To
cite Hannerz (19962110), “[H]ome is not necessarily a place where cosmopolitanism is in
exile. It is natural that in the contemporary world many local settings are increasingly
characterized by cultural diversity. Those of cosmopolitan inclinations may make
selective use of their expansive orientation toward the wider world . . .” The idea of
multi-locality is exempliﬁed in this case of transnational retumee entrepreneur and his
sons.

The sense of multi-locality experienced by the transnational entrepreneurs and their
families can be contrasted with those of migrants and diasporic members who also
construct “multi stranded social relations . . . that link together societies of origin and
settlement” (Basch et al. 199427). The difference lies in little to no interest in transporting

non-work cultures between the host and home country by the transnational respondents

because of the total absence of a “myth of return” in their lives (Jones-Correa 1998), a

256

challenging situation that diasporic members and migrants often have to deal with.
Kurien (2004) and Bhalla (2006) assert that settled Indian migrants in the United States
and diasporic members actively engage in transplanting cultural and religious practices
between the host and home country to maintain distinct cultural boundaries from
mainstream American culture. Second, because of the residential dispersion of the
transnational entrepreneurs who possessed middle and upper class resources like an
American college degree, a majority of interviewees could avoid being encapsulated in
the regional ethnic Indian communities reconstructed by Indian migrants in American
society. So the majority of transnational respondents in this study who had high human
and cultural capital could escape from the complex, all encompassing ethnic bonds of the
settled Indian population that incorporates migrants and also demands loyalty for the
price of security (Kennedy 20042162).

To ensure continuing engagement and connections in the transnational space with
family members and friends in India and elsewhere, but more importantly to provide their

children the freedom of living in either of the two countries (India or United States) and

the social and cultural advantage of “transnational belonging”23, close to 70 percent of
Indian immigrant and retumee transnational interviewees chose to become naturalized
U.S. citizens, refer ﬁgure 5-1.

Consequently, for returnees and immigrant transnational parents in their late 303 and
405 in India and in the United States respectively, identity construction mostly revolved
around social and communal activities that would enhance raising their children to be

“global” or “world” citizens, of which “being an Indian” was an essential part. In the

 

Simultanelty or llvrng lives that incorporate daily actrvrtles, routine, and institutions located 1n the
United States and transnationally (Levitt & Glick Schiller 200421003).

257

process of doing so they often reﬂected on how their own identity had been transformed

as a result of personal exposure to American life and transnational experiences. The

transnational entrepreneurs were eager to pass on their “global” or “international” traits to

their children. Abhinav Kelkar, who had lived for 18 years in the United States before

returning to India, refers to his sense of global inclusiveness in the following exchange:
Q. How do you relax when you are not working?

Kelkar: I try to relax while working actually. I spend a good deal of time at
various airports of the world. I use that time making calls to my wife and family.
When I am in India, I like to spend time with my children and wife in the
evenings. On weekends we hang out with ﬁiends or visit our parents. I relax
when we take family holidays.

Q. Tell me about your everyday activities with your family

Kelkar: My children mean everything to me. I don ’t get to be with them as much
as I would like to. . . Activities. . . ummm? We have our dinners together when I
am not traveling and there’s a lot of conversation around the dinner table. I
help my kids with their studies. We do a lot of ﬁm things together when we travel
on holidays. Last year we visited Indonesia. We all liked Bali.

Q. You have told me that you are a U.S. citizen. What does it mean to you?
Kelkar: It provides tremendous access to anywhere in the world and the
ﬂexibility to live in India and U.S. without time restrictions.

Q. I suppose you have an OCI card?

Kelkar: Yes.

Q. How do you perceive yourself?

Kelkar: I see myself as more of a global citizen with an Indian origin!
Phenotypically, I look ﬁ'om South Asia, you cannot take that away. I deﬁnitely
want my children to have a more of a global orientation than myself but also to
be informed about what it means to be an “Indian . . I want them to know
about the their ancestry, heritage, local practices etc. See, my parents never left
the town in which they were born. My generation moved around India and in a
few countries, but the future generation of Indians have the right credentials to
move around anywhere in the world. They will have all the tools and where-
with-all to live in any country of their choice. My daughter is learning Chinese
now, besides having a fairly good grasp of English and Spanish . . . I have
always wanted my children to be exposed to dijferent cultures. . . they were
born and brought up in the U.S. but now have a chance to experience life in

India, China and Europe (sic) 24.

 

24 . . . . .

On questions about famlly life, the male respondents were not as engaging as then female counterparts.
As these questions were asked towards the very end of the interview I noted some degree of restlessness
among male respondents, whereas all female informants were more forthcoming on this topic.

258

In a similar manner, Rajiv Bhatia, an immigrant transnational entrepreneur in the
United States, accepts the fact that his children will eventually become monolinguals like
the rest of their American peers, but tries hard to retain their proﬁciency in languages
other than English by conversing with his children exclusively in Hindi or in halting

Spanish. All the interviewees were multi-lingual, in fact many of them had a good

knowledge of three or four languageszs. Quite a few of the transnational entrepreneurs
were sensitive about the language issue. They considered multilingualism to be a scarce
resource, believing that speaking multiple languages allowed for the possibility of
looking at things from different perspectives, instead of becoming bound to symbols and
perceptions embedded in a single tongue. It was regarded as an effective asset to gain
access to foreign markets, as well as to gain competence in cultures which were initially
alien. To quote Mr. Bhatia:

It is to our advantage if we know more than one foreign language spoken by

business communities in the world That way, we can take advantage of the best

of many worlds and try and mix our strengths. For instance in hiring people for

our Philippines oﬂice we sent Indian recruiters who spoke Spanish and for

tactful presentation of our accomplishment in the right light in South American

countries. This way people can appreciate our performance. We have realized

that growth markets for our kind of business are outside this country [ U. S. ]. We

can get some big markets here but year-to-year growth is outside the U.S.

Another thing has been the changing expectations of the type of performance

ﬁom Indians in the tech. space (sic).

This mindset to “achieve competence” or to “engage the other” of many cultures as

Hannerz (1996) deﬁnes the process of cosmopolitanism”, was deeply ingrained in the

 

25 Most of respondents were proﬁcient in English, Hindi, and the regional language spoken by their parents
or by the parents of their spouse. Some of them had a working knowledge of Spanish/Chinese—mainly
acquired because of occupational necessity—when they lived in the United States. Nonmigrant
entrepreneurs knew no foreign language except English.

26 . . . . . . . .
Hannerz (19962103) descrlbes the process of cosmopolitanism as “entall[lng] lnvolvement wrth plurality
of contrasting cultures to some degree on their own terms.” Therefore, “genuine cosmopolitanism is ﬁrst of

259

preferred lifestyle of these transnational entrepreneurs, which is reﬂected in their

selection of cultural reproductions. It was incredibly important for Neel Mukherjee to

have the thread ceremony27 for his sons in India. The particular aspects of the place as
sacred /holy land held meaning for him and his family. This is how he explained it to me:

I visited India to perform the “upanayanam ” for my two sons. These are pizza-
eating American kids, but they do know the “gayatri mantra ”28. I thought they

should be exposed to India’s spiritual traditions in the true environment. You
can never really transport the distinctive cultural experience to the U.S. . . . I
wanted my sons to feel and inherit these traditions as they were passed on to me
by my father. I believe, the liberal Hindu way of life will help my children to
know what is right ﬁom wrong. The ceremony was arranged by my brother and
parents. It was great occasion for a family reunion (sic).

While all transnational respondents except for one expressed themselves to be secular
and not belonging to any religious organization, they felt by observing a few of the major
Hindu rituals and celebrating religious festivals of Diwali, Holi for example, would give
their children access to a community and provide them an opportunity for cultivating an
Indian (often analogous to Hindu) identity. Gold’s (20022215) research on Israeli
transnationals in the diaspora points to a comparable ﬁnding where he states, “ethnicity
alone provides few opportunities for collective celebration, building social ties and
passing on an identity to their children . . . [the Israeli émigrés] treat such religious quests

as the only viable means of maintaining Jewish life in the diaspora—rather than as a

religious quest per se.”

 

all an orientation, a willingness to engage with the Other. It entails an intellectual and esthetic openness
toward divergent cultural experiences, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity.”

The sacred thread ceremonies also known as Upanayana, is performed mostly by the Brahmins for
adolescent boys. It is a Hindu rite-of-passage ritual.

Gayatri mantra is a religious syllable or poem of the Hindu religion.

260

Additionally, many of the respondents mentioned that religious occasions or festivals
of a public nature presented them with platforms where common cultural experiences
between immigrant, retumee, and nonmigrant children and adolescents were cultivated,

as in the case of taking classes on Hindu scriptures and in memorizing Sanskrit

“shlokas”29. Thus, by participating in the transnational space, the entrepreneurs and their
families found others who interacted with them in “terms of specialized, but collectively
held understanding” (Hannerz 19962107).

However, according to Levitt’s (20082770) deﬁnition of “rule-makers”, all the

transnational entrepreneurs in this research were “rule-makers”—members of the Hindu

majority in India3O—as opposed to “rule-takers” or the minority. This gave them the
leverage and the choice of what to include in their “mental ﬁle cabinets” and create
transnational subject positions for themselves and their children. To cite Levitt “[the
transnational respondents were] not worried, for example, that having a Christmas tree in
their homes will undermine their children’s religious identities. In fact, they see it as a
way of demonstrating they are American (20082770)”.

A similar deliberate orientation and openness towards incorporating a plurality of
divergent cultures on their own terms was evident when I asked the respondents about
their food, dress, and music preferences. A quest for experimentation with contrasting
cultural experiences appeared to be the dominant pattern in just about all of the
responses—cutting across age, gender, territorial location, and their diverse business

enterprises. Here are some responses on the next page:

 

29 Shloka is a Hindu prayer or hymn to be sung or chanted in liturgy. The respondents’ children learned
these Hindu shlokas using web-based training sessions as opposed to instructor-led training in a particular
territorial location.

30 Being members of the Hindu majority in India gives them the power of deﬁning Indianness.

261

Table No: 6-12 Choice of F ood/Music/Dress (sic):

 

>2 We eat all kinds of food—Italian, Mexican, Thai, and Indian.

> I eat everything. My favorite food is Thai. My favorite music is Western
Classical

> I eat everything. Of course keeping the culture in mind when I am out with
Muslim ﬁiends, I avoid eating pork Similarly, when I am dining with Hindu
ﬁiends I avoid beef

> I eat all kinds of food—Indian, Thai, steak Then I got aﬁlicted with a heart

disease. I eat South Beach diet now. I hear western music, particularly pop.
> My favorite music is rock.
>2 Both my children are bi-cultural. And like any Indian American kids being

raised in the U.S. They eat pizza, bugger and chapattrﬂ with relish.

>2 There is no formal dining in our house and everyone is left to do whatever
they want. I eat at home around three to four times a week I hear all sorts of
music, particularly hip-hop. 1 date everybody across race and ethnicity. My
last girl friend was a white American.

> We eat 75 percent of time Indian food I love steaks. I love sushi. We watch a
lot of American T. V. I watch Jay Leno show every night.

> I purchase my business casual in the U.S. and wear them in India, U.S. or
elsewhere in Europe for client meetings.

> I wear anything that is comfortable.

 

The transnational interviewees’ symbolic connection of with Indian food and dress as
powerful sites for the construction of Indianness has undergone a major transformation,
contrasting with the experiences of ﬁrst generation settled immigrant parents. The settled
immigrant parents prescribed selective assimilation for their children, hoping by retaining
cultural differences in private and selectively presenting them in public would enhance
the mobility of their children despite a minority status in the United States. The
transnational entrepreneurs—except for the nonmigrant—who too were ﬁrst generation
immigrants to the United States, made efforts to integrate into multicultural American
society by cultivating salient ethnic identities. The transnational parents did not want

their children to be part of the “post-ethnic” America in which group differences are

 

3‘ Indian bread

262

voluntary and secondary (Hollinger 1995 cited in Dhingra 200724). In other words, the
responses from the respondents indicate that they did not feel the pressure of “going
native” or “becoming a practicing Hindu”—a necessary aspect to counter-assimilative

forces or ﬁnding a place in multiculturist American society, as found in research on

Indian immigrant community in the United States by Kurien (2004)32 and others. The
thick web of transnational networks and institutions in which these families were
embedded created a multi-layered social framework for a distinctive kind of transnational
meaning and culture to thrive, which I argue was made possible by the majority
American culture’s selective tolerance of ethnic differences in the last two to three
decades.

“I have become a potpourri of cultures . . . ”

After having mapped the various meanings and emotional attachments of the
transnational entrepreneurs who associate their civic and personal engagement with their
roles as transnational businesspersons, I asked them to share their self perception or how
they deﬁned themselves ultimately given the ﬂuidity of their multi-local lives. The self-
descriptive responses were related to their present citizenship status and to their
possession of current passport(s). Here are a few illustrations:

Table No. 6-2: Self-deﬁnition based on Citizenship (sic):

 

I am a proud American.

I am an American of Indian origin.

I am an American citizen but choose to live in India.
I am an Indian.

I think myself to be global-Indian.

VVVVV

 

32 . . . . . . .
Kunen’s (2004) study states that “Hrnduness” among Hmdu Indian Americans IS the major reason for
construction of their identity in a multicultural American society and the recent rise of ethnic nationalism.

263

>2 I did not choose to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, so that makes me
an Indian-American.

> I am a Canadian-Americanﬁ'om Assam”

> I had a British passport. Now I am American.

 

For the respondents, the scope, power, and possibilities that citizenship status of a
particular state could offer in realizing their aspirations for a transnational life was of
phenomenal signiﬁcance. Partho Ganguli deﬁnes this as “living life in my terms, and the
power to make choices.” It also meant enabling macro political and legal structures,
which have been put in place to make optimum use of entrepreneurs’ potentials for cross
border business activities. The following pie-chart is indicative of the signiﬁcance of U.S.
citizenship and membership of the India state in the lives of 42 transnational respondents,

where 69% percent of immigrant and retumee transnational entrepreneurs were

naturalized citizens of the United States and 31 percent are Indian citizens34

 

3 . .
3 Name of a state in the eastern part of Indra.

34 The propensity to become naturalize U.S. citizens by the respondents of this study is reﬂective of the
naturalization trends among different nationalities in the United States in the past couple of years. Indians
are the second most important source of new U.S. citizens after Mexicans. 46, 871 Indians became
naturalized U.S. citizens in 2007, which was a 7.1% increase from 2006. Indians were followed by
Filipinos and Chinese in third and fourth places in 2007 (Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2007). One of
the reasons for the continuous upsurge among Indians to embrace U.S. citizenship is the change in stance
by the Indian government toward their expatriates and the introduction of dual membership of the Indian
state which removes the disincentive for Indians to become U.S. citizens (Portes & Rumbaut 2006: 140-
143).

264

Figure No. 6-1: Distribution of Citizenship and OCI/ P10
card of India among the Respondents

    

9
21%

I Only us. Ciizenship
7 . n Only Indian Ciizenship

LluSCiizensh‘pand OCTPIO amen? E

My notion is that the contemporary immigrant and retumee transnational Indian
entrepreneurs, above all, drew upon their U.S. citizenshipsS—which can also be described
as transnational citizenship—by claiming economic and cultural membership in
American and Indian communities as explained earlier. It facilitated embracing a
distinctive cosmopolitan lifestyle, deﬁned by Hannerz as “largely a matter of assimilating
items of some distant provenance into a fundamentally local culture” (19962103), which
shaped their self perception. Describing the same phenomenon as “dynamic transnational
syncretism,” Faist (2000) mentions how the immense ease of using communication

”36

technology encourages the transportation of “social” and “symbolic ties by immigrants

 

35 Fox (2005:188-195) makes a distinction between “transnational” citizenship and “global” citizenship.
Transnational citizenship is membership in political communities that are not limited to nation-states.
These are cross-border communities that are not global in scope. It can also be referred to as bi-local or bi-
national, relationships that are quite bounded in terms of speciﬁc political conrrnunities (not necessarily
nation-states). Cosmopolitan citizenship does not necessarily have a cross-border dimension, in terms of
either community membership or rights.

6 F aist (2000:191-194) describes ties as transnational links. These transnational links can be of an
informal nature and institutionalized nature. As example of informal tie would be intra-household or family

265

into host countries. This increases the potential of Old cultural patterns to synthesize with
the new ones of the host country giving rise to “syncretist” practices and hyphenated
collective identities. In this way, migrants (re)negotiate relations between old and new
realities.

What’s more, the predominance of dual national membership among transnational
entrepreneurs supports F aist’s Observation that “transnational cultural syncretism” is not
“located on a magic carpet of a deterritorialized space of ﬂow. It only makes sense [to
immigrants and returnees] when tied to speciﬁc spaces in different nations. It is not a
notion above nation-states but a combination of both the inside and the between”
(20002218). Therefore, the legal provision of U.S. citizenship and membership in the
Indian state via OCI/PIO cards facilitated transnational economic activities and played a
central role in the production of cosmopolitan Indian American37 identity among the
transnational immigrants and retumee entrepreneurs.

The case was slightly different with the nonmigrant entrepreneurs, who had a
different self-perception because they could not avail themselves of dual state
memberships. Consequently, this group of entrepreneurs interpreted the pro-business
Indian policies—especially from the 19905—to have empowered them to articulate their
potential as transnational entrepreneurs. Their concerns were to be dealt with exclusively

through national policies. They perceived themselves to be culturally grounded within

 

ties. An example of an institutionalized tie would be political parties entertaining branches in various
countries of emigration and immigration. Resources inherent to social and symbolic ties make them
different. Symbolic ties do not depend on face-to-face contact and are therefore easier to transfer between
nations. Social ties depend primarily on local assets such as language or a distinct cultural ideological
outlook and therefore are more resilient to transfer unless forced into motion by macro structural forces
such as international labor recruitment.

37 . . . . . . . . .

I have chosen thrs term to denote multiple identrtles of rmmlgrant and retumee Indian transnatlonal
entrepreneurs. This is not the same as hyphenated identity, e. g. Indian-American or Mexican-American, nor
do they represent hybrid culture.

266

Indian society. Risks and solutions for their transnational business activities were
conceived within national borders by exercising their national rights and duties, which
was appropriate for all citizens of India. They described themselves to be Indians, but

zealously cultivated a global perspective. Many declared themselves to be “global

Indians.” Their path to cosmopolitan citizenship38 was different from the transnational
citizenship of immigrants and retumee entrepreneurs had taken more of an indigenous
route.

Summary and Conclusions:

In this chapter, I elucidated how the enabling macro legal environment of U.S.
citizenship, along with membership in the Indian state, presented opportunities for the
transnational respondents to express their sentiments Of nationalism. Access to both
mainstream American culture and their Indian cultural heritage—which I categorized as
“patterns of socialibility”—provided the freedom to make personal choices and shape
their identities.

As a result, the selﬂrood of the interviewees is contextual, where nations continue to
be extremely important but social life is not conﬁned by national boundaries (Gold
20042331; Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004)”. Multiple factors generate their evolved
identity: formal education, citizenship, class, age, skills in employing and manipulating
cultural artifacts, membership in various networks, gender, political status as immigrants

(or as returnees or nonmigrant), and direct and concrete knowledge of different

 

38 Bloemraad et al. (20082168) states the cosmopolitan citizenship links status to persons rather than to
territory, raising questions about how to secure rights that are overwhelmingly guaranteed by states, as in
the case of dual citizenship or in multi-state membership.

39 To cite Bloemraad (20082154) “Nation-states continue to hold substantial power over the formal rules
and rights of citizenship and to shape the institutions that provide differentiated access to participation and
belonging, with important consequences for immigrants’ incorporation and equality."

267

cultures—such as an awareness of work ethnics in American and Indian work culture.
Particularly for the immigrant and retumee transnational entrepreneurs, it can be also be
understood as a process of what Morawska (2003) calls economic “transnationalirn cum
assimilation”.

The transnational entrepreneurs of this study participated equally in American and
Indian cultural, political, economic, and other social organizations—reﬂecting their
overlapping attachments. Thus, my ﬁndings contradict the assertions by critics of dual
citizenship or multi-state membership that loyalties are necessarily tied to a single
citizenship (Miller 2000; Renshon 2001). The transnational entrepreneurs in my research
were involved in local issues and concerns, and concurrently in a dynamic process of
networking that extended across multiple nations. This is in keeping with the ﬁndings of
extensive research by the Oxford Transnational communities program (Levitt 20042105-
06), as well as the Leitner & Ehrkamp (2006) study on migrant and refugee communities
in the United States and Germany. The identities of interviewees were reﬂective of the
experience gathered in the multiple habitats that formed their cultural repository, which
inﬂuenced the re-articulation of their identity (V ertovec (20012578). The multiple
contexts created what some have referred to as “transnational social ﬁeld” (Levitt &
Glick Schiller 2004), “transnational social space” (Pries 1999), or “translocality”
(Appadurai 1995)—in which the transnational entrepreneurs could feel a sense of
connection to their actions.

Finally, their identity as transnationals cultivated a unique cosmopolitan culture,
which above all provided them with mediating possibilities. The cosmopolitan culture

served as a bridgehead for entry into other territorial cultures, providing opportunities to

268

connect with the meanings of others’ lives and to gradually incorporate this experience
into their own personal perspective (Hannerz 19962107). This form of making sense of
identity by transnational entrepreneurs offers additional ways of thinking about
immigrant adaptation and considering stratiﬁcation. In place of dominant theories of
adaptation, like segmented assimilation (Portes and Zhou 1993), reactive ethnicity (Portes
and Rumbaut 2001), and pan-ethnicity (Espiritu l992)——which allow for migrants to have
multiple identities—I believe that transnational migrants separate both what their
identities mean and where they are performed. The formation of identity by transnational
entrepreneurs was not based on preference or aversion to one category over another, but

on constant conversation between IW0 01' more cultures.

269

Chapter — 7
Conclusions

The chapters of this dissertation have explored the different forms of capital—
cultural, social, and human—and the networks that Indian immigrant, retumee, and
nonmigrant entrepreneurs in the United States and in India used to achieve their goal of

transnational entrepreneurship.

My research highlighted how, for highly-skilledl Indian transnational entrepreneurs,
cultural capital from their class backgrounds and their education and employment in both
countries contributed to the conﬁguration of networks that functioned as a source of
social capital. As individuals or as members of a social unit, the Indian entrepreneurs
mobilized the actual and potential resources in network relationships for advancing their
cross-border business activities. I found that transnational entrepreneurship was perceived
as an attractive and viable opportunity for career growth by resource-rich and
accomplished Indian immigrants in the United States and nonmigrant in India—no less
than it has been for less-skilled and unskilled migrant entrepreneurs in the United States.
It also conﬁrmed that different types of transnational networking affect business
performance and survival, a topic that has received scant attention because ethnicity has
been considered the main actor in the networking-performance relationship. These
ﬁndings in my research therefore ﬁll important gaps in the existing literature of economic

transnational practices.

 

I The accepted marker of “skill” is either educational level or occupation. The economist opts for
education, while sociologist and demographers prefer occupation (Borjas 2003; Bouvier and Simcox 1994
cited in Batalova and Lowell 2006286).

270

My research established that what really matters are the relational (norms and ties)
and structural (size, diversity, density, and connectivity) aspects of social networks to
which transnational entrepreneurs have access, along with investment policies and market
Opportunities in the host and home country. Country-speciﬁc factors account for the
differences in the scope and level of economic transnational activities. One example is
the Indian government’s development of Software Technology Parks in 1991, intended to
ensure infrastructure and administrative support for software exports from India. This
government program was aimed at encouraging Indian entrepreneurs to return from the
United States and other advanced countries, and ensuring their prosperity after their
return to India. Guellec & Cervantes (2002), state that the Korean government developed
strong initiatives to foster a research and development environment and infrastructure to
lure Korean migrants back from abroad.

Further, empirical studies by Gold & Kibria (1993); Gold (1994); Kyle (1994); and
Landolt et al. (1999) have found that less-skilled immigrants groups who arrive in the
United States without the resources—education, language skills, and/or professional
skills—necessary for economic assimilation into the mainstream American society
activate their extensive web of social networks. This provides them with alternative, and
more liberating ways, of earning an income. Within immigration literature this has
popularly been referred to as a process that is occurring from “below”, resisting macro
economic forces of globalization (Potes 2000:257-259; Smith and Guarnizo 1998). In
contrast, the results of my study highlighted that their option for transnational business
was associated with two aspects of economic globalization: (a) the ease and increase in

the international ﬂow of ﬁnancial capital and (b) the intensity of interconnectedness of

271

labor migration and markets (F ong & Luk 200728). The entrepreneurial actions for the
respondents of this study were a means by which to ﬁrrther consolidate their economic
resources. This was not a consequence of poverty or the recency of their arrival to the
United States, as in Potes et al.’s (2002) research on Colombian, Dominican, and
Salvadorian migrants in the United States.

As a result of the inclination for studies of the less-skilled immigrants groups, partly
caused by geographical proximity between the country of origin (Latin American and
Caribbean countries) and destination (United States), the existing literature on economic
transnationalism in the United States suffers from a relative lack of ethnographic research
on skilled migrant entrepreneurs. Exceptions are Gold’s (2002) research on Israeli
transnationals, Saxenian’s (2006) and Biradavolu’s (2008) studies on Indian technology
transnational entrepreneurs, and Zhou & Tseng’s (2002) and David Ip’s (2007) study on
Chinese immigrant transnational entrepreneurs in the United States and Australia
respectively. Meaningful insights into the signiﬁcance of networks among resource and
capital rich transnational entrepreneurs are needed, and recognition that the types of
networks that economic transnationals utilize are likely to differ between socioeconomic
classes.

My research on skilled and mobile Indian transnational entrepreneurs is a
contribution in ﬁlling this lacuna. It develops an all-inclusive image of economic
transnational practices engaged in by a variety of actors in both sending and receiving
countries. The ﬁndings of this research can be regarded as “transnationalism from above”
initiated by accomplished Indian transnational actors by their daily activities and in social

relationships (resembling happenings of the low-skilled transnational migrants in

272

numerous ways). These transnational relationships are not shaped by multi-national
corporations, media, or by international public institutions and their policies that

transcend state borders (Mahler 1998267).

Further, the ﬁndings of my research respond to the limitations of macro-biases in the

neo-classical and the world system theory2 in understanding operations of global
businesses and the mobility of highly-skilled and resourceful entrepreneurs, by adopting
an “agent-centered” study of transnational networks. The network perspective allows for
considering both the enabling and constraining impact of societal structures, as well as
the agency of the transnational actor as the principal initiator—as member of a variety Of
networks—Of global ﬂows of capital, commodities, knowledge, and information. Thus,
by assessing a conﬂuence of multiple factors and relationships, as opposed to focusing on
a single level analysis (for instance, the efforts to liberalize citizenship conditions by the
Indian government and how it affected the agency for transnational entrepreneurship), the
network-based approach provides for macro, meso and micro level analysis of the
stratiﬁcation within and across fundamental social categories of transnational
entrepreneurs (Gold 20052258). For example, class, age, religious and ethnic afﬁliations,
levels of education, tiers of educational institutions, rural/urban locations within India,
and legal status played a major role in terms of rewards, achievements, success,
responsibilities, and division of labor among transnational entrepreneurs.

The conclusions of this research also made clear how immigrants, retumee, and

nonmigrants conceptualized their transnational experience. The respondents of the study

 

The neo—classrcal View takes wage drfferentlals as the prlme determmlng cause for migration, whereas

World System theory argues that migration is caused by the consequences of market creation and the
structure of the global economy (Gold 20052258).

273

moved their understanding of the process beyond the assimilationist agenda of the host
societies to include those who do not actually migrate but are connected to migrants
through the networks of social relations that are maintained across national borders.
Perceiving migration to the United States to be a temporary move, the transnational
entrepreneurs challenged the zero-sum assumption underlying the “brain gain/drain”
debate, which understates the back and forth movement of ideas, ﬁnance/remittances,
skill sets, information, and goods. This back and forth movement between the home and
host country by transnational entrepreneurs and the complex interconnectivity they
maintained to their region and localities of origin both in the United States and India
drew attention to how transnational processes are mediated by local conditions,
expressions, and institutions. My research established the unique spatial setting or the
groundedness of “place” in the economic transnational activities of Indian entrepreneurs.
Dismissed is the perception of contemporary transnational practices as beyond the
purview of nations. Ong & Nonini (1997210) and Orrg (1999) characterize this as
“boundless”—a liberatory process to be enjoyed by mobile and networked population, in
pursuit of ﬂexible accumulation of wealth and resources.

My study has brought awareness to the place-making projects of forces such as
capitalism from the perspective of those who make globalism and transnationalism
happen, rather than from the perspective of those who are made by the process. I consider
my empirical ﬁndings among Indian transnational entrepreneurs—who underscored that
local resources and their individual mooring to a particular place in the home and host
countries were required for economic transnational practices—to be a major contribution

of this research. While similar conclusions were reached from research studies on various

274

transnational sub-populations in the United States and Canada (Fong & Luk 2007; Zhou
& Tseng 2002; Gold 2002; Guarnizo & Smith 1998), this element of Indian transnational
entrepreneurship is important, as each ethnic group possesses characteristics that make
them unique.

A Review of Chapter Findings:

The analysis of data in the chapter titled “When Imagination becomes Reality” clearly
demonstrates the beneﬁts of cultural capital in transnational ventures. The respondents of
the study were members of privileged economic and social classes in India in the 19603,
19705, and 19803. They had attended English medium schools, and later attended either
prestigious or better institutions of higher education as undergraduates in India Their
middle and upper social class backgrounds cultivated a mental disposition or habitus that
assigned a high valuation for U.S. graduate education, mainly in engineering,
management, and sciences, as well as necessary social skills and sensibilities from
western and Indian cultures. The high regard for western technical education among the
transnational respondents was further reinforced by the all-pervading culture of global
articulations of higher education in the universities and colleges in India, which proved to
be a powerful source of motivation for the entrepreneurs to migrate to the United States

For the majority of the respondents, simply possessing the right educational
qualiﬁcations and skill sets (human capital) was not enough for initial migration or for
deciding on the appropriate American university for graduate studies. Additional social
capital in friendship and family ties was therefore garnered from established migration
channels. These included undergraduate college peers from India as well as family

members and close friends in the United States. Thus, the cultural and social context of

275

pre-migration played an important role in the speciﬁc opportunities and constraints that
were available to dissimilar groups of entrepreneurs for transnational activities in the
United States. For instance, in the case of entrepreneurs in the material goods sector, the
ﬁnancial credit and business support was extended to intra-ethnic entrepreneurs. In
another example, in the technology domain, industry leaders provided legitimacy to the
innovative business enterprises of younger entrepreneurs. This ﬁt between the particular
resource characteristic of each entrepreneur group and the social capital that was
available in transnational networks in the United States and in India was guided by a
sense of common meaning that had been developed through a shared history of
interactions. This shared history played a signiﬁcant role in immigrant entrepreneurs’
decision to engage in transnational business (Gaurnizo & Smith 1998213). Extensive
micro-level evidence of the socio-economic circumstances of the entrepreneru's in
India—and how that shaped the formation of pre-migratory network structures—is a
major contribution of this study. These ﬁndings move beyond the limited endeavor of
analyzing from only one location how transnational networks operate, as in many studies
on transnational and migratory networks: e. g. Menjivar (1997); Bagchi (2001); Harvey
(2008); Poros (2001).

My effort was to show how senior and junior immigrant transnational entrepreneurs
in two sectors (technology and material goods) with different resource content (cultural,
social, and human capital) provided examples of their process of migration to the United
States. Iater, their individual experiences of labor market integration in the United States,
access to ﬁnancial credit, religious community affiliation, and post-migration cultural

adaptation to the American society yielded further contributors to their transnational

276

network conﬁguration. The ﬁndings also brought to light the usage of varied types of ties
in different combinations: occupation-based weak ties, trust-based strong ties, bridging
ties, ambiguous ties, organizational, familial and friendship ties. My investigation
concludes that on the whole and irrespective of variation of resource content in the
entrepreneurial categories, business people in both sectors located in the United States
tended to use both strong and weak ties, and exploit structural holes in their networks as a
source for business information and contacts.

It would be wrong to say that highly skilled entrepreneurs—who were professionals
befOre their transition to entrepreneurs—preferred or relied exclusively on weak ties or
on structural holes as has been generally asserted in earlier research (Granovetter 1973,
1995; Nan Lin 2001; Burt 1992; Wang & Salaaf 1998). These authors ague that weak
ties—those ties which extend beyond the individual’s immediate social circles—provided
access to unique inﬂuences and increased the efficiency of information through
minimizing redundancy. In the context of this research I found the boundaries of strong
and weak ties for immigrant transnational entrepreneurs were blurred. What mattered
more was the arrangement of the network, the position of the entrepreneur in the network,
and the context in which social relationships were formed.

In the chapter titled “The Game Changers” I focused on two important aspects of
entrepreneurial networks: the longitudinal development of network structure that enabled
the return migration of technology entrepreneurs from the United States to India, and the
role of inclusive global networks for entrepreneurs with uneven distribution of social and

human capital.

277

Evidence illustrated that the expansion of structural and relational aspects of business
networks by Indian immigrant entrepreneurs was done with a deep sense of conviction
and commitment. There was an abiding awareness among senior and contemporary
entrepreneurs—regardless of their territorial location—Of the rewards and beneﬁts of the
social capital embedded within a wide range of network relationships, including
collectives of college and university peers, work colleagues, friends, family members,
business associates, and vendors. These networks would provide the latest business
information, contacts, and knowledge that was critically needed to advance their cross-
border enterprises.

Towards the same end, the migratory channels and peer solidarity among the alumni
of undergraduate institutions in India provided the foundation for the creation and
longitudinal expansion of networks. Over time these emerged as intermediary
transnational organizations at the meso-level for Indian technology entrepreneurs in both
countries to access common intellectual capital. Consider for example the Pan IIT
networks, TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), and SIPA (Silicon Valley Indian Professional
Association). Further, the ﬁndings emphasized that social capital facilitated the
development of intellectual capital in such organizations by inﬂuencing the conditions
necessary for the process of symbiotic exchange of knowledge and experiences by
different actors. For instance, dyad or triad team entrepreneurships among retumee
entrepreneurs were formed by strong trust-based ties with college peers or family
members with whom the technology entrepreneurs shared an on-going personal

relationship and a history of interaction (Granovetter 1992). Similarly, organizations such

278

as TiE or SIPA materialized from a common social context Of Indian immigrants in the
United States.

In addition, the ﬁndings brought attention to the effects of the changes to macro-
economic policy during the l990s in India. These included market-ﬁiendly policies,
removal of licenses on imports of industrial equipments, and tax exemptions for ﬁve
years in designated zones for export-oriented software ﬁrms. These had very signiﬁcant
impacts on individual network usage of meso-level intermediary collectives, particularly
among IIT alumni retumee entrepreneurs for whom the Pan IIT network facilitated a
smooth transition into successful entrepreneurship in India.

My analysis discovered that macro economic structural changes in India affected
entrepreneurs differently depending on their personal endowment of social and human
capital. For example the nonmigrant entrepreneurs in the material goods sector, who had
relatively lower levels of human capital, had no access into the U.S. market by means of
established transnational, ethnicized, or college peer networks of technology
entrepreneurs. To take advantage of the economic reform policies of the 1990s and to
become globally competitive, this group of entrepreneurs relied heavily on the cultural
capital of membership in the privileged class in India, and on their membership in
international trade-based organizations. Deprived of transnational peer group support and
therefore resource scarce, these entrepreneurs counted heavily on weak ties in trade- or
interest-based global networks. Therefore, weak ties were a means of entry into the U.S.
market for entrepreneurs in the material goods sector in India. This ﬁnding afﬁrms Nan

Lin’s (2001) argument that social relations with weak ties were decisive in helping

279

entrepreneurs dealing in material goods in India to secure information they did not
already have.

In conclusion, network usage varied depending on individual characteristic of the
entrepreneur, geographical location of the enterprise, and existing migratory channels. -
Usage also underscored that networks are ﬂexible and subject to change over time. In
general then I found how important it is to differentiate among the different social
contexts and instances that lead to diverse patterns in transnational entrepreneurship, and
consequently to a variety of network conﬁgurations and usage.

In the chapter “Life between Two Worlds - Re-articulating Identity as
Transnational Entrepreneurs” I sought to deal with the issues of recent changes in
Indian citizenship laws and policies that affected the self-perception and day-to-day
lives of immigrant transnational entrepreneurs, many of whom were retrunees to
India. To further analyze the beneﬁts of multi-state membership of immigrant and
retumee entrepreneurs and its impact on their self-perception, I contrasted their
experiences with the nonmigrant entrepreneurs in India who did not beneﬁt from this
legislative provision.

I analyzed the ways in which immigrant and returnees have employed their dual
state membership of the United States and India as a social practice——that is, by
engaging in civic and personal actions across national boundaries—in formulating
their unique identity. In particular, I examined their transnational expressions of
national loyalties and patterns of sociability associated with or generated by their
transnational business actions that had brought a new meaning to their lives, and

thereby had altered their self-perception. My inquiry revealed that the immigrant and

280

retumee respondents considered themselves assimilated into American society, while
they deeply valued their distinct Indian identity.

The results indicated that for the immigrant and retumee businesspeople, their
American and Indian experiences were not perceived as binary opposites, nor were
they thought of as sequential or linear, but rather as the “simultaneity of
connections” (Levitt 2004; Leitner & Ehrkamp 2006). For example, the association
of comfort food and dress from all of the world, or celebration of Hindu (Diwali)
along with non-Hindu (i.e. Thanksgiving and Christmas) festivals for entrepreneurs’
families functioned as powerful sites of cultural reproduction. Such representations
were in sharp contrast to the efforts of the settled migrant Indian-American
community, who have felt a clear need and desire to maintain distinct cultural
boundaries from mainstream American culture. Bhalla’s (20062123) research on
letters to the editor of the expatriate Indian newspaper India Abroad illustrates the
aversion the settled American-Indian population has felt towards American values,
as well as their reasons for not assimilating—American society is described as a
depraved society going astray and Indian values are considered right and moral.

Moreover, by moving away from the religious Hindu construction of Indian
identity, as has been the practice of the settled Indian immigrants in the United States
(Kurien 2004), the transnational entrepreneurs wove a very different identity for
themselves and their families that complemented their multi-local and mobile lives.
By participating in the transnational space, the entrepreneurs and their families found
others—by way of global ﬁiendship and family networks—who interacted with them

in “terms of specialized, but collectively held understanding” (Hannerz 19962107).

281

This developed in them a cosmopolitan orientation and multiple “habitats of
meaning” not territorially limited (ibid). The immigrant and retumee entrepreneurs in
my study did not display an inclination to transport culture between home and host
countries. This is in contrast to migrant and diasporic members who generally bring
their culture when they move overseas, and afterward remain encapsulated in the
kinship, family, village, or ethnic/national communities constructed in the host and
other diasporic locations (Basch et al. 1997; Cohen 1997 cited in Gold 200222).
Overall, in my research I found no obvious differences in patterns of sociability and
life style between the three categories of transnational entrepreneurs, despite age and
business sector differences, in both countries in their construction of transnational
identity. This could be because they all inhabited similar transnational cultural and
social spaces, which could have been a reﬂection of their economic class.

However, the entrepreneurs differed in their expressions of loyalty to India. The
expansion in the legal status of Indian citizenship, which was accompanied by more
changes in the non-resident investment policies in India, evoked different nationalistic
emotions from immigrant and nonmigrant entrepreneurs. For the non-resident and
retumee entrepreneurs, the policy changes were seen to have Opened up opportunities for
transnational economic engagements and to justify their public display of longing for the
home country. For the nonmi grant entrepreneur who had never felt a hiatus in expressing
nationalistic affiliations, the changes were merely perceived as a chance to make their
business efforts more redistributive by linking small rural towns and villages to the global
markets. I found the rural-urban character of entrepreneurs’ transnational businesses—

with technology enterprises creating employment in urban centers, and material good

282

businesses engaged in job creation in rural India—underlies their personal understanding
of patriotic feelings and obligations to the development of India as a poor country, while
being engaged in transnational business.

Hence, present citizenship status had come to represent rights and privileges of
expressing nationalistic aspirations, as well as their identity as Indian American, Global
Indian or as American with Indian origin. Nonetheless, all three categories of
entrepreneurs shared the common desire to improve the overall quality of life of their
fellow nationals, primarily through job creation.

The ﬁndings of changes in personal identity brought on by transnational life have
important implications for the study of economic transnational activities among South
Asian Indians in other diasporic locations. First, the research confnmed the outcome of
other studies, for instance Lieitner & Ehrkamp’s (2006) work on Turkish and Kurdish
immigrants in Germany and among various African and Asian immigrant groups in the
United States, and Gold’s research (2002) among Israeli immigrants in several cities in
the United States, Europe, and South Aﬁica. Public expressions of nationalism were
found to co-exist with acts of commitment and allegiance to American society, which
included transnational actions directed towards progress in both countries. The ﬁndings
therefore disagreed with the arguments that multiple allegiances and citizenship act as
obstacles to the integration of immigrants into the host society, undermining the host
country’s national identity (Renshon 2001; Miller 2000). Second, the results established
that, although multi-state membership of India and American citizenship challenged the
conceptions of bounded national citizenship (Urry 1999:312-13), it did not automatically

entail Soysal’s (1994) notion of de-territorialization or post-national form of citizenship

283

and of identities. The re-articulation of identity by Indian transnational entrepreneurs was
contextual to Indian and American experiences, highlighting the constraints and
opportunities that contextuality of multi-state membership imposes (Gold 20042331;
Guarnizo and Smith 1998211; Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004).

Finally, the ﬁndings of my study revealed the structures in the Indian society that lie
beneath the social capital made available in the transnational networks for these Indian
entrepreneurs. It sheds light empirically on the cultural context of class—beyond
Bourdieu’s (1986) French society and the West—that conditions transnational
stratiﬁcation.

Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research:

My study provides remarkable insights into the migratory and transnational practices
of a subpopulation, but it does not allow for reasonable generalizations of transnational
entrepreneurship initiated by skilled and accomplished immigrants and returnees between
newly developing nations who now position themselves as both emigrant sending and
immigrant receiving countries. These nations include China, India, Israel, and Taiwan
(Wadhwa et al. 2009; Chacko 2007; Ramji 2006; Gold 2007; Saxenian 2008; 2006; 2005)
as well as traditionally immigrant-receiving countries, like the United States, Australia,
and Canada. An extensive and comparative analysis of large data sets that would include
comparisons of patterns of immigration and return between sending and receiving
countries—across class and supplemented with speciﬁc case studies—would provide
opportunities for developing generalized theories that are not limited the transnational
actions and practices at the lower end of the labor market. Such subjects for future

research could capture the dramatic changes in international migration and transnational

284

activities for all the countries involved in the global circulation of labor and population,
which would help explain the changes in the proﬁles, perceptions, and actions of
contemporary transnational migrants.

The second major limitation Of my study has been the lack of sufﬁcient information
on women transnational entrepreneurs. As do their male counterparts, they possess a high
level of cultural, human and social capital just like male counterparts. Purkayastha
(20052194) argues that a focus on the “individual” as a category elides the complex ways
in which women are helped or disadvantaged in their efforts to become or continue as
transnational entrepreneurs. In this way, my focus on individuals limits the research.
Such an examination would entail further research in analyzing the competing interests
and power differences within transnational households. This was evident during the data
collection phase of this study, when potential women respondents had to discontinue their
entrepreneurship. SO, future investigations might focus on struggles to balance the
demands of entrepreneurial and family life by highly skilled women, a feature which is
not unique to Asian Indian women alone. This would expose the variety of barriers that
women—despite their skill levels—have to contend with to establish their transnational
business. In addition, studies illustrating the differences and similarities in the use of
different forms of capital and networks between the sexes to promote transnational
entrepreneurship would greatly add value to the existing knowledge of immigrant
transnational networks, particularly of those who possess a high volume of class-related
cultural and human capital.

Also, more focused studies on women and gendered transnational entrepreneurship

among the skilled immigrant population would narrow the gap in the existing literature,

285

where most studies on migrant and nonmigrant women’s transnational activities have
been on less or low-skilled and undocumented immigrants. This literature includes
Hondagneu-Sotello’s (2007; 1997) research on Latina immigrant domestic workers from
diverse national origins in southern California who work as nanny/housekeeper/house
cleaners and whose remittances support their families and children in their home
countries. Additional studies are, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas (2001) work on Filipina
domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles, and Carla Freeman’s (2000) work on
Barbadian informatic workers who travel between New York and the Caribbean.
Empirical studies on the transnational entrepreneurship of highly skilled women will help
develop a more complete picture of transnational labor movement, employment, and
business in a globalized world.

Future research could also be done on the ways in which employees of transnational
entrepreneurs make sense of the scalar and spatial dimensions of the workplace by
attributing meaning and qualities, such as dangerous or safe, ours or theirs, new or old,
accessible or inaccessible, to the material and social elements in workplaces. Such a
study would highlight the ongoing practical and discursive production of workers, as well
as their agency as initiators, transformers, and reﬁners of transnational workplaces in
urban and semi-urban settings. Work locations would be studied not merely as a setting

or a backdrop, but an agentic force, with Obvious and independent effects on social life.

286

Appendix No. — 1: Invitation Letter to the Study Respondents.
Date:
Dear .................. ,

I am Manashi Ray, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, writing to request
your kind participation in my research as a respondent. (My advisor Prof. Steve Gold’s
letter and research clearance are attached.)

The respondents of my doctoral thesis entitled ‘A Study of Transnational Asian Indians
in a Borderless World, ’ comprise the special category of outstanding entrepreneurs or
business professionals such as you, who have succeeded in establishing enduring
business ventures between India and the U.S.

For my research, I have described transnational Indians to be people living in the U.S.,
who earn their livelihood by engaging in professional business activities between the U.S.
and India on a regular basis, and who often travel between these two countries. Although
these Indians may no longer reside in their home country, they do remain intensely
involved in the economic progress of India making it globally competitive. My doctoral
research investigates the role and inﬂuence of:

(a) Human capital (educational credentials) and
(b) Social capital (networks of family, friends, peers, professional
organizations, etc)

There is almost no in-depth research documenting the self-motivated actions of Indians,
who have actually been producing the global forces for the past two decades that make
globalization happen. In my research I would like to tell the story, and eventually publish
a book, about these exceptional individuals, who have remained invisible in the literature
on immigration and globalization.

I would be delighted to interview you for approximately 30 minutes within the next two
months at your convenience, either by telephone or in person at a time and date you
suggest. You could contact me directly either by email at Manashi.Rav@gmail.com. or
by phone at 517 - 355 - 8131 (home) or 517- 243 - 0925 (cell). I will follow up this
communication to conﬁrm your participation. I thank you in advance for your kind
consideration.

I look forward to hearing from you.
With regards and best wishes,
Manashi Ray

808 D Cherry Lane Apts.
East Lansing; MI, 48823

287

Appendix No. — 2: Letter of support from Academic Advisor

June 18‘“, 2007

To whom it may concern,

This letter is to introduce Manashi Ray. Ms. Ray is a serious and well trained sociologist
who is writing her PhD dissertation in sociology on Indian transnationals -- those persons
who draw on their social, economic and cultural ties to both India and the US to earn
their living.

This is an important area of research that will help both scholars and the public better
understand how our global society and economy functions. Manashi would like to
interview you to learn about your perspective on doing business in two societies. Your
participation will provide her with valuable insights into the human experience of this
process.

Thanks very much for your cooperation.

Yours Sincerely,

Steven J. Gold

Professor, Graduate Program Director and Associate Chair
Department of Sociology

316 Berkey Hall

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824-1111

USA

517-353-6352 (ofﬁce)
517-432-2856 (fax)

gold@msu.edu
hgp2//sociologv.msu.edWSgold.html

288

Appendix No. — 3 2 Interview Schedule for Data Collection

List of Question for Personal or Telephonic Interview

Note:

(i) The ‘Interview Questions’ which are to be addressed to all respondents have been
numbered.

(ii) The Questions in italics are ‘Probe’ Questions. They are not numbered.

(iii) The Questions with double stars before them are meant for a particular category of
respondents, for example immigrant transnationals in the US, transnational entrepreneurs
who were professionals earlier, women transnationals, and retumee transnationals These
questions are not numbered.

(iv) I have avoided using the term ‘transnational’ in my interview questions as it might
not be a commonly understood term among the respondents. It has been replaced with
‘global business’ or ‘business activities with the US or India’.

(v) In most cases I had ﬁlled out the data on Page 5 before the interview session from
information available on the web, or informally through contacts.

 

I. INFORMATION ON PLACE AND LEVEL OF EDUCATION

 

 

 

A: Common Questions for ALL Transnational Respondents in the U.S. and India
1. What is the name(s) of the institutions from which you graduated with an
undergraduate/ graduate degree?

2. What is the highest grade/fonn or educational degree you have completed?

3. How much importance / value did your family place on educational
achievement?

4. How about discrimination during your educational experience? If any, could
you please describe this discrimination?

5. How did your parents earn their livelihood?

6. Who paid for (ﬁnanced) your education? Were there multiple sources?

289

Was there a pressure to seek employment on completion of your undergraduate degree?
(Probe Question)

A.l: Questions for Immigrant Transnational Respondents in the U.S.

** Why did you migrate to the U.S.?

How did you make the decision to migrate? Was the migration decision made? Did you
have the emotional and/orfinancial support of your immediate family? (Probe Question)

7. How has your U.S education inﬂuenced on your professional business
activities with India? Please describe.

8. How has your U.S. work experience beneﬁted your professional business
activities with India? Could you please describe the beneﬁts?

Or, What are the trade-oﬁfs of having a U.S education/U. S. work experience for
conducting business activities with India?

Probe for advantages/disadvantages of the respondent ’s U. S. education on business
activities with India. Ask about disadvantages if only advantages are mentioned by the
respondent; similarly ask about advantages if only disadvantages are mentioned.

For instance (a) Do you think you would have engaged in professional business activities
of this type if you had not studied in the U. S. for your undergraduate/graduate
education? (Probe Question)

9. Why did you choose to pursue business activities with India?

Are you a U.S. citizen? (Probe Question)

A.2: Questions for Return Migrants from the U.S to India and Transnational
Respondents in India

** What was the primary reason for your return to India?
** How long were you in the U.S. before relocating to India?

Are you a U.S. citizen? Why did you initially migrate (to the U.S.)? Is it a permanent or
temporary relocation to India? (Probe Question).

- 10. How has your U.S education inﬂuenced your professional business activities
with India/U.S.? Please describe.

290

11. How has your U.S. work experience beneﬁted your professional business
activities with India/U.S.? Could you please describe the beneﬁts?

Probe for advantages/disadvantages of the respondent’s U. S education on business
activities with the U.S. Ask about disadvantages if only advantages are mentioned by the
respondent, similarly ask about advantages if only disadvantages are mentioned.

For instance (a) Do you think you would have engaged in professional business activities
of this type if you had not studied in the U.S. for your undergraduate/graduate

education? (Probe Question)

12. Why did you choose to pursue business activities with the U.S/India?

 

II. INFORMATION ON TERRITORIAL LOCATION (U.S. & INDIA)

 

 

 

13. Why did you [your company decide to have the headquarters of the
company in - India/U.S - for business activities with India/U.S?

(E.g. U.S./Indian policies which favor economic transnational activities with
India/U.S., advantage of infrastructural facilities, advantage of geographical time
difference between India and the U.S. etc.)

14. On average, how many trips do you make to India/U.S. each year for
business?

15. How does your OCI/PIO card of India and U.S. citizenship help in your global
business?

 

III. INFORMATION ON SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS

 

 

 

16. What is the nature, scope and history of your professional business
speciﬁcally with India/ the U.S.? (This question is optional if the information is not
available of the web.

17. Did you get help/assistance from anyone for your global business activities?
Particularly, with India] the U.S.?

- Yes/No

- If Yes. What kind of assistance?

291

(E.g. monetary assistance/capital, information about business/Job opportunities,
paid/unpaid family labor, beneﬁcial contacts for your transnational business
activities, knowledge and skill up-gradation workshops/seminars,
hardware/software, travel and emigration/naturalization documents etc.)

- From whom?

(E.g. Immediate and extended family, kin/ friends/ School/college/graduate
school alumni associations/ Ethnic, Social! Religious organizations! Professional
Associations/Organizations)

- When?

18. How did you receive the assistance/help for your business speciﬁcally with
India/ the U.S.?

(E.g. through face to face interactions at social/professional, fonnalﬁnformal
gatherings, travel or visits by family/friends/colleagues, e-mail communications,
telephone, or by using any kind of time compressing technological device like
vonage etc. )

19. Of your total business activities world wide, what is the proportion of your
Indian business?

20. Are there certain factors that have been especially important in your business
success? If so, what are/were they?

21. How would you perceive yourself operating on a regular basis across two
naﬂonalboundanes?

How does your present citizenship inﬂuence the construction of your identity? For a
Asian Indian immigrant transnational in the U.S/ U.S. citizen residing in India/ Indian
transnational in India (Probe Question)

** Do you want to maintain a sense of home/homeland or motherland? If so, how

22. How do you relax? With whom do you normally spend time to have fun/relax?
What percentage of your friends Indians?

23. What are your preferences of food/clothes/ music! entertainment] travel?

24. Do you discuss Indian versus American values with family members or
friends? Give me examples.

25. Does having an identity (American or Indian) come up in your conversation?

292

** Is there anything that you might like to say, which I may have overlooked?
(This question will depend on time and how forthcoming and relaxed the respondent was
during the interview session and to women respondents to explore the gender aspect).

 

IV. INFORMATION ON SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

 

 

 

1. Name

2. Male Female
3. Age

4. Religion

5. Caste

6. Marital Status:

7. Mailing address: (a) Home: (b) Office:

8. Occupation: (a) Self Employed/Entrepreneur
(b) Salaried employment
(c) Other
9. Name of the Company/Organization/ Institution:
10. Your Position/Title in the Company/Organization/Institution:

11 (i) For salaried employee: How long have you been working in this position?

1 1 (ii) For Self Employed/ Entrepreneur: How long have you been an entrepreneur or
Self-employed?

12. Your Citizenship(s)/ VISA Status:

13. Year of Migration to US: VISA status on ﬁrst time migration to US:

14. Number of children (Total): Boy(s) Girl(s)

15. Total number of family members living in the household:

293

Appendix - No. 4: Consent Form

CONSENT FORM

Hello! My name is Manashi Ray. I am a PhD candidate at the Department of
Sociology, Michigan State University. I am originally from Kolkata, India. At present I
am collecting primary data for my dissertation from Transnational Asian Indians in
United States and India on their economic transnational activities. By economic
transnational activities, I mean commercial activities and businesses of all sorts between
India and the U.S., transfer of skill-sets, technical know-how/expertise, capital and labor,
spanning across these two nations.

Speciﬁcally, I am trying to understand the inﬂuence of level and place of higher
education in the U.S. and India and its importance in the nature and scope of economic
transnational activities between these two nations. It will be of great value to the research
to have your responses and inputs to be included as part of my dissertation research.
Anything that you mention in this interview will be strictly conﬁdential. Your privacy
will be protected to the maximum extent allowable by law. Your name will not be used in
any transcript or any notes.

Participation in the study will involve a telephonic/face to face interview, which
will take around 30 minutes or at the most 40 minutes only. I will be taking hand written
notes of the interview. Because it would be impossible to write down all of your
responses in a complete and accurate manner, I would like to tape record your responses.
If you don’t want the interview to be tape recorded, you can still participate in the study.
You have the full freedom to refuse to answer any questions you feel uncomfortable with,

or to stop the interview at any time you wish. If you have any question about the content

294

of this study, I would encourage you to raise them at any time during this interview. Your
co-operation as a study participant is completely voluntary.

If you have any questions about the study, please contact the primary
investigators: Manashi Ray by phone at 517-355-8131 and email id: ramanas@,msu.edu
or Dr. Steven J. Gold by phone at 517- 353 — 6352 and email at gold@msu.edu or by
regular mail: 316, Berkey Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
48824.

In case you have questions or concerns about your rights as a research participant,
please feel free to contact Peter Vasilenko, PhD, Michigan State University’s director of
Hmnan Research Protection Programs, by phone : (517) 355 - 2180, fax: (517) 432 -

4503, email: irb@msu.edu or regular mail: 202 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824.

Do you consent to participate in this study? Yes .............. , No ................

Do you consent to be audio taped during this interview? Yes ........... , No .......

I remain grateﬁil for your co-operation, patience and assistance in advancing my

dissertation research. Thank you so very much in advance.

Signature ; Date

 

 

295

Appendix No. — 5: Software Technology Parks of India

The Software Technology Parks of India, commonly known as STPI was set up by the
Department of Communication & Information Technology, Government of India in 1991
to ensure infrastructure and administrative support for software exports from India. It is
similar to an export processing zone for software development and export. STPI
maintains internal engineering resources to provide consulting, training and
implementation services. It also gives export-oriented software ﬁrms in designated zones
tax exemptions for ﬁve years (Source: Software Technology Parks of India).

The Indian government, particularly the Department of Electronic (DOE) played an
important role in providing crucial data-communication infrastructure for software ﬁrms,
such as core computer facilities, reliable power, and ready to use ofﬁce space and
communications facilities including 64 Kbps data lines and Internet access. The ﬁrms in
the STPIs are allowed to import all equipment without duty or import licenses, and 100
percent foreign ownership is allowed in exchange for a sizable export (Saxenian 2000).

The establishment of STPIs is considered to be the main force in shifting to provide
offshore services from India and for gradually moving away from ‘body shopping’
practices of providing inexpensive hourly labor for low value added programming
services (coding and testing) at customer sites, primarily in the U.S. (Parthasarathy and
Aoyama 2006: 1270-71; Saxenian 2000). The STPI ﬁrms have the permission to freely
repatriate capital investment, royalties and dividends after paying the necessary taxes. It
also provides for a single window clearance mechanism for applications from potential
investors.

STPIs have a presence in many of the major cities of India, including the cities of
Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Noida, Mumbai, Kolkata,
Kanpur, Lucknow, Dehradun, Patna, Ranchi, Gandhinagar etc.

To summarize, the economic policy reforms of the 19805 encouraged the export oriented
software industry in India. But, during the decade of the 19808 it was based exclusively
on body shopping on-site. This changed to off shore production with more reforms in the
early 19903, particularly with the removal of licenses on imports of industrial equipments
and the establishments of STPIs in India (Saxenian 2000). For more information see
Parthasarathy and Aoyama (2006).

National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM)

The high proﬁle software industry’s association NASSCOM, plays a signiﬁcant role in
shaping the policies for the software industry in India. No other older Indian industries or
the computer hardware industry in India has a similar powerful industry association.
NASSCOM contributes in shaping Department of Electronic (DoE) strategy of working
with software companies to provide critical infrastructure, while avoiding being involved
in more detailed regulations and interventions. As Saxenian (2000) mentions this was
evident, for example, in the decision to organize STPIs as autonomous units with future

296

plans for them to be completely privatized. This way of functioning by the Department of
Electronic is a departure from older generations of strategic government ministries which
speciﬁed and directly regulated industry infrastructure.

NASSCOM was set up in 1988, at Mumbai to facilitate business and trade in software
and services and to encourage advancement of research in software technology. It is a
not-for-proﬁt organization, registered under the Indian Societies Act, 1860. Currently,
NASSCOM is headquartered in New Delhi, India with regional ofﬁces in the cities of
Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Pune.

NASSCOM leaders regularly interact with politicians and policy makers, and the
association is represented in many inﬂuential committees of the Government of India.
The organization promotes and supports high proﬁle conferences, studies, and also
aggressively promotes the Indian software industry around the world through a web site,
as well as by participating at international trade shows and foreign visits. Besides, the
association acts as a data and information source for software and IT industries of India
and advises its members of both established and emerging companies how to further their
growth in the global and domestic market. The membership of NASSCOM has been
steadily increasing from 38 members in 1988, who together contributed close to 65
percent of the revenue of the software industry to reach over 1300 members in 2008.
These members currently account for over 95 percent of the revenues of the software
industry in India (Source: NASSCOM; Saxenian 2000).

297

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