White-collar Nationalisms

Abstract

The export of information technology (IT) services from India—including software programming and IT-enabled work such as call centers that handle human resources, financial services, customer services—has been growing exponentially over the past decade. Although the overall employment figures accounts for only a tiny fraction of the overall working population, the promise and potential for IT-related jobs loom large for globalized, urban, middle-class Indians, the same jobs that today appear to threaten middle-class Americans afraid of being “Bangalored.” In this paper I offer a critical reading of the debate between critics and advocates of outsourcing and high-skilled migration. I argue that both sides of the debate are premised on what I call “white-collar nationalisms” mobilized by conservative political forces. Specifically, Indian H-1B workers have been characterized as vulnerable victims of globalization who are then blamed for threatening the sanctity of both national security and “good” American jobs. Turning to the Indian context, we see that high-skilled emigrants to the United States essentially play the opposite role in the Hindu nationalist imaginary. Instead of hapless victims, “skilled” Indian migrants in the United States have been celebrated as the “heroes” of the nation's new economic development strategy. The appeal (and lack of alternative to) white-collar nationalisms limit the political landscape to a debate between two positions that are essentially mirror images of each other. My research is based on analysis of websites, blogs and media coverage of the high-tech migration and white-collar off-shoring debates between 1998 and 2005.