Skilled migration and cumulative disadvantage: the case of highly qualified Asian Indian immigrant women in the US Bandana Purkayastha U-68 Department of Sociology, University of Connnecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2068, USA Received 26 July 2002; received in revised form 24 October 2003 Abstract The research on skilled international migration focuses primarily on the experiences of male migrants. Little work has been done on female migrants, especially those who migrated as dependents of highly skilled males. This paper presents some data on Asian Indian women in the US, and argues that these women suffer from cumulative disadvantage. The paper emphasizes that it is necessary to adopt a complex model involving the interaction of gendered/racialised immigration laws, workplace and household experiences in order to understand the experiences of these women. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Skilled migration; Cumulative disadvantage; Asian Indians in the US; Gender; Racialisation; Immigration 1. Introduction The migration of highly skilled people within trans- national labour markets during the last few decades of the 20th century is often linked to the shift towards post- industrial economies in the west. These skilled immi- grants have moved to provide expertise for global information, services, or knowledge enterprises (Beaverstock, 1994). The economic factors influencing such migration have been paralleled by political valori- sation of certain types of migrants: those with expertise in medicine, science, technology and finance have been given preference through immigration quotas in several countries (Mahroum, 2000; Iredale, 1999; Salt, 1992). While the academic literature, in recent years, has begun to examine the nature of skilled migration, the focus is primarily on men who move through multiple global locations within and between multinational corpo- rations (e.g. Findlay, 1995; Findlay and Li, 1998; Salt and Ford, 1995). Kofman (1999), among others, has argued that the migration of skilled women has not drawn much attention till recently, largely because of the widespread acceptance of the gendered migration model that assumes males move in search of jobs, while their wives and children follow later. A growing body of scholarly work has begun to demonstrate that women migrate both as workers (e.g. Chang, 1997; Hardill and MacDonald, 2000; Ong and Azores, 1994) and as wives under family reunification clauses (Kofman, 1999). However, as Kofman et al. (2000) point out, little attention has been paid to what migrating as wives mean for women, especially for women with high human capital. This group remains relatively invisible within the literature on skilled migration; little attention is paid to whether these women change their status from dependent wives to workers, whether or not their jobs actually remain sec- ondary to their primary roles as wives, and under what structural conditions such changes take place. In short, the gender sensitive literature emphasizes the need to look beyond the existing theoretical gap between ‘‘skil- led migrants’’ (who are assumed to have the education and training necessary in modern white-collar work places) and wives (who are assumed to be primarily a part of the domestic sphere). This paper focuses on one such group of ‘wives’. It examines the experiences of a group of highly educated women from India who mig- rated to the US after 1965 under family reunification clauses. It traces their attempts to re-establish their careers and illustrates how these women, who migrate E-mail address: bandana.purkayastha@uconn.edu (B. Purkayas- tha). 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2003.11.006 Geoforum 36 (2005) 181–196 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum