Paper short abstract:

Wives of high-skilled Indian migrants in the Netherlands often remain, for various reasons, unemployed. These women are however active in back-linking to India. This paper assesses the impact of this back-linking on family's decisions to return to India, move on, or stay put in the Netherlands.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past 10 years, the Netherlands has become increasingly interested in mounting its brain power within its borders. Instead of maximising stocks of gold and silver, the country now invites highly skilled workers and immigration policies have moved in that direction. High-skilled migrants from India are particularly welcomed with the hope that they contribute to national development goals by increasing productivity through enhancing the national pool of skilled people. Though most Indian migrants in the Netherlands are male and single, family migration has also taken place. Wives of these high-skilled men generally arrive as 'dependents' , alternatively defined as 'ex-pat wives', 'trailing spouses' or 'family relocation managers'. Most research has focussed on high-skilled Indian men in the Netherlands. This paper's focus is on gender regimes within Indian families in The Netherlands and analyzes the role Indian women play in connecting to family and friends left behind in India. Existing literature describes non-working female migrants as passive subjects of family reunification or involved in reproduction of ethnic boundaries and gender roles. Instead, this paper analyzes the transformative power of non-economic activities and assesses the impact of Indian women's 'back-linking' on family's decisions to return to India, move on, or stay put in the Netherlands.

Paper Download (424 KB)