The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program - Paperback

by Pallavi Banerjee (Author)

2023 Asia and Asian America Section Book Award Winner, given by the American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention, 2022 Betty and McClung Lee Book Award, given by the Association for Humanist Sociology

Unravels how US visa laws fail Indian professional workers and their legally dependent spouses and families

The Opportunity Trap is the first book to look at the impact of the H-4 dependent visa programs on women and men visa holders in Indian families in America. Comparing two distinct groups of Indian immigrant families --families of male high-tech workers and female nurses--Pallavi Banerjee reveals how visa policies that are legally gender and race neutral in fact have gendered and racialized ramifications for visa holders and their spouses.

Drawing on interviews with fifty-five Indian couples, Banerjee highlights the experiences of high-skilled immigrants as they struggle to cope with visa laws, which forbid their spouses from working paid jobs. She examines how these unfair restrictions destabilize--if not completely dismantle--families, who often break under this marital, financial, and emotional stress.

Banerjee shows us, through the eyes of immigrants themselves, how the visa process strips them of their rights, forcing them to depend on their spouses and the government in fundamentally challenging ways. The Opportunity Trap provides a critical look at our visa system, underscoring how it fails immigrant families.

Author Biography

Pallavi Banerjee is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Calgary. She directs the Critical Gender, Intersectionality and Migration Research Group at the University of Calgary, and her research is supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).