Highly educated and skilled Indian nationals are the largest recipients of H-1B visas in the US. An employer must be willing to sponsor an H-1B work visa for the worker to continue to live and work in the US. This stipulation has granted US employers unprecedented power over H-1B visa holders, which can be understood as status coercion; employers have state-sanctioned power to threaten or discharge a worker from their status, i.e., visa status, which interconnects work and migration status. While the expansive power of employers to curtail a worker's status is one factor driving the ongoing coercive conditions, the other factor is precarious work. There is a gap in the literature in understanding what occurs at the intersection of status coercion and precarious work, especially within high-skilled information technology (IT) jobs. For instance, how does status coercion operate for employer-sponsored H-1B visa holders? Is it similar for dependent visa workers on H-4 EAD visas that rely on their spouse's H-1B, and F-1 OPT visa workers who have employment authorization from USCIS? Lastly, do these visa workers ever resist status coercion? In this study, I draw on twelve in-depth, semi-structured interviews of Indian nationals in the IT sector on H-1B, F-1 OPT STEM, or H-4 EAD visas. Findings suggest these workers experience greater status coercion than non-visa holders due to their visa status. Also, H-1B, F-1 OPT STEM, and H-4 EAD visa workers experience greater status coercion regardless of whether their visa is employer-sponsored, employment authorized by USCIS or a dependent visa. The consequences of coercion are that these workers are underemployed, overworked, given limited access to claims-making, and subjected to repetitive tasks on outdated technology. Yet, workers also exercised agency and ingenuity in their interconnected migration and employment trajectories. I find that visa workers ‘game' the US visa system via ‘visa hopping' from one visa to the next to ensure they can extend their stay and work in the US. While workers continuing to stay and work shows their compliance and consent to work in coercive conditions, I argue that gaming the US visa system can be understood as a form of resistance that showcases visa holders' creative agency.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2137601 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Jangeti, Neha |
| Contributors | Sobering, Katherine, Scarborough, William J., Johnson, Jamie |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Jangeti, Neha, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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