Washington: Decades ago their parents,
mostly with eight dollars in their pocket, came to the land of
opportunity in search of greener pastures. Decades later their
sons and daughters, now US nationals, are going back to India
in search of greener pastures, a study has revealed.
Though, they are very minuscule in number, return of
second generation Indian Americans reflects a reversal of the
trend that was apparent a few decades ago and also emergence
of India as an world economic power where people from across
the globe can aspire to have a better future for their job
opportunities.
"A small but growing number of second-generation
immigrants who are moving or considering moving to their
parents' native countries for professional and personal
reasons," said Sonali Jain of the Duke University, author of a
study published by the Migration Policy Institute.
"Studies suggest that the emerging economies of the
parents' homeland may encourage the children to make an
economic investment there. In addition, many among them want
to learn more about their parental homeland, ethnicity, and
heritage," Jain said in the article published yesterday.
As part of the study, Jain conducted in-depth, semi-
structured interviews with 48 second-generation Indian
American professionals with US citizenship living in New
Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad in India. Eight of the 48
'returnees' were entrepreneurs who had established their own
companies of varying sizes.
"They found jobs in India using professional and
school-based networks. Because they wanted to experience India
as independent, unsupervised adults, respondents in general
did not prefer to live in cities or towns where their extended
family resided," the study said.
"All respondents asserted that the availability of
exciting professional career pathways in India was an
important factor in influencing their 'return' migration
decisions," the study said.
Respondents observed that in India they worked in the
middle to upper echelons of management. Many pointed out that
they held positions that would have taken them five or more
years to achieve in the US because such opportunities were
simply unavailable to persons of their age and work
experience, it added.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, November 02, 2010, 09:42