Migration as a social mobility project: the case of return migrant families in India

This article asks the following questions: how do parents see relocating to India as beneficial to their children’s upward social mobility? What role do their children have in facilitating their family’s social mobility strategies? How does growing up in India affect return migrants’ children’s relationship to and understanding of their ethnic identity? This article addresses these questions by analysing interviews with return migrant parents and their children from 35 families. These families relocated from the US to Bangalore, a city in southwest India. The analysis reveals how middle- and upper-class return migrant parents prepare their children for future success in a way that promotes their children’s agency and affirms their ethnic identity.