‘Go West Young Man’: The Culture of Migration among Muslims in Hyderabad, India

Abstract

Most studies of migration that ask why and how people migrate examine economic rationales and the network connections of migrants. In this article, I explore one understudied aspect of the migration process, the ‘culture of migration’, using data gathered from field research in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad is a city with substantial capital investment, especially from IT companies, and is an excellent site to examine how the desire to migrate remains salient in spite of the immigration of capital to the migrants’ home setting, resulting in increased job opportunities at home, at least for professionals. Additionally, greater restrictions have been placed by Persian Gulf states on migrant labourers, resulting in decreased opportunities abroad. I argue that it is the culture of migration among Hyderabadi Muslim professionals and labourers that promotes migration to the US and Saudi Arabia, even though opportunities at home are greater for some, and opportunities abroad are more restricted for others. I further argue that this culture of migration helps to shape the effects of remittances on status relations and marriage patterns among Muslims in Hyderabad, which further promotes migration abroad.

Keywords:

• Migration
• Culture
• Stratification
• Muslim
• Hyderabad

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Xiang Biao, Christopher Lee, Karen Leonard, Murray Milner Jr., Maritsa Poros and Milton Vickerman and for critiquing various drafts of this paper, as well as the three anonymous JEMS reviewers and Russell King, the JEMS editor, for their comments. I especially wish to thank Michael Uzendoski for detailed readings of this paper at every stage. The research for this paper was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship.

Notes

1. On how transnational corporations affect rises in salaries for professional and managerial workers, see Sassen (2000).

2. In South Asia, Christians, Muslims and Sikhs are divided by caste, in spite of these religions having egalitarian ideologies.

3. However, this may change. While I was in Hyderabad in 1998, Saudi Arabia had put a freeze on labour migration, and then lifted it. There is a growing trend in the Gulf states of tightening labour migration, and many people who leave the Gulf states cannot get visas to go back, and fewer visas are being approved. From 1997–2000, nearly 330,000 workers in the Gulf returned to Kerala for good. A study by the Centre for Development Studies (Kerala) found that the rate of reverse migration is unprecedented. This led to an economic recession in Kerala as the ‘petro-dollars’ dried up.

4. On the decline of the nobility in Hyderabad, see Ali (2001), Imadi (1977). On changes in the definition and meaning of caste and status for Muslims in Hyderabad, see Ali (2002).

5. This transformation of migrants is common. For example, Hansen (2001) describes a local celebrity in one of Bombay's Muslim slums named ‘Europe-raja’ (Europe-king), who is respected by all the young men for having not only gone abroad, but to Europe, a place where hardly anyone from the slums can go.

6. Even just having relatives abroad has become a marker of high status in itself. A middle-aged Hyderabadi doctor I interviewed in New York illustrated this point. She told me how someone asked her unemployed brother-in-law in Lahore, Pakistan what he did. He replied, ‘My brother is in the US’.

7. There is no legal category called ‘azad’ work visa; apparently the worker goes to Saudi Arabia legally on a work visa, but with the understanding between him and his sponsor that he will not work for the sponsor but will get a job elsewhere. His visa is then tranferred to another company, for which the worker pays an additional fee. It is a risky proposition for the worker as, on arrival, he may find employment opportunities lacking and wages lower than expected.

8. Thanks to Raza Mir, a Hyderabadi professor at Monmouth College in New Jersey, for pointing this out to me.

9. The United Arab Emirates is encouraging Arab men to marry local women by helping to cut wedding costs and giving other financial incentives. This may also help the women as the extravagant cost of marriage has resulted in marriages happening later in life for women, or sometimes not at all (Aslam 1993).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Syed Ali

Syed Ali is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Long Island University