Historicizing Mobility Trajectories of Highskilled Migrants from Coastal Andhra to the United States

Abstract

Guntur-Krishna districts in the state of Andhra Pradesh has seen intense mobility of professionals to the USA from among the ‘dominant’ castes of the region, particularly the Kammas. Kammas were a rural agrarian caste who have successfully transnationalized themselves, but continue to have strong connections with their region of origin. Rather than making sense of this duality only through anthropological literature on transnationalism, in this account, taking a longue durée approach, I show how certain historical moments in the region created possibilities for the Kammas to first become urbanized, and later, cater to the demand of flexible high skilled labour in the west. Using a meso and micro level schema, the article argues that transnational migration was preceded by changes in the political economy of the region due to the region’s encounter with the colonial state. Moreover, the response of the community to these changes to achieve social and economic mobility further facilitated their rural to urban migration and, later, transnational migration. Finally, this article argues that rather than understanding transnational migration patterns through a statist lens, a more dissgaregated historical analysis is vital to bring out region and community inflected constitutive elements of such migration. JEL: O15, J61, N35.