LIMITED MOBILITIES

India has the most skewed gender ratio of any major international student sending country (Sondhi, 2015). Using available data from Canada, Australia, UK, South Africa and France, in 2010 UNESCO calculated that 27% of India’s international student cohort were women. More recent Australian government statistics reveal that this trend has not waned, with 28.5% of the 2015 Indian student intake comprised of women. This sits in stark contrast to China, for instance, whose student cohort travelling to Australia in 2015 comprised of 52.7% women, which was similar to the 55% reported by UNESCO in 2010. Anecdotal evidence from agents and counsellors as well as university representatives in this study reflect this skewed gender ratio among Indian international students. As one university representative told me, “we have a lot more male candidates going as compared to female candidates, no doubt about it.” Agents in the study uniformly estimated that 10% of their clientele were women. Counsellors reported slightly higher numbers, estimating that 20% to 40% of their predominantly SoBo elite clientele are women. These figures suggest that SoBo elite women potentially face fewer barriers to becoming mobile students. However, on the whole, women’s mobilities are more constrained than their male peers.

This is not a surprising finding. As mentioned in Chapter Two, a large body of literature has demonstrated the myriad ways in which women’s mobilities are limited compared to men, particularly women from the Global South. This literature examines skilled migrant women (Purkayastha, 2005; Man, 2004; Yeoh & Khoo, 2002), undocumented workers (Hancock, 2007; Campbell, 2008; Hogeland & Rosen, 1990), emotions and oftentimes strained family connections (Parreñas, 2001; Mahdavi, 2016; McKay, 2007; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994, 2007), among many other topics. However, this body of literature often focuses on non-elite women and on transnational motherhood/relationships, so the present study adds a valuable perspective in relation to class as well as lifecourses. Furthermore, despite this expansive literature on women’s mobilities, student mobilities are rarely discussed from a gendered perspective (Sondhi, 2015), even though it stands to reason that female international students are likely to encounter discrimination and hardships that are not dissimilar to other mobile women (for exceptions, as discussed in Chapter Two, see Walton-Roberts, 2015a; Martin, 2018; King & Sondhi, 2016; Holloway et al., 2012; Karupiah, 2018; Sondhi & King, 2017).

In this study, despite suburban strivers’ desire for upward socio-economic mobility described in sections above, this group considered gender a reason to limit the physical mobility of young women. That is, suburban striver families (much more so than SoBo elite families) may not permit young women to study overseas in order to ensure their safety, despite the potential career and economic advantages of such a move (see also Forsberg, 2017).

Unlike the SoBo elites, suburban strivers often raised the issue of women’s ‘unprotectedness’ when they study overseas. Ashish, 18, a prospective suburban striver student, explained the different attitudes that he had observed towards young men and women:

Families won’t be comfortable sending them there, because who is going to be there to take care? If any person troubles them, then there’s no one to protect them. That’s what men feel. No, this is what families feel – even the women feel that way. Boys, it’s not that way. Like, we get the liberties that girls don’t get. … Because they’re not worried about protecting us like they are with women. … So I think, for girls, it’s more difficult to convince their parents that they want to go abroad. Because parents are, you know, even if it’s today in modern India parents still have that conservative mindset because they feel that who is going to be there for her? Who is going to protect her,

take care of her? How will she live there alone? So, boys, it’s not that much about protection – it’s how will they cook for themselves? [laughs]

These concerns around safety and gender were echoed by several young suburban striver women themselves. Shriya, 18, also a prospective student from a suburban striver family, described her and her family’s reservations about her desire to study overseas:

Going to a place where I know no one and nothing, I could probably die there and no one would notice! … My parents are definitely scared. My mum not so much, but my dad is definitely scared because I'm a girl.

Doreen Massey (1994) suggests that women’s safety is central to their ability to be mobile. She argues that men are a fundamental reason for women’s immobilities, which cuts across class lines: “the degree to which we can move between countries, or walk about the streets at night, or venture out of hotels in foreign cities, is not just influenced by ‘capital’. Survey after survey has shown how women’s mobility … is restricted - in a thousand different ways, from physical violence to being ogled at or made to feel quite simply ‘out of place’ – not by ‘capital’, but by men” (147-8). Sara Forsberg (2017) similarly reports that in urban Kerala, parents limited the mobilities of girls because of a perceived need to protect them from crime or ‘public shaming’.

The threat of violence (physical, symbolic or otherwise) is a persistent concern for women anywhere in the world (Watts & Zimmerman, 2002). In India, however, violence against women has particularly come to prominence in recent years following the high-profile gang rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi in 2012 (Lodhia, 2015; Shandilya, 2015). An element of public opinion evident in the ensuing debate is that women are responsible for their own safety and should dress and move conservatively in order to ensure that they do not ‘attract’ men (Roychowdhury, 2013). Priyanka, a mother of two boys and an agent from a suburban striver background, echoed this by suggesting that when women are studying overseas they should ensure their safety by presenting as ‘simple’:

If you go to any place in the world, the protection of you as a girl lies with you and your behaviours. Not with anybody else. It’s with you. How you dress-up, how you move. See, the more simple you are, nobody is going to look at you. If you are out with the moon then everybody is going to come.

According to Priyanka, women’s safety is ensured by their modesty. For transnationally mobile women from middle-class backgrounds, it would appear that elder generations expect them to maintain Indian notions of decency and respectability (Gilbertson, 2014b) as they move through the world. These concerns are not dissimilar to observations about the importance to Indian notions of respectable middle-class femininity of domesticity, boundaries and limited engagement with the outside world (Fernandes, 2006; Chakrabarty, 1991; Still, 2011). These notions have their roots in the colonial period when Hindu ideals of the good wife merged with Victorian ideals of femininity (Chatterjee, 1989; Gilbertson, 2014b). As discussed in Chapter Two, a family’s and community’s honour are tied to the respectability of women, who therefore have to either limit their mobility or be mobile in ways that maintain boundaries of respectability (Radhakrishnan, 2008, 2009, 2011; Flemming, 2016; Gilbertson, 2014b; Twamley & Sidharth, 2018).

The vulnerability of women who become ‘too exposed’ was also a concern voiced by some suburban striver participants. Fazlur, an agent from the outer suburbs of Mumbai, implied that recent social changes in India had compromised the virtue of women: “India has become over-Westernised. … They have adopted Western culture. Dressing, girls are out late and working – it never used to be a case before.” The tone of Fazlur’s voice suggested that becoming ‘over-Westernised’ was a negative thing, and he later suggested that women should instead be ‘good’, ‘simple’ and ‘family-focused’, which echoes literature on what attributes the ideal middle-class Indian woman should embody (Bulbeck, 2010; Gilbertson, 2014b; Chatterjee, 1989; Radhakrishnan, 2011; Flemming, 2016). As Walton-Roberts (2015a) observes, women’s educational engagement and socio-spatial mobility can be read as an expression of modernity, but this progress is replete with contradictions that demand they and their families carefully balance risk and reward.

Although older people in the study (parents and industry professionals) perceived the mobility of young women through a lens of potential risks, most young women from suburban striver backgrounds believed that international education would allow them to demonstrate that they are not as vulnerable as some believe them to be. For instance:

If I were a guy, I think [my parents] would be more sure that I could take care of myself, as opposed to me being a girl. But the point is that I can't show them that I can take care of myself until I actually get to take care of myself!

– Neha, female, 18, suburban striver prospective student

My grandmother told me that I shouldn’t be studying psychology because I'm a girl, and girls shouldn’t be studying in that field – they shouldn’t become doctors. She's very backward. … She [also] cries about my safety, and which I think is so ridiculous. Like, what does she think will happen?! It makes me want to go there just to prove her wrong!

– Aalika, female, 23, suburban striver prospective student

For these women, the prospect of (temporarily) leaving the family unit to study overseas provides them with an opportunity to negotiate their independence and potentially renegotiate gender hierarchies (see also Raghuram, 2004; Martin, 2018). However, mobility must ultimately be supported by the family given that Indian families are almost always the financiers of a child’s international education (Thomas, 2017).

Walton-Roberts (2015a) similarly observes the importance of family in the decision-making process of Indian international students, finding that parents are central to this process and often encourage their daughters to study overseas in order to commence a familial migration strategy (similar to strategies of East Asian families described by Waters, 2005, 2006a). As a result, Walton-Roberts finds that young women are “not engaging in overseas migration as an act of independence or overstated autonomy” and are actually quite constrained in their mobility (2015a: 79). In this study, however, the opposite appears to be occurring wherein young women seek independence from their families via international education. The differences between this study and Walton- Roberts’ (2015a) findings likely relate to class status and regional differences in India. Walton-Roberts’ participants hail from Kerala and Punjab, which are renowned for their high rates of skilled worker out-migration (Tumbe, 2012; Forsberg, 2017; Voigt-Graf, 2005). Her participants were also studying nursing, which was not an occupation considered by any participants in my study, who were primarily contemplating degrees in business, IT, accounting and engineering.

The data presented in this section thereby highlights that, while young Indian women are undoubtedly less mobile than Indian men (Sondhi, 2015), there also exist

gendered inequalities and unevenness within international student mobilities. Participants in this study are almost certainly of a higher class status than Walton-Roberts’ (2015a) respondents and are therefore likely to experience mobility differently at all phases. In the pre-departure phase, the higher levels of capital that families in this study possess translates to the desire to accumulate cosmopolitan cultural capital (whether pertaining to career advancement or self-actualisation) above the economic capital that Walton- Roberts’ (2015a) participants are pursuing. Furthermore, higher class status generally equates to greater access to economic capital, which not only makes affording international education theoretically easier, it also potentially reduces anxiety around factors such as physically caring for ageing parents because paid help can be purchased (this is discussed further in Chapter Seven).

The notion that class may shape people’s perceptions of women’s mobility was shared by my participants. As Harshil, 19, a suburban striver prospective student explained:

Families like to keep their girls close to home. It depends on caste and religion, that’s one thing. ... The other thing is your class. Like, if you’re in the lower- middle-class and you're a girl, then your family might want to keep you closer to home. Because, like, they don’t have a history of travel. If you’re upper- class or upper-middle-class then I think your family is more likely to send you if you’re a girl, because they feel more comfortable with that.

Harshil aptly identifies a history of travel as a central factor in determining how comfortable families are with the mobility of their daughters. This may explain why concerns about safety were only expressed by my striver participants and why a greater proportion of students from the SoBo elite are women. Further, as discussed earlier in this chapter, SoBo elites tend to travel abroad several times per year. For them, international mobility is commonplace and therefore potentially perceived as less threatening to women’s respectability. It is also possible that SoBo elites possess more economic capital and are therefore better positioned to invest in the education of their daughters as well as their sons.

It must be stressed, however, that the women in this study are an exception, given the statistics at the top of the section that revealed that 27% of India’s outgoing international students are women. This means that their experiences are not necessarily

typical of Indian women, many of whom may not be in a position to even broach the topic of international education with their families. The ‘familial history of travel’ arguments put forward by participants in this chapter was used to explain acceptance of women’s mobilities, but this is also driven by an assumption that ‘high class’ equates to modernity and progressive mindsets, which this section has suggested may not always be the case. If immobility is the norm for Indian women, this indicates that ‘exposure’ is gendered – it is more important and less problematic for men to accumulate cosmopolitan cultural capital, as they are potentially the bearers of capital for the family unit.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has argued that different meanings are attached to the notion of ‘gaining exposure’, which correspond to localised micro-categories of class. For suburban strivers, exposure as a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital was paramount to their strategies for upward socio-economic mobility. Suburban strivers imagined that attending foreign universities and gaining experience in foreign workplaces would allow them to accumulate ‘practical’ exposure, which I have argued is a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital that participants expected to convert into economic capital by securing better jobs in India. Suburban strivers’ discourse around ‘exposure’ revealed the notion that young people must ‘become global’ in order to be successful at work in India (see also Upadhya, 2016a; Gilbertson, 2014c). Exposure is something that is acquired outside India, specifically in the West. In turn, this reinforces the higher position of the upper-middle class and elite in the Indian context, who can afford international travel, as opposed to the middle class who are less likely to travel for leisure or education primarily because their economic capital is less likely to allow for it. Suburban strivers expected their foreign degrees would be read – particularly by employers – as more meritous than a locally acquired degree, which disguises educational advantage procured by superior economic and cultural capital. As Khan (2011: 8) rightly notes, “there is nothing innate about merit.”

Despite the aspirations of parents and the desire among suburban strivers for upward socio-economic mobility, suburban striver women in particular faced barriers to becoming mobile on the basis of their gender. Personal safety was cited by many participants as a concern for young women when they study overseas, although young women themselves did not always share this anxiety. These responses reflected other

literature on class in India, which finds that middle-class professional women often find themselves balancing Indian morality and a new global Indian identity (Radhakrishnan, 2011; Flemming, 2016; see also Walton-Roberts, 2015a). In this study, localised micro- categories of class appear to work in tandem with gender to govern the extent to which young women are able or allowed to be mobile, with suburban strivers more likely to experience limitations than the SoBo elite. Participants suggested that these limitations are perhaps a result of lower levels of accumulated capital, especially cosmopolitan cultural capital, because suburban striver parents are less ‘exposed’ than SoBo elite parents.

This not only suggests that the accumulation of cosmopolitan cultural capital via international education is gendered, but also highlights the importance of framing international education as an event that occurs within the lifecourse. As the first section of this chapter demonstrated, SoBo elites have accumulated cosmopolitan cultural capital prior to engaging with international education because their schools and families ensure that they become ‘exposed’ from a young age and are prepared to study overseas. SoBo elite participants had all attended elite high schools that deliver international curricula, which participants thought would better prepare them/their children to transition into foreign universities in Anglophone countries. This, along with frequent international holidays to exotic destinations, equipped SoBo elites with knowledge that would allow them to reproduce their privilege via international education. This contrasts to the school experiences of suburban strivers, many of whom did not attend schools that delivered an international curriculum. Those suburban strivers who did attend ‘international’ schools were often critical of their school and described shortfalls that resulted in them feeling disadvantaged when they sought international education. For suburban strivers, international education is not imagined as an initiation into adult life in the same that studying overseas is presupposed as part of the lifecourse of SoBo elites, which can mean that experiences around international education are uneven long before students make the decision about what and where to study.

For SoBo elites, international education was imagined as a rite of passage through which they build character and capabilities, as well as cognitive skills that are imagined as distinctly Western and cosmopolitan. Gaining exposure was a project of self-

actualisation that SoBo elites deemed ‘necessary’ for their personal development. For SoBo elites, exposure as a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital took on different meaning compared to the suburban strivers wherein the symbolic value of international education was paramount, signifying prestige and superior levels of taste, comportment and ideologies. SoBo elites had no need to frame exposure in terms of career advancement or economic gain because those factors are typically secure prior to an elite student’s departure. However, gaining exposure also involved a ‘necessary’ temporary divestment of material benefits that being elite in India affords. SoBo elite participants imagined that experiencing ‘hardship’ would deliver independence and personal growth, but, ironically students’ families pay for them to experience said hardship. In this case, it is desirable for