SIG Event: The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failure of the Dependent Visa Program

Human Development Seminar Series

“The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failure of the Dependent Visa Program”

The Opportunity Trap is the first book to look at the impact of the H-4 dependent visa programs on women and men visa holders in Indian families in America. Drawing on interviews with 55 Indian couples, Banerjee highlights the experiences of high-skilled immigrants as they struggle to cope with visa laws, which forbid their spouses from working paid jobs. She examines how these unfair restrictions destabilize—if not completely dismantle— families, who often break under this marital, financial, and emotional stress. The Opportunity Trap reveals how visa policies that are legally gender and race neutral in fact have gendered and racialized ramifications for visa holders and their spouses. It provides a critical look at our visa system, underscoring how it fails immigrant families.

Pallavi Banerjee, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Calgary. She directs the Critical Gender, Intersectionality and Migration Research Group. Her research is supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada, and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). Her book, The Opportunity Trap, won the Best Book Award from the Asia and Asian American Section of the American Sociological Association in 2023.

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This event is funded by CLA Scholarly Intersections Grant and CLA Thematic Initiative on Transnational Feminist Solidarities. It’s co-sponsored by the Departments of Human Development, Sociology, International Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), South Asian Studies Program, and University Honors Program