Collaborative Grant: Maintaining Diversity in the US High-Tech Sector

这是一个合作项目，将对比评估旅居国外的印度工业信息技术和生物技术工程师、留在美国的工程师和移民回印度的工程师的经验。研究人员将通过对60名回国的印度工程师和科学家进行深入采访来获得相关的原始数据，然后将其与目前受雇于美国工业部门的60名印度工程师和科学家的经历进行比较；他们还将采访一些回国创业的印度企业家。这项研究的结果将通过期刊上的出版物和在会议上发表来传播。它们将有助于加深美国和印度之间的联系，因为它们将利用各自的国家资源和专业知识，进一步推进联合研究。它们将被整合到人力资源管理、劳动力多样性和产业政策的研究生和本科生课程中。此外，研究人员将雇用来自代表性不足群体的学生。他们的大学是美国仅有的两所既是少数族裔服务机构又是卡内基非常高研究活动大学的大学之一；它有大量的拉美裔学生和美国原住民学生。该项目有两个截然不同的目标：理解工业工程师和科学家返回祖国的原因，以及从理论上理解跨国移民带来的民族社会结构的变化。如上所述，他们将使用定性方法实现这些目标，其结果将有助于补充现有的回返移徙模式，这些模式主要侧重于经济影响。研究人员声称，重要的是要包括社会、职业和政治经历，这些经历有助于形成这些决定。这项研究的结果可能会为关于人力资本、科学和技术发展、跨国移民以及移民模式和政策的研究提供参考。随着国家边界在科技界变得看不见，研究人员希望表明，工程师和科学家之间的回流移民过程绝不是零和游戏。这项研究补充了美国国家科学基金会早些时候支持的一项研究，该研究由出生在外国的学术工程师和科学家组成，他们在美国工作和生活后返回印度。

This is a collaborative project that will comparatively evaluate the experiences of expatriated Indian industrial information-technology and bio-technology engineers, those who stay in the US and those that migrate back to India. The researchers will acquire pertinent primary data by conducting in-depth interviews with 60 returned Indian engineers and scientists, and then compare that with the experiences of 60 Indian engineers and scientists currently employed in the US industrial sector; they will also interview some Indian entrepreneurs who have returned to India to start their own companies. The results of this research will be disseminated through publications in journals, and by presenting at conferences. They will serve to deepen the bonds between the US and India as they build upon their national resources and expertise toward furthering joint research. They will be integrated into graduate and undergraduate courses on human resource management, workforce diversity, and industrial policy. In addition, the researchers will employ students from under-represented groups. Their institution is one of only two universities in the nation that is both a Minority Serving Institution and a Carnegie Very High Research Activity university; it has a large Hispanic student and Native American student population. The project has two distinct aims: To understand why industrial engineers and scientists return to their home country, and to develop theoretical understanding of changes in the social construction of nationality with transnational migration. They will meet these aims using qualitative methods, as indicated above, and their results will serve to complement existing models of return migration, which overwhelmingly focus on the economic impacts. The researchers claim that it is important to include social, professional, and political experiences that help shape these decisions. The findings of this study will potentially inform research on human capital, science and technology development, transnational migration, and immigration patterns and policies. With national borders becoming invisible in the world of science and technology, the researchers expect to show that the process of return migration among engineers and scientists is anything but a zero sum game. This study complements an earlier NSF supported study by this collaborative team of foreign-born academic engineers and scientists who returned to India after working and living in the US.