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

Fri, September 26, 2025 10:00 AM at Zoom

The Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen)  invites you and your teams to our upcoming GenCen Colloquia talk with Dr. Pallavi Banerjee (Professor of Sociology; University of Calgary, Research Excellence Chair).

 

Topic: The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program

• When: Friday, September 26, 2025, 10:00 a.m.–11:30 p.m. ET
• Where: Zoom (link: https://tinyurl.com/2025Trap)
• Host: Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen), MSU; Co-sponsered by Department of Sociology
  Details are also posted on the GenCen events page. (gencen.isp.msu.edu)

 

About the talk

Drawing on interviews with fifty-five Indian couples, the book examines how ostensibly “neutral” dependent-visa policies (e.g., H-4) produce gendered and racialized consequences for families—shaping labor market participation, household dynamics, and wellbeing. The talk offers a critical window into immigration policy’s lived effects and their broader social and economic implications. (gencen.isp.msu.edu, NYU Press)

 

Speaker bio (brief)

Dr. Pallavi Banerjee is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary and a Research Excellence Chair. Her scholarship sits at the intersections of immigration, gender, families, labor, intersectionality, and transnationalism. She directs the Critical Gender, Intersectionality and Migration (CGIM) Research Group. Her award-winning book The Opportunity Trap was published by NYU Press (2022), and her research has appeared in venues including American Behavioral Scientist, Social Problems, and Gender & Society. (gencen.isp.msu.edu)