While most migration flows from India have been directed to different countries of the American continents, the emergence of the Indian economy in the global arena in the twenty-first Century has led to reverse flows in the form of return migration of Indians. Besides, many foreigners from the Americas are also coming to India specifically to explore the possibilities of future career prospects in multinational companies or even as students. This chapter provides an overview of immigration from the Americas to India and the return migration of Indians. Due to the lack of quantitative data on these two aspects, the chapter mainly relies on secondary sources and attempts to identify major trends and patterns regarding the immigration of foreign nationals and return migration of Indians from the Americas to India.

Immigration from the Americas

During World War II, more than 400,000 American soldiers were posted in India (Vest 1948: 223). Before the end of the British rule in India in 1947, the ‘colonial third culture’ surrounded employment, which featured expatriates in superior roles, natives in subordinate roles, and little informal socialization between the two. However, this was gradually replaced by a ‘co-ordinate third culture’, based around a common social life wherein the Americans working in multinational corporations mingled with their Indian colleagues (Useem J. 1966: 146). Americans who came to India for work slowly assimilated into this culture. However, many companies in those days had difficulty in retaining those American employees who were living in India accompanied by their children as they found the educational facilities at the school level inadequate (Useem R. 1966: 132). In a break from the long tradition of older American expatriates coming to India to manage local subsidiaries of American companies, a trend began in the first decade of the new century, of younger Americans taking up jobs in Indian companies, especially in the information technology sector, often at lower wages than they had previously earned in the US (Rai 2005; Chea 2006).