ABSTRACT
This study has three main objectives. First, we aim to highlight how highly skilled migration is changing, diversifying, and multiplying, reflecting the complex aspirations and plans of an emerging international middle and lower middle class and its offspring that do not always conform with earlier stereotypes of affluent transnational households. In this emerging context – and this is our second objective – we explore how highly skilled migrants exercise agency and navigate a complex policy environment. Third, this study introduces the notion of migration pathways as a concept that allows for bringing together structure (migration policies and infrastructures) with agency (migrant motivations, plans, and actions) offering a dynamic understanding of complex contemporary migrations. The study focuses on Indian highly skilled migrants in Canada, pointing to the heterogeneities of migration motivations and aspirations and the agency of people who often use legal, career, and spatial mobility patterns to achieve two different but related goals, while at other times they decide to use one pathway over other or keep all pathways open as options.
