A middle-class global mobility? The working lives of Indian men in a west London hotel

The migration of middle-class Indian men working in the hospitality sector in west London illustrates the intersection of gender and social class in organising both who migrates and what types of labour they consequently perform. In this article the authors examine the working lives of young, single, middle-class Indian men employed in the increasingly global hospitality sector in London, UK. Using a case study of a single hotel, they investigate a particular form of Indian middle-class global mobility that differs from both the well-documented ‘low status’, unskilled migrant as well as the highly-skilled, science oriented migrants. The article explores how their jobs both reinforce and challenge middle-class Indian notions of masculinity, as well as how the recruitment process is both gendered and economically selective.

The authors suggest that the transnational formation of Indian middle-class identity is drawn from four main categories: a middle-class lifestyle in India, class-based motivations, the gendered and class based recruitment process of the UK hospitality industry, and the performance of class-based gender identities. The article concludes that these men did not migrate solely for economic reasons, but rather to augment their gender and class identities in India. The authors show in the presented narratives that through migration many of these men challenged class- and gender-based occupational expectations, like becoming a doctor or engineer, through the performance of jobs that were often incongruent with their gender and class identities in India such as working as maids.