Adrienne
Atterberry
Educations & Degrees:
MA, Sociology, Syracuse University, 2015
MA, Media Studies, The Newhouse School of Syracuse University, 2012
BA, Economics & English Literature, University of Pittsburgh, 2009
Research Interests:
International Migration, Education, Parenting, Citizenship, and
Race/Ethnicity
Biography
Adrienne Atterberry is a doctoral student in the Sociology
Department at Syracuse University. Before starting her PhD coursework,
Adrienne earned undergraduate degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, a
graduate degree from the SI Newhouse School, and a certificate in South Asia
through Syracuse University’s South Asia Center.
Atterberry’s current work examines the following questions: Why
do highly-educated, affluent, and seemingly well-settled immigrants leave their
country of migration and return to their country of origin? How do return
migrants prepare their children to become the next generation of
transnationally-mobile professionals? As a result of their upbringing in two
countries, how do their children understand their cultural identity and
national belonging? These questions, and more, are addressed in her
dissertation, “Cultivating India’s New Transnational Elite: Parenting,
Schooling, and Belonging in the Age of Global IT.”
Through analyzing 97 conversations with return migrants, their
children, and Indian American alumni of local high schools, Atterberry makes a
case for how changes to the global economy affect the lives of Indian and
first-generation Indian American return migrants and their families who live in
Bangalore, South India. She does so by first explaining why well-settled
migrants defy much of the literature on migration and immigrant assimilation by
opting to return to their country of national origin. She suggests that to
better understand this return migration decision requires stepping away from
scholarship that characterizes this choice as a personal or professional
“failure,” and instead consider the social and cultural context in which
migrants make this choice. Further, Atterberry argues that to fully grasp why
they make the decision to return requires considering how the availability of
“good” K-12 schools facilitate this move. In doing so, she documents how return
migrant parents strategically and effectively use the different schooling
options available in Bangalore to prepare their children to tackle the
challenges and opportunities available in the global economy. Thus, Atterberry shows
how the availability of “good” schools enables parents to move without
negatively affecting, and in some ways enhancing, their ability to secure
important educational and professional advantages for their children. Meanwhile
the children in these transnationally-mobile families, having grown up within
two countries before becoming adults, express forms of cultural identity and
national belonging that demonstrate their unique social position vis-à-vis
their similarities to and differences from US-raised Indian Americans and
India-raised Indians. Thus, her dissertation reveals how changes in the global
economy lead to new migration patterns and parenting practices, which
subsequently produce new ways of being and belonging.
Dissertation: Cultivating India’s New Transnational Elite: Parenting,
Schooling, and Belonging in the Age of Global IT