Manashi Ray, PhD;
Professor of Sociology, West Virginia State University
My book Becoming Boundless: Indian Transnational Entrepreneurs in the Global Economy challenges overly celebratory views of transnational entrepreneurship and globalization. Based on longitudinal ethnographic research with sixty Indian men and women entrepreneurs, the book explores the complexities and nuances of the economic success of forty-five men and fifteen women migrants to the United States. In the book, I contend that the practices and actions of these entrepreneurs in “transnational space” are empowered by privileges and resources unevenly distributed across both host and home countries. Further, the book brings out the intricacies of cross-border connections and ties between social and spatial mobility, which very few studies examine empirically. Becoming Boundless finds that Indian transnational entrepreneurs are active architects of an increasingly multipolar world order, but their agency is exercised within—and sometimes reproduces—prevalent inequalities as they shape new centers of economic and social power that link India to the wider world.
In the book, I primarily examine how these entrepreneurs’ global and social networks function as systems of power and inequality. The research systematically recounts how factors like gender, caste and class belonging, education, skill levels, and migratory regimes intersect in transnational spaces between America and India to (re)produce new and old configurations of symbolic and cultural power structures. In other words, the book examines the positions and activities of transnational entrepreneurs as a lens for understanding broader cross-border processes that contribute to global capitalism.
In my opinion, an important but subtle insight of the book is its illumination of the “invisibility” of caste belonging and pre-migratory class position among transnational entrepreneurs. Often these entrepreneurs’ successes and accomplishments are presented as individual achievements based exclusively on “meritocracy,” where entrepreneurs’ ascribed status and social privileges that make such achievements possible remain hidden or normalized and unmarked. Through numerous case studies, the book demonstrates how caste privilege frequently operates as an invisible infrastructure for both geographical and social mobility—providing access to higher education, migration opportunities, global entrepreneurial networks, and business acumen. By examining who is able to become a transnational entrepreneur—and who remains excluded—the book exposes the role of a crucial vector through which entrepreneurs routinely mobilize resources for intensive and continuous flows of ideas, goods, and people and for redrawing the boundaries of entrepreneurship.
Likewise, the book challenges the persistent assumption that transnational entrepreneurship is primarily a male domain. By highlighting the narratives of fifteen women transnational entrepreneurs, the book captures their experiences in transforming structural and cultural constraints into global business opportunities. As strategic actors they constantly negotiate gender norms across social and cultural contexts, maneuver competing expectations, and sometimes reinvent themselves to obtain professional market expertise, spousal/family support, and partnership for accessing transnational networks. The book reveals how women entrepreneurs do not necessarily have to occupy the margins of globalization but can emerge as trendsetters and business leaders with ventures spanning multiple countries and markets.
Just as there is no one, singular story of India, the book contributes to ongoing conversations about India's evolving place in the global economy and the social forces shaping that transformation, while uncovering the contradictions and complexities embedded in these transnational processes.
