South Asian Americans in the American South

Do you think India will ever join the European Union?” Officer David asked me as our unmarked police car left one ward of Durham and entered the next. I didn’t understand his question at first since India cannot remotely be said to be in or near Europe, but he quickly clarified to fill the silence. “You know,” he said, “because they’re talking about admitting Turkey . . . and India is right next door.” After probing, I learned that in his geography of the world, Turkey and India were contiguous. The countries actually in between the two—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—seemed to be positioned elsewhere in his mind’s map. I was doing a “ride along” with one of the officers in the Durham Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit. Keenly aware of my vulnerable position in his police car, I refrained from giving Officer David the geography lesson that I usually give to those with a loose concept of any location outside of the 50 states. My silence reaped a further treasure: additionally, he envisioned Pakistan as a region in which Iran and Iraq were located.

Unfortunately, his ignorance of Asian and Middle Eastern geography does not put him in the minority. With the growth of Asian and Middle Eastern communities in the South, however, law enforcement and social services providers must become familiar with more than a map.

The first significant population of South Asians came to North Carolina during the wave of Asian immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. These immigrants were highly skilled in professions such as medicine, engineering, research. They took the open positions offered throughout the country in hospitals and universities. In North Carolina, these jobs were concentrated in Charlotte and the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area, also known as “the Triangle.” With the Family Reunification Act in the 1980s, North Carolina saw an influx of Asian immigrants more likely to hold blue collar jobs. These newer immigrants chose North Carolina either because they had relatives already situated in the state or because the growing economy offered greater opportunity and less competition than the larger cities of the North and West. These immigrants mostly took maintenance and repair jobs, as well as restaurant and factory work. Those able to save money started small businesses or bought franchises in motels and convenience stores. Even in the most remote parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, you can find South Asian-owned Subway sandwich shops and motels.

During the technology boom of the early 1990s, many multinational corporations took advantage of the inexpensive land, lower cost of living, and favorable business conditions in North Carolina. They set up large bases of operation or moved their headquarters to the Research Triangle Park area. Companies such as IBM, Cisco Systems, Glaxo Smith Kline, SAS, Nortel and others were infusing capital and creating new jobs in the local economy. Many South Asians migrated to the Research Triangle to work in computer technologies and engineering. The engineering and computer science departments were expanded at area universities, such as Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, attracting more South Asian students and faculty. In the Triangle and Charlotte areas, the Asian Indian population grew from 5,266 to 16,340 in the 1990s, a 310 percent increase. Including South Asians from countries other than India, I estimate the total number of South Asians in these two areas totals approximately 35,000.

Historically, the primary methods of social interaction of immigrant communities have been through their own religious and cultural gatherings. With North Carolina South Asian populations becoming more significant, music and dance associations formed to invite renowned artists to the Triangle area and to teach children about their cultural heritage. Ethnic groceries, restaurants, and clothing and music stores appeared in the Triangle and Charlotte areas to meet the needs of the new South Asian migrants. The coffers of the various houses of worship grew as they served a larger population every year. The communities continue to invest their growing wealth in cultural and religious activities—yet have not proportionally invested in addressing the social needs of their most vulnerable members.

Women in crisis usually rely first on traditional sources of community assistance: friends, family, and houses of worship. While these networks are essential to every battered woman, not every immigrant woman has access to them. Often with migrant populations, the men move to a new area first, establishing relationships and garnering the loyalty of the community members. Their wives migrate later, either due to immigration laws or because the men may marry after having established a career and home in the United States first. By the time their wives follow, the men are frequently ensconced in a circle of friends into which the wives comfortably nestle themselves. While initially comforting for an immigrant woman new to the U.S., the woman may discover she does not have friends of her own whose loyalties are not split. Combined with a predisposition in all communities to blame tension in a marriage on the wife, this often means the immigrant wife cannot turn to community members in times of marital crisis.

The situation can be made worse by immigration laws. Many South Asians have come to North Carolina to take high tech jobs under the H-1B visa, which is given to foreign nationals working in certain white collar positions that cannot be filled by U.S. residents. The visa allows the holder to reside and work in the U.S. at a particular company for up to six years. The employer may within this time to opt to sponsor this employee for a green card. Each year, between one third to one half of H-1B visas are granted to nationals from South Asian countries, with Indian nationals receiving the highest number.

H-1B workers’ spouses may come to the U.S. under the H-4 visa. Most H-4 visa holders are women, and the legal constraints of the visa make them particularly vulnerable to domestic violence. H-4 visa holders are not allowed to work legally in the U.S., obtain social security numbers, or open their own bank accounts. They need their husband’s cooperation to apply for a driver’s license, although in some states they are not even allowed to have one. Their husbands also control their immigration status at each stage of the process. Those “H-4 wives” who find themselves in abusive marriages are not eligible to receive protection under the Violence Against Women Act or the Battered Spouse Waiver, provisions created specifically for battered immigrant women. While the U Visa available to crime victims is technically an option, suspicion of the legal system and fear of uncertainty prevent many from pursuing this possibility. In the first half of 2005, 75 percent of women who contacted Kiran, a North Carolina organization dedicated to helping abused South Asian women, were current or former H-4 visa holders.

H-4 wives typically are English-speaking, most have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, and many worked in white collar jobs in their home countries. Despite all these advantages, because of immigration constraints cause them to be, they are no better off than less-privileged women if caught in an abusive marriage. With no money of their own, no control over their status, and little familiarity with the survival skills necessary in American society, these women find they have left a comfortable life back home for abuse and uncertainty in the United States.

When they look for help outside their communities and families, battered South Asian and other immigrant women find that mainstream domestic violence organizations are often unable to provide appropriate services. Most domestic violence advocates and social service providers have little or no training in immigration issues and their role in perpetuating violence. Mainstream services are also not equipped to handle matters which require an understanding of cultural differences. Some, like Officer David, are not even sure where South Asian countries are on the map. Cultural constructs such as the joint family, arranged marriage, and dowry are alien to most North Carolinian social workers. Women have reported enduring racial stereotyping and pressure to “Americanize” their belief system to obtain assistance. For example, one Muslim client was told by a local domestic violence advocate, “If you weren’t so attached to your culture, you wouldn’t be having such a hard time.” Women told of being confused for other clients of similar skin tone, of advocates conflating Hindu and Islamic beliefs, and of advocates unable to understand why maintaining immigration status often trumped managing the violence. This lack of familiarity with important aspects of South Asian women’s experiences, combined with an element of suspicion of those who are neither black nor white, made it clear by the late 1990s that creating a safe space specifically for South Asian women in North Carolina was essential.

So in 1999 Kiran: Domestic Violence and Crisis Services for South Asians in North Carolina was founded in the Triangle area by six women committed to supporting South Asian women through abusive relationships. We aimed to fill gaps in services provided by both mainstream women’s groups and South Asian communities, and to get women help and advice from someone who can understand their issues and constraints and has their safety and long-term goals as the first priority. Kiran is designed as a multi-cultural, non-religious, community-based, South Asian organization. Through outreach, confidential peer support, and referrals, Kiran has been promoting the empowerment of South Asian women for six years.

One crucial insight our work has afforded us is that, while some of the specific cultural dynamics of South Asian communities may be unfamiliar to American Southerners, the overarching family dynamics are, ironically, quite similar. At base, the family dynamics are driven by unresolved tensions between the individual and collective identities. In both the American South and South Asian communities, women are expected to respect male authority and the judgment of their community elders and religious leaders. When I suggested to a white Christian woman in rural North Carolina that we look into a battered woman’s shelter for her, she emphatically said no. “Mother Mary would not want me to leave my husband,” she said. Similarly, when I counseled a 24-year-old woman from India in Raleigh, N.C., she also cited religious authority: Sita would never have abandoned Ram. How would it look if I did?

In actuality, it is not the battered woman’s culture that prevents her from helping herself, but her personal level of traditionalism. Most cultures have beliefs and practices that enforce women’s inequality. Traditionalism reflects the degree to which these beliefs are allowed to inform expectations of behavior. In both the U.S. and South Asian countries, traditionalism has retreated the most in the larger cities. Members of smaller, more rural communities still face the challenges of balancing individuality with community expectations. Religion also plays a larger role in Southern communities in the United States than in other areas of the United States in which where South Asians have concentrated, such as the Northeast and West Coast states. As a result, one might expect that advocates in the American South would be the most well-positioned to understand the role of culture and religion in the lives of battered immigrant clients. Unfortunately, Southerners, in my experience, have instead tended to emphasize the cultural differences between themselves and their foreign-born clients.

As part of Kiran’s mission, we educate both the South Asian community and mainstream social workers by conducting outreach and training sessions. Building competencies among those who are in a position to help South Asian and other immigrant women in crisis is essential. These kinds of connections are being made throughout the American South. Other organizations such as Raksha in Atlanta, Saheli in Austin, Texas, and Daya in Houston, have also been working to facilitate a dialogue between South Asian communities and mainstream domestic violence service providers.

In conducting trainings at shelters and domestic violence organizations in the Triangle, I’ve been encouraged by many advocates’ interest in learning about the specific barriers that their immigrant clients face. Though there is a much work ahead, these exchanges are stepping stones towards providing better understanding of immigrants in the American South.

As I learned the back roads of Durham and the Domestic Violence Unit’s procedure on taking domestic violence calls, Officer David learned about the barriers that immigrant women face in accessing the police in the U.S. Our cultural exchange was a microcosm of the learning that needs to take place to fully integrate new populations into the fabric of a changing American South.