Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston during the Cold War by Uzma Quraishi (review)

Uzma Quraishi has written a well-documented and engaging book. It was a pleasure to read. Her focus is on changing immigration to Houston, Texas, and she reminds us that this city belongs to both the South and the Sun Belt. The author relates the story of Houston's rapid growth since the 1950s, with its boom-and-bust economy. Quraishi touches on the large increase of the Latinx population, but her study centers on the much smaller populations of South Asians, in particular Indians and Pakistanis. She combines census data and other sources with in-depth oral histories. She studies the first generation of South Asians in Houston after 1965 and gives a picture that is not common among histories of immigration.

Why the inclusion of the Cold War in the title? The migration of South Asians to America during the Cold War was part of the U.S. government's attempt to win allies as it promoted programs overseas. The main such program was established by the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act (1948), which attempted to present the best possible view of the United States. Embedded in this program was the educational exchange of Americans and South Asians. South Asians had been severely restricted by regular U.S. immigration channels, which limited immigrants to one hundred per year, until the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. When pushing for the 1965 act's passage, Lyndon B. Johnson administration officials suggested that only eight thousand Indians would come to the United States. But the educational exchanges had already opened a path to the United States that proved the 1965 predictions to be gross underestimates. Quraishi points out that some of the South Asian migrants had no initial intention of staying in the United States but decided to stay after favorable experiences with the educational opportunities in Houston. After the economic elite became established, immigrants arriving under family unification followed, thus expanding the community. It should be noted that she does emphasize the difficulties of the highly educated in India to find employment in their home country, which also encouraged them to find their futures in the United States. In any case, "For Indians and Pakistanis in the postwar era, the idea of migration to the United States emerged as an unintended consequence of U.S. State programs abroad" (p. 2).

The second part of the book rests on thirty-eight intensive interviews with first-generation South Asian immigrants. Some readers might believe that this sample is too small, but this reviewer was not bothered by a limited group. Quraishi blends the interviews with data about the growth of the community and its presence in Houston. It is important to note that these immigrants were an elite group—as she puts it, middle-class, or "upper caste" (p. 23). What emerges from her interviews is the significance of education in her subjects' lives. It was education that made their success in Houston possible, and their faith in education for their children was the key to sustaining that success.

A major part of the story Quraishi tells is about the growing opportunities for these immigrants due to the expansion of Houston's suburbs. Their search for housing took them to older (but basically new) neighborhoods with quality public schools. As she demonstrates, these neighborhoods were usually white with some other Asians. Rather than challenging segregation, the resulting neighborhoods supported it, with Blacks and Mexicans largely confined to poorer neighborhoods. These South Asians were thus incorporated into a Jim Crow Houston shaped by class and racial hierarchies.