Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

High mobility in the contemporary IT industry has been identified as the nature of this industry with IT professionals moving across organizations, not bound to a single employer, as well as mobilizing across professional positions. The IT industry has therefore become a “boundaryless” world, in which boundaries among organizations and professions have been blurred and the individuals are independent from traditional organizational career arrangements. With the global expansion of high-tech IT industry and its transnational labor force system, the entry of the transnational labor force has analytically entangled mobility in the IT industry with individuals’ immigration experiences and social relations. This study centers on lived experience of Chinese high-skilled IT industry professionals in the U.S.. This study draws on semi-structured interviews with Chinese students pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees in the School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. These students are currently in the initial stages of IT professions available to most high-skilled Chinese immigrant IT practitioners, the stages in which they receive educational and professional training for their later careers in the high-tech IT industry. The study focuses on the following key questions: 1) What perceptions or imaginaries of the ideal career and life plan mobilize them into this state of suspension? 2) What choices relating to mobility have they made or anticipated to make based on their understandings of the IT industry and its job market in general, in order to navigate the boundaryless world of the IT industry?