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The current literature on gender and migration focuses largely on women's experiences as migrants or, alternatively, on their experiences as those left behind. This article, on the contrary, seeks to demonstrate how gender is central in producing a migration system itself. Based on in-depth fieldwork in Sydney (Australia) and Andhra Pradesh (India) on the migration system of Indian information technology (IT) professionals front 2000 to 2001, the article suggests that the gender relations prevalent in Andhra Pradesh, particularly the institution of dowry, have been critical in producing a specially cheap and flexible labour force, and in supporting it in the volatile global economy. In turn, the emergence of a group of mobile IT professionals contributes to the increase of dowry, with disturbing consequences for those underprivileged and seemingly unconcerned with the IT industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information Technology (IT) is leading to a new form of capital accumulation as is clearly evident in the IT industry. Regardless of its origin and amount, capital can be circulated and accumulated on a global scale, at an unprecedented speed and therefore with extreme volatility. An urgent task of the study of globalization and migration is to understand the international labour system of the “new economy”. This article is an ethnographic study of those agents who have been the main means by which Indian IT professionals move globally. “Body shopping” is the practice whereby a firm recruits IT workers and then farms them out to clients for a particular project, though the firm itself is not involved in the project. The key players in “body shopping” are a series of recruitment agents. They form “agent chains” where they depend on each other and assume different functions in dealing with the market, the state and the workers. “Body shops” rely on ethnic networks. Their practices have led to the emergence of a flexible international labour supply system that benefits some IT professionals but also imposes costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]