The University of Chicago Department of Sociology

SaunJuhi Verma

Ph.D. Candidate
SALC Dissertation Fellow
MA, Sociology, University of Chicago
BS, Finance, Indiana University Bloomington
BA, Economics, Indiana University Bloomington

Phone: (773)954-3318
Email: jverma
Curriculum Vita: CV

SaunJuhi Verma is a Ph.D. candidate of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include migration/labor studies, sociology of law, and social theory, specifically, the conceptualization of race and gender. Her first project evaluated subversive organizing strategies by women laborers in Bangalore India, particularly the manipulation of female frailty as a tool for improving factory conditions. Her dissertation research, an ongoing ethnographic multi-site case study, evaluates the role of the U.S. guest worker program and formal business networks for producing a legal and illegal workforce. Based in the U.S. gulf south, New Orleans and Houston, as well as New Delhi, India, the fieldwork analyzes the migratory process of low wage temporary foreign workers recruited into the U.S. oil industry. Notwithstanding the economic downturn, the usage of the guest worker program continues across the U.S. gulf south, bringing workers from South Asia. Despite, entry through legal immigration channels and employment in formal industries, these low wage male migrants experience variation in access to legal status; migratory outcomes range from slippage into undocumented status, deportation to sending countries, or granting of legal status through judicial intervention. Her research supplements the literature’s focus upon individual migrant choice to ask: what is the role of legal and economic institutions in generating a legal and illegal workforce? Her study evaluates the role of formal organizations such as the U.S. courts, multi-country employer networks and the system of labor brokerage for explaining variation in migrant worker’s legal status. This project involves interviews with workers, employers and labor brokers to assess their use of the U.S. guest worker program and analyses of labor trafficking court cases filed by guest workers against employers.

Master's Title

Manipulating the Weaker Sex Schema: Subversive Gendered Action in Bangalore's Labor Protests

Research Interests

Work/Occupations, Economic Sociology/Globalization, Gender, Race/Ethnic/Minority Relations, Immigration/Migration, Law & Society, Labor Studies

Selected Publications

Verma, SaunJuhi. 2011. “Manipulating the Weaker Sex Schema: Subversive Gendered Action in Bangalore’s Labor Protests”. Gender and Society. (Revise & Resubmit)

Verma, SaunJuhi. 2011. Book Review of Reena Patel. Working the Night Shift: Women in India’s Call Center Industry. American Journal of Sociology. (Forthcoming)

Verma, SaunJuhi. 2009. “New Orleans and the Storm of Katrina: Issues of Trust and Terrain” Book Review of J. Horne and P. Steinberg, R. Shields. Breach of Faith and What is a City?. The Griot: Newsletter of the Association of Black Sociologists.