In late July 2026, the South Asian Studies Bulletin (Nanya Yanjiu Tongxun) published an analysis by Liu Zongyi examining the global spread of anti-Indian immigration sentiment. The piece opens with a striking number: India has signed 28 Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreements (MMPAs) with 26 countries, and India's Ministry of External Affairs says similar negotiations are continuing. At the same time, a wave of anti-Indian xenophobia is accelerating across the populist soils of the United States, Europe, and beyond.
Put these two facts together, and the picture demands unpacking.
Standing at the Edge of a Hole of One's Own Digging
The Indian government's global labor-export strategy is impressive in both scale and degree of systematization. From the United States and Europe to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, from Japan to Australia and New Zealand — 28 agreements with 26 countries cover a complete pipeline from low-end labor to high-end skilled talent. The diplomatic breadth of this effort means India has elevated labor export to a matter of national policy — with targets, pacing, and institutional arrangements.
The problem is that while India is sending people out in an organized fashion, the civil sentiment and social structures of the receiving countries have not prepared themselves in parallel for absorption. Anti-immigrant sentiment is not specifically targeting Indians — but at this moment, Indians happen to occupy the brightest spot in the spotlight. Not because Indian migrants are the poorest or most extreme, but because their numbers have grown too fast — fast enough to give locals the illusion of being "replaced."
The more efficient India's labor-export strategy becomes, the more visible the Indian diaspora grows; and the more visible it grows, the higher the probability it is targeted by xenophobic sentiment. This is not a deviation in execution — it is precisely the byproduct of strategic success.
The Paradox of Numbers and Visibility
This paradox is not unique to India. Historically, every country that has exported labor on a large scale has gone through a similar cycle: the Irish in 19th-century America ("No Irish Need Apply"), the Chinese in Southeast Asia's ethnic-Chinese pogroms, the Turkish guest-workers in Germany's Gastarbeiter predicament — all pointing to the same pattern: the more successful the sending country's export strategy, the more easily its diaspora is identified as "replacements" and attacked ahead of other immigrant groups.
India triggering this pattern at this conjuncture involves three layers of background superimposing on one another.
Velocity
The growth curve of Indian migration has steepened sharply over the past decade. This is not slow seepage — it is batch export. The very existence of the MMPA framework is an institutional accelerator, one that leaves receiving societies struggling to keep up in their capacity to digest the inflow.
Structure
The distribution of Indian migrants is uneven — high-end talent in the technology sector coexists with low-end labor in construction and services. The former attracts accusations of "taking good jobs from locals"; the latter is charged with "dragging down wages." A lose-lose positioning.
International Environment
The world is currently riding a high tide of xenophobic sentiment. Trump's policies in the U.S., the rise of the right in Europe, tightened immigration in Australia and Japan — none are specifically aimed at India, but at this water level, the label of "outsider" needs only a single spark.
From the United States and Europe to the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Japan, to Australia and New Zealand, the Indian government is pushing forward a global labor-export strategy with unprecedented intensity… At the same time, a wave of anti-Indian immigration sentiment is accelerating across the populist soils of the US, Europe, and other countries.
This analytical framework does not attribute the anti-Indian wave simply to a resurgence of racial discrimination or xenophobia. Instead, it places the phenomenon in the hedging relationship between an active export strategy and a passive receiving society. The more successful the export strategy, the sharper the social friction — the two are opposite faces of the same process.
What India Can Do
India does not hold all the initiative in this conflict. The receiving countries' immigration policies, economic conditions, and social sentiments are not under New Delhi's control. But India does have several areas where it can adjust proactively:
Pacing Management
Whether the quantity and speed of labor export could be "soft-landed" in certain countries — not by stopping exports, but by stretching the time window to give local societies room to adapt.
Community as Asset
Transforming overseas Indian communities from "exported goods" into "diplomatic assets." This means investing resources in maintaining the community's image, building bridges with local societies, and providing effective legal and diplomatic protection when xenophobic incidents occur.
Diplomatic Hedging
Pairing each new MMPA with a commitment framework and legal guarantees for social integration in the receiving country — not just sending people, but sending a complete risk-management package.
All of these approaches face a common difficulty: labor export is a hard requirement for the Indian economy — millions of young people enter the job market every year, and the domestic economy cannot absorb them all. You cannot insist that "employment is a non-negotiable necessity" and simultaneously ask India to "slow down its exports." This contradiction is the foundation of the trap.
The Root of the Trap
The current predicament of India's global labor strategy is, at bottom, the price of a choice. India chose a more aggressive labor-export path than other developing countries — not waiting for enterprises to export spontaneously, but having the government negotiate agreements and open channels. The benefits of this path are obvious: foreign-exchange earnings, relief from employment pressure, enhanced overseas influence. The costs are equally clear: when export volume reaches a certain scale, the populist target sets itself up.
This is not a strategic mistake. It is the natural consequence of scale effects. When the same activity, scaled up, begins to produce side effects, what is tested is not execution capability but the capacity to endure — whether a country can export labor and simultaneously absorb the backlash that exporting creates.