‘Home is Never Fully Achieved … Even When We Are In it’: Migration, Belonging and Social Exclusion within Punjabi Transnational Mobility

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon transnational research in the UK and India, primarily over 150 semi-structured interviews in Newcastle, UK and Doaba, Punjab, as well as the ‘mobilities turn’ within contemporary social science, this paper examines the pursuit of ‘home’ within a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that this transnational pursuit of home is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia, in particular processes of social inclusion and exclusion therein. Thus, returning Punjabi migrant attempts to distinguish themselves from the resident population through conspicuous consumption, and simultaneous attempts from Punjabi residents to exclude Non-Resident Indians from ‘real’ Indian status, lead to a continual reprocessing of home across different sites of mobility, as well as demonstrating the ‘never fully achieved’ nature of home.

KEY WORDS:

• mobility
• Punjab
• diaspora
• home
• belonging
• transnationalism
• caste

Acknowledgements

The research upon which this paper is based was conducted with Deborah Booth, a Senior Researcher at Northumbria University and Professor Manjit Singh of Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. The author gratefully and fully acknowledges this work.

Notes

1. The Doaba region is currently comprised of four main districts: Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Nawanshahar.

2. This is not to deny either the great diversity of castes within the ‘Dalit’ category, or the existence of many other castes besides Jats and Dalits within Punjab.

3. While we can point to significant Jat Sikh dominance of the resources enabling access to western migration, there has been some wider caste migration from Punjab to the UK where it is estimated that at least 10% of the Punjabi population hail from the scheduled castes, with the majority from the Chamar community and the majority of these from the Doaba region (Hardtmann 2009). There are also other Punjabi populations (castes or sects) in the UK, who would not identify themselves or be identified with either Jats or Dalits. Nevertheless, Jat Sikhs are the majority Punjabi population in the UK.