Study title

14 In-depth ethnographical interviews with UK-resident Punjabis were conducted in Birmingham, Leicester and London. These interviews paid particular attention to the ways through which people negotiate with and navigate through, both in India and UK, policies and laws attempting to formalize and regulate transnational movement and exchanges. Questions concerning the social legitimacy of ‘illegal’ migrations were explored in depths, especially with reference to degrees of legitimacy which are attributed to practice on the basis of the caste, class and gender position of immigrants.

This grants will fund Dr VJ Varghese's [CDS, Trivandrum, India] research in UK. This research is connected to an ongoing research Dr Varghese is conducting, on the diverse forms of transnational exchanges between Indian Punjab and UK through Punjabi migrants and Punjabi-origin UK citizens. Firstly, the study examines the broader structural aspects of this linkage, particularly the initiatives of the state in creating a formal transnational space and the way in which transnationalism, through different national legislations and policies, engenders new contours of nation. Secondly, the study is equally interested in transformations of individual/family life-worlds, as well as in the production and reproduction of transnational networks, primarily from the perspective of a 'sending country'. The proposed field investigation in UK will supplement and contrast the ethnographic research carried out by Dr Varghese in the Doaba region of Punjab. Besides having selective interactions with Punjabis in Birmingham and Southall (London), Dr Varghese will have discussions with the UK branches of village-networks from some of the key migrant villages in Punjab. Half of the visiting time will be devoted for consultations with research partners at University of Sussex and scholars of Punjabi Diaspora elsewhere in UK and for preliminary analysis of data.