South Asian Immigration
Travels out of the sub continent are recorded as far back
as 600 A.D. South Asian travelled the trade routes and settled in
North and East Africa, East Asia and South
East Asia. Organized migration began much later. The clearest
records, of course begin with the colonial practice of indentured
labour. Labour from India was taken by the British colonists to the
Carribean, Mauritius, South Africa
and South East Asia. With the growth of
the empire migrations into Europe and North America began. The earliest
migration into the North American continent is recorded in the
story of the Komgata Maru - the ship that was denied entry into the
USA. Through the colonial period, the rate of migration continued
to increase - today the largest immigrant group in England are South Asians, many of them
having migrated in the early to mid 1900's. The most prominent post
1947 migration out of the sub continent is the working and middle
class migration to the Middle East. In addition we have the
migration of Sri Lankan tamils under conditions of ethnic strife at
home to Europe and Canada. However, of all the modern migrations
the one most spoken about is the middle class migration into North
America - the post-60's wave of American migration. While this is
indeed the largest migration to have ever occured, it is also the
one that is presented as only a middle class migration thus
overwriting not only the stories of the past migrations but also
the growing working class migration from South Asia into North
America that began in the 1980's.
