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6. Some migration such as Mini Kahlon’s was basically for life style purposes. She felt the social environ more conducive to her value system and provided her with a wider canvass to explore job opportunities and relationships both at personal and societal levels.

7. In some cases migration took places as a part of job opportunity and upgrading by the husband though initially this was not a factor in getting married.

8. In case of relatives from the villages, the motivation was to have better living standard and to have more income in comparison to earnings in India. The land sub-division amongst children was looming large whereby living standards were expected to be under pressure. More over with other relatives being there as a result of marriage alliances, it was felt that migration was merely shifting from the India based cluster of relatives to overseas cluster with the support system already in place. Better future for off-springs was an added incentive. In Canada the old age benefits were attractive for senior citizens.

9. The motivation per se for each person to strike a new course (and emigration is certainly so) may not be sufficiently strong where local affluence or opportunity is attractive enough. Efforts to migrate at a later age have not been less successful, with men having more difficulty than women. For some years, a woman parent, in fact, is sought after by migrant children for obvious reasons. How long for, is a different matter?

10. Many Sikhs including me had a very strong temptation to migrate during 1980’s because of problems as ethnic minority in India. Had I been ten years younger, I would have left India. One or two of my friends did migrate at that stage of their lives.

I would like to have comments on the subject as each person’s experience, back ground, motivation, value systems etc. are different. So please do write in.