Twice migrants: East Africam sikh settlers in Britain

Based on fieldwork conducted by the author among the Sikhs
in Britain, this book focuses on the marriage patterns of a
single community with a common history of migration from
India to Africa, and from there to the UK, from the mid-1960s
onwards.
East African Sikhs are successful settlers: they were able
to establish community and technical skills before they
migrated, and to migrate in complete family units, and
consequently established themselves rapidly as a community
in Britain. But despite this, the community has remained
highly traditionalistic, maintaining a cultural conservatism
and accentuating certain features of the traditional cultural
patterns - for example, the marriage and dowry system - in
spite of the absence of reinforcement from a home country.
Their command over mainstream skills, combined with a lack
of 'home' orientation, has catalysed the settlement process
and the formation of a 'British Asian/Sikh' identity.
This new ethnography, by an anthropologist who is herself a
member of the community she studied, provides fascinating
and important insights into the adaptation of a strongly
traditional group to life in urban Britain.
The author: Parminder Bhachu carried out her doctoral research
among Sikhs while at the University of London and later as a
research fellow at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations
at the University of Warwick; she is currently at the Thomas
Toram Research Unit, University of London.