Recent Student Migrants: A Story of Mobility

Abstract

I am sitting in a village near Tarn Taran in Punjab in the winter afternoon sun in Pargat Singh’s compound. He has a large landholding. The house is new, the wheat is growing and I can hear the buffaloes. His two daughters are settled overseas, one in Melbourne and the other in Canada. His cousins are also overseas. His wife brings out sweets and pakoras with brewed tea. His mother is on a charpoy, a bed woven with twine, surrounded by his daughter’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Pargat tells of his sister’s husband Puran Singh who was offered a good job in the USA. He went there first, and the plan was that his wife would follow. Puran returned in two months, saying “My heart did not fit there.” Pargat says it became a family joke: “Two people came back from America. One was Columbus and the other was Bhai (Brother) Puran Singh.”