Migration, Settlement and Families

Abstract

The establishment of Muslim family life, and the forms this has taken, in European cities have been affected by a number of factors first among which is the process of migration itself. Immigration into Europe has been a specialist activity. The origins of, for example, Pakistanis in Britain are not evenly spread across Pakistan or even the province of Punjab. Particular villages have provided the bulk of migrants. In Turkey it is not unusual to find one village heavily affected by emigration to Germany, while a neighbouring village has hardly been touched. Even within villages it was not unusual for the migration to be confined to some families and not to others (examples in Engelbrektsson, 1978; Kiray, 1976; Shaw, 1988, pp. 22f). This is to a great extent explained by the phenomenon of ‘chain migration’ whereby one or two pioneer migrants took the first step and the rest of the family has followed. This pattern has been characteristic also of the migration from the Arab world to, for example, North America, and more recently, Indian subcontinent migration to the Arab Gulf.