The aim of this book has been to introduce the reader to the history and experience of one of the largest movements of people in the modern world, namely out-migration from the subcontinent of South Asia from the nineteenth century to the present. Numerous flows of people out of the subcontinent have created a significant and very diverse South Asian diaspora spread through every continent. This diaspora has become important not only in the places where South Asians have settled, but also for the countries of the subcontinent from which they came. So the emphasis here has often been on India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as on the life of South Asians in the diaspora.

The first two chapters analysed the global and local environments that provided the opportunities and incentives for South Asians to travel such large distances overseas and to create permanent homes outside the subcontinent, even though most of them, at least among the earlier generations of migrants, clung to a ‘myth of return’ – a hope that one day they would return to their ancestral homelands. We first looked at the changing connections of South Asia with the wider world, and patterns of stability and movement among its people both within and outside the subcontinent, to understand why there developed an environment conducive to large-scale out-migration. We then turned to a description and analysis of the many and distinctive flows overseas, seeking to understand in more detail why people left their homes, where they came from, where they travelled to and why they went to those particular places.