ABSTRACT
Sikhs had been travelling to Southeast Asia since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sikh movement to Canada began at the turn of the twentieth century, with the more enterprising among them embarking on journeys to Australia, America and Canada to explore opportunities in these white dominated lands and encouraging their kinsmen in Punjab to join them. Gillian Creese names two major factors of social psychology and economic competition as responsible for Asian exclusion in Canada. North American policies demonstrate a tension between the need to import Asian workers to meet the shortfall in labour demands and appease its white populations, particularly workers who perceived a threat from incoming Asian workers, which was resolved by periodically expelling specific groups construed as threatening the white workforce. Seema Sohi conceptualizes US-Canada borders as a transnational region linked to practices of anti-Asian racism, exclusion, and anti-radicalism across the entire Pacific.
