ABSTRACT
This chapter argues psychological push factors, although difficult to identify and quantify with any precision, hitherto relatively unstudied role in motivating individual migrants to up and leave. It begins with an exploration of the Babas' testimonies, before moving onto those of the Freshies and then hazarding some comparative reflections that focus on the growing importance of human smuggling. It draws that the Lacan's ideas about the structuring of the Self through desirous encounters with alterity. The chapter explores that how visual experience can contribute to understanding the driving forces of migration. The parallels between cash and sperm as symbols of male potency, they underline the intimate correspondences between sexuality and the excessive, deliberately public spending of money that get lost in utilitarian accounts of migrant behaviour. Many middle-class Pakistanis migrated to London in this period from big cities along age-old colonial pathways of movement that existed long before mass labour migration from the villages got underway.
