ABSTRACT
The history of Pakistani settlement parallels that of some other South Asian groups in Britain, such as the Panjabi Sikhs and the Bangladeshi Muslims, in that wives and children came to Britain some years after the pioneering bachelor-status migrants of the 1950s and 1960s 1 . The beginning of ‘family reunion’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s quite clearly signaled in a new era in which the earlier all-male settlement would be transformed. What is puzzling, however, is why Pakistani women and children should have come to Britain at all. If migrants viewed living and working in Britain as a means of improving their lifestyle in Pakistan, why should they risk izzat (honour, respect) by exposing their wives and daughters to the influences of a society which does not value purdah and female modesty? Why should they incur extra living expenses by bring wives and children to Britain, leaving less money to remit to Pakistan? 2 .
