Abstract/Summary

In this chapter, the home is the central domain from which I explore the writing of one Mirpuri migrant family from Pakistan. Mirpur town, in the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan, is bound to the north west of England through three phases of chain migration, which have developed over the past 50 years. In the first phase (from the 1950s to the 1960s), male labour migrants left Azad Kashmir for the textile mills of Lancashire, and were quickly reunited by their wives and children in the family reunion phase (1960s to 1970s). With increasing curbs on immigration by successive UK governments, marriage migration became the means by which Mirpuris demonstrated their kinship responsibilities by marrying British Mirpuris, often in Mirpur, but then moving to the UK to live. It is during this contemporary phase of marriage migration that Usman (from Mirpur), whose home literacy practices are explored in this chapter, and Nadia (from Lancashire) came to be married.