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References: The South Asian Diaspora

  1. Indian indentured labourers - The National Archives (UK) - A research guide explaining how the indenture system began after slavery was abolished and where workers were sent. It also shows how families can search colonial records for an ancestor who sailed under indenture.

  2. Beyond this Day: 29 January 1838, Indian Indentured Trade and "The First Crossing" - Royal Historical Society - A historian's account of the Hesperus and Whitby voyages to British Guiana in 1838, with the numbers of workers and deaths, and a discussion of whether indenture was a new form of slavery.

  3. Remembering the Ugandan Asian expulsion 50 years on - Runnymede Trust - A short piece by a UK race equality think tank on the 1972 expulsion, the resettlement camps and the cold welcome some families met, including Leicester's newspaper adverts.

  4. Population of England and Wales - UK Government, Ethnicity facts and figures - Official 2021 Census numbers for Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other ethnic groups in England and Wales. The source for the British South Asians table in this chapter.

  5. What Is the Kafala System? - Council on Foreign Relations - A clear explainer on how sponsorship ties Gulf migrant workers' jobs and residency to employers, why rights groups and the ILO have criticized it, and what reforms Qatar and Saudi Arabia have made.

  6. Personal remittances, received (current US$) - World Bank Open Data - The source for the 2025 remittance figures for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. You can compare any country and see how remittances have grown over time.

  7. United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) - Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School - The full text of the Supreme Court's 1923 decision. Reading even a few paragraphs shows how the Court reasoned about race and citizenship.

  8. Immigration Act of 1965 - US Customs and Border Protection - A short official history of the Hart-Celler Act, signed at the Statue of Liberty, which ended national origins quotas and reshaped who could immigrate to the US.

  9. Indians in the U.S. Fact Sheet - Pew Research Center - 2023 population, income, poverty and immigration data for Indian Americans. Linked pages give the same facts for Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Sri Lankan and Bhutanese Americans.

  10. Asian Alone or in Any Combination by Selected Groups (Minnesota), ACS 2020-2024 5-Year Estimates, Table B02018 - US Census Bureau - The official table behind the Minnesota numbers in Section 21.8, with margins of error for each South Asian group. Change the location to look up your own county or city.