Punjabi Migration to Northern British Columbia: Labour and the First Nations

The book chapter examines the patterns of Punjabi migration to the remote towns of northwestern British Columbia, when Punjabis were in search of labour in British Columbia’s resource industries from the early 1960s up to the present. More specifically, it delineates the relationship between employment patterns and immigration policy. In doing so, the chapter also demonstrates how settlement in small remote towns of the Skeena resulted in complex intercultural dynamics, including between Punjabi immigrants and Indigenous peoples, a topic that has by and large been overlooked by academics and policymakers. While Punjabis encountered anti-immigrant sentiment from various Indigenous people, this resentment however seems to have been more the by-product of the First Nations’ long-standing conflict with colonial settlers and the Canadian government.