The process of chain migration was quite straightforward. The pioneers who had already established themselves in Britain were constantly on the look-out for opportunities, and took jobs wherever they could find them. If the factory in which they worked was short of labour, it was easy enough to write and tell their relatives and fellow villagers to make their way to Britain, and once they had arrived, they could tell the foreman that a close relative was also looking for a job. Having been taken on and settled down, the new arrival would promptly do the same. It was through these self-organised networks of 'chain migration' that the great majority of settlers found their way to Britain.

The process of chain migration explains a great deal about South Asian settlement in Britain. With this in mind, it is not at all surprising that large numbers of people should have arrived from such a restricted number of locations in the subcontinent: these patterns of migration were largely determined by the origins of the early pioneers, who had begun to establish themselves in Britain since well before the Second World War. Chain migration meant that the outflow was concentrated around, and gradually spread outwards from, the particular villages from which those early pioneers had originated. The same was true at the other end of the chain: since immigrants came to join kinsfolk who had already established themselves overseas, they invariably initially settled in the same street and started work in the same factory as did their predecessors.

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