Conclusion
The conclusion details how the creative art of letter writing and 300 plus letters written in the 1960s and 1970s at the heart of this study have proven an invaluable source of insight on the past and present world. Indeed, the intricate and detail-laden missives provide a window onto the ways in which immigration policies and practices impacted the every-day lives of migrants and those left behind. They demonstrate, too, how migrants and non-migrants alike built, nurtured, and sustained intimate, emotional, and social relationships across vast distances, including nation-state divides. Despite the ability of distance and time to weaken, at best, and destroy, at worst, personal, family, and community relations, the notes indicate that migrants pursued their hopes and dreams and sometimes nearly lost and shattered them altogether. Embedded in a richly textured social, political, economic, cultural, and historical context, the notes provide a unique lens onto the lives of ordinary people negotiating extraordinary circumstances in their attempts to establish transnational lives that could sustain them and the loved ones who stayed at home.