**6. Conclusions**

Throughout this article, I have reflected on specific issues regarding the way in which the Sikh community in Barcelona and its individual members perceive, question, and manage their identity in a new migratory context. The notion of the body and the descriptions of changes and negotiations in bodily appearance have allowed us to view and understand how they manage their process of settlement in the new context, as well as their relationships within the community and their connections with others outside it and with the wider society. Through the managemen<sup>t</sup> of their bodies and appearances, newly arrived Sikh men and women situate themselves within and outside of their community, as they strategically manage their lives to unfold in the new context. I have used the notions of bodily control and physical managemen<sup>t</sup> to analyze aspects of the social and cultural realities in which individuals find themselves in migratory contexts and to describe some of the constraints and opportunities that are a fforded to them in the new situations. My arguments contribute to the understanding of the diverse processes that are involved in the constitution of individual and group identities in transnational mobility contexts. I have also presented the notion of agency in order to assess the capacity for initiative and for cultural transformation of gendered individuals in migratory contexts. For this, gender relations have been taken into account as a basic framework.

I have described how the roles of men and women among some Sikhs in Barcelona are perfectly di fferentiated and articulated and have attempted to explain how the constitution and managemen<sup>t</sup> of gendered bodies reinforce these roles that are both culturally established and socially controlled. Thus, in the context of migration of Sikhs to Spain, hierarchies, subordination, and forms of control over women are reinforced, and the power exerted by men over women becomes even more entrenched; power is also further exercised by those maintaining orthodox identities (and, therefore, considered purer) over those who move away from it.

In short, I have found that gendered bodies are imbued with power relations, and that choice and changes in corporeal expression and (re)presentation must be linked to an intentionality within the framework of power relations. Furthermore, I have shown that among Sikhs in Spain, there is a persistence of norms regarding gender roles within families, but that young Sikh women express and display a significantly lower acceptance of the implicit ideals and rules, as illustrated throughout this article. Finally, I argue that the space of immigration to Spain is a context that affords a multiplicity of interstices that permit and encourage the use of new forms of agency among young Sikh women who come to live there.

**Funding:** This research was funded in part through a Spanish Ministry of Education Predoctoral Studentship [AP2005-1400].

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
