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For nearly 40 years, Indian nurses have been migrating to the Gulf countries. For the pioneers, it was an unexpected opportunity to get up to ten times more than in their own country. Nowadays, thousands of young women fill India’s nursing schools with the goal of migrating as soon as possible. Emigration to the Gulf is today considered as an intermediary step before the “true” migration: i.e. to the West which is opening the door more and more to foreign nurses. For these young women, migration is much more than a financial opportunity; this is, very consciously, a strategy to get more autonomy and freedom than they would get in their own country and milieu. This paper is based on fieldwork done both in the South of India and in the Gulf (UAE and Oman).