Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York

Sienna R. Craig 
Orvil Dryfoos Professor of Public Affairs in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College

Abstract:  For centuries, people from the Nepal Himalaya have relied on a combination of agriculture, pastoralism, and trade as a way of life. Among some communities, seasonal migrations to Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, and cities in North India for trade as well as temporary wage labor abroad to other Asian countries and the Gulf States shaped their experiences since the 1980s. Yet, permanent migrations to New York City over the past two decades, are reshaping lives and social worlds. Culturally Tibetan regions such as Mustang have experienced one of the highest rates of depopulation in contemporary Nepal — a profoundly visible depopulation that contrasts with the relative invisibility of Himalayan migrants in New York City. Drawing on more than 25 years of fieldwork and relationships with people in and from Mustang, and on collaborative NYC-based research focused on the broader migration experiences of Himalayan and Tibetan New Yorkers, this talk explores questions about migration, community, and belonging in translocal worlds — rooted equally and by turns in Himalayan villages and the global village of New York. I explore how different generations abide with and understand each other, how traditions are defended and transformed in the context of new mobilities, and how cycles of movement and patterns of world-making shed light on dynamics of kinship and care in an era of migration. flexible in the face of migration, at the nexus of environmental, economic, and cultural transformation.

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