On-Migration Aspirations an Livelihood Among Tibetan Newcomers

This article demonstrates that a growing number of Tibetans aspire to migrate to the West and that their ‘capital’ in India, Dharamsala, has become a place of various on-migration activities for the Tibetan newcomers who have relatively recently arrived to India. The case is connected with the current academic discussion on on-migration, a task that has not been fulfilled in the context of this locality before. The study is done by qualitative ethnographic methods, examining migration aspirations of the Tibetan newcomers and their flow out of Dharamsala particularly through heterogeneous refugee narratives and the statements of the Tibetan settlement officials. There is no single motive behind the on-migration aspirations of the Tibetan newcomers, but the interviewees highlighted their livelihood-related difficulties, although increased freedoms in India compared with Tibet under the Chinese rule were appreciated. Hence, global socio-economic and political inequalities affect the migration patterns of the Tibetan newcomers.