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Examines the status of Tibetans in India in 2000. Information on the social conditions of the exiles from Tibet in India; Comparison between the self-sufficiency of Tibetans and Palestinians; Key to the success of Tibetans-in-exile. INSET: Escape to freedom.

Diverse types of mobility have emerged in contemporary China, among which consumption-led ethnic retired migrants have received little academic attention. This study addresses the seasonal mobility of retired Tibetan migrants who previously had careers in governmental and public sectors in Tibet. After retirement, they purchase second-home apartments in Chengdu for health and leisure reasons. Through semistructured interviews, nonparticipant observation, and the application of Schnell’s multidimensional model, this article analyzes the migration and adaptation experiences of retired Tibetan migrants in Chengdu. It is revealed that, physically, they reside in mixed communities and share activity spaces with the local people, and, socially, maintain their life-long social relationships and form new local relationships. They feel satisfied and comfortable in their new situation, maintain their primary identity as Tibetan, and gradually establish a sense of home in Chengdu. Their political privilege and governmental support in the destination also contribute to their positive migration and adaptation experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent alienation is a symptom of problems in relations among the individual, school, community, and family. Based on a research conducted with a sample of 897 Tibetan adolescent students in Grades 7 to 12, this study reveals that over one third of subjects experience high levels of alienation. Questionnaire data and field work show possible sources of this alienation in contemporary rural Tibetan society in China, factors that may reduce alienation, and explanations for low levels of alienation among some students. The paper concludes with an argument for researchers and policy makers to pay greater attention to the issue of alienation among minority boarding school students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, thousands of Han Chinese have migrated to Lhasa, the capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to pursue a slow-paced and leisurely lifestyle in a land in which they have invested both fantasies and emotional attachment. These lifestyle migrants constitute a culturally unique group dubbed, by themselves and in folk discourse alike, “drifters in Tibet.” This group puts into question the positions and identities of the socially and economically advantaged Han, by hybridizing with and adopting what they assume to be authentic Tibetan values and worldviews. This article takes Han Chinese's “drifting in Lhasa” as a point of entry to inquiry of the ongoing negotiation of Tibetanness. Drifters mobilize Tibetanness as a repository of representational, discursive, and experiential resources to critically reflect on recent modernization and economic development in the interior of China. Yet, in embracing Tibetanness to problematize the privileged position of the Han in Tibet, the drifters have not distanced themselves from an essentialized conception of Tibetanness. They uncritically celebrate the state's economic subsidies as a means for preserving what they think of as “authentic” Tibetan lifestyles. Tibetans, on the other hand, contest the rigid binary opposition between Han developmentalism and the perceived economic inertia of Tibetans, a regime of identity regulation implicated in uneven power. In particular, Tibetans respond to the drifters’ representations by configuring alternative, but nonetheless “modernized,” conceptions of ethnicity and indigenous identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in an English training program tailored for rural young Tibetans in West China, this study looks into the complexities, dilemma, and possibilities of particularly the cultural aspects of citizenship in a context where minority people are encountering urban, majority, and global forces as a result of their geographic and cultural mobility. In doing so, the theme of flexible citizenship (Ong ) emerges, which deconstructs the conventional conception of citizenship. This deconstruction is achieved through unveiling the complexity and complication of citizenship that is in particular evidence in the everyday practices of these Tibetan subjects. The findings capture a re-consideration of citizenship that is open to multiplicity and grows out of practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-farm activities are gradually becoming critical income sources to improve the quality of Tibetan farmers' lives. However, Tibetan farmers' participation is limited. Based on the experience of two Tibetan villages in Qinghai Province, China, this paper analyzes the challenges and opportunities of Tibetan farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the lives of a number of Tibetan mountaineering women who have risen to celebrity by climbing the highest peaks in the world. It shows how they negotiated their gender and ethnic identity within the highly complex context of modern Tibetan mountaineering in the People's Republic of China. Even though they use mountaineering as a means for emancipation, these Tibetan women enact gender roles in ways that are more complicated than the simple binary opposition between 'old society' and 'new society', reflected in Chinese modernisation narratives, suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the heart of the relationship between identity and the state is the construction of a binary between the citizen resident, in a bounded national community, and its archetypal “other,” the refugee. The case studied here fundamentally disrupts this dualism and the conventional mapping of citizen and refugee onto concepts of statehood and statelessness. With their own government structure operating within the state of India—albeit without legal recognition—exile Tibetans are simultaneously “Tibetan citizens” in the eyes of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, “refugees” in the eyes of many within the international community, and “foreign guests” in the eyes of the Indian state. Based on ethnographic research on exiled Tibetan political institutions and practices, this article charts the contradictory relationship between Tibetans in India and each of the two “governments” that identify, label, and document them. It does so by exploring both the legal discourses and bureaucratic administrations through which the identities of “refugee” and “citizen” are institutionalized, and the materiality of the identity documents issued by these polities. The negotiation of citizenship and refugeehood by a political community without sovereignty over territory thus opens up questions regarding the relationship among citizenship, statehood, and legitimacy, and the ambiguity and power relations inherent within the categories of citizen and refugee. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than 150,000 Tibetan refugees have led their homeland for South Asia since 1959 since the first uprising against the Chinese. Despite fleeing to developing countries that were not signatories to the UN Refugee Convention, their high levels of self-reliance mean they are often described as a 'successful' refugee community. This success has generally been put down to the establishment of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), a government-in-exile that delivers services such as health and education to Tibetans. Along with the delivery of these services, however, the CTA has also maintained a policy that encourages Tibetans to continue living as stateless persons in South Asia. This they argue is a necessary basis for the preservation of their culture and society. Yet as no South Asian state is a signatory to the refugee convention or has domestic laws granting refugees status or rights, it has also led the Tibetan exile community into three or four generations of vulnerable statelessness. As this continuing unresolved status has had damaging side effects, this paper asks if it is time for a change to this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses American radio newscaster and adventurer Lowell Thomas' involvement in Tibetan political affairs which started in 1949 and elaborates on his role as an advocate for Tibetan and American interests. Topics covered include Thomas' experiences and the challenges he faced during his visit to Tibet in 1949, his contributions to the progress in the American-Tibetan relations, and his efforts to present the plight of the Tibetan people to the American public.

Among Tibetans living in exile in India, expressions of longing and sadness for family, friends and places in Tibet are not uniformly shared across members of the community. Time and distance have faded and idealized their homeland in the memories of long-term exiles. Yet, for a segment of this community called New Arrivals, who have only relatively recently left Tibet, people and places 'back home' are real and immediate. The immediacy of these ties to Chinese Tibet, however, often engenders perceptions of New Arrivals as Sinicised, backward and uneducated. This paper focuses on these New Arrivals in the enclave of McLeod Ganj, India, home to the Tibetan exile government and approximately 7,000 Tibetan exiles. In this predominately Tibetan area, the division between long-term exiles and New Arrivals constitutes the dominant social boundary among McLeod Ganj Tibetans, a division that is most prominent among McLeod Ganj's Tibetan youth. Drawing from community discourses, social networks and practices, and educational institutions, I analyse everyday written forms (e.g., poetry, letters, diary entries) to suggest that through these writings, New Arrival youth are constituting and reconstructing their marginalized position within the community. In an exile community where resources are limited, improving the position of New Arrivals can be challenging. Here, I suggest two approaches to the difficulties these youth face. First, re-educating the larger Tibetan community in order to breakdown the prejudices that exist toward these new exiles. Second, refashioning the existing educational institutions for New Arrivals to better prepare them for employment in the Tibetan communities or elsewhere in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exiled Tibetans in India are an unusual marginalised community. With their own government structure operating within the sovereign state of India, albeit without legal recognition, they are both de facto refugees from the perspective of the Indian state and Tibetan 'citizens' in the eyes of the Tibetan government-in-exile (TGiE). Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the complex, dynamic and at times contradictory three-way relationship between this population and the two 'governments' which strive to identify, document and rehabilitate them. After sketching out the context of relations between India and (exile) Tibet, these interactions are explored through two key sets of state-population relations: the identification of individuals as citizens and refugees, and the provision of welfare. Interweaving 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' perspectives on such state-citizen and state-state relations, this paper juxtaposes the rhetoric of both 'governments' with Tibetan citizens' micro-political interactions with these state structures and foregrounds the importance of scale for analyses of the state. The paper concludes by reflecting on how this case can offer a critical spotlight on broader understandings of the everyday state. It is argued that this case provides particularly valuable leverage in demonstrating the partial and processual nature of statehood and powerfully exposes the contingent practices which underlie the social construction of political power in so-called 'normal' states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes issue with a mode of argumentation advanced by a number of left-leaning, radical scholars, including those associated with China's New Left, about the causes of the Tibetan unrest in China in spring 2008. According to this stance, the Tibetan protests were the result of external manipulation by neoconservative, reactionary forces, ranging from the CIA to the Dalai Lama. The unstated premise of this response is that taking a critical stance against western imperialism and neoliberal globalization necessitates a defense of China's policies in Tibet. Such arguments take the form of unfavorable comparisons between Tibetans and Palestinians especially because the former are often romanticized, suggestions that Tibetans are unfortunate ideological victims of US-funded propaganda, and claims that they should be grateful for Chinese state-funded development. This response renders Tibetans incapable of being authentic political subjects. A radical stance on Western imperialism and capitalism should reject such reductionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political and ethnic turmoil that was experienced by Tibet under China's control 60 years ago. It cites the invasion of China in Tibet in 1950s wherein China's control on religious and cultural activities in Tibet resulted to protest of farmers and nomads against Chinese rule in 2008. It mentions the effort of China to develop Tibet hoping for Tibetans to accept their rules. It notes that despite major investments in Tibet, it remains as the poorest region in China.

The article offers information on Buddhists and the Buddhism in North America. It relates on the growing Buddhist presence in Toronto, Ontario, where its immigrant Buddhist diversity is expanded by class and status distinctions as well as the impact of migration process on various groups such as Japanese Canadians and Tibetans. It says that Buddhists are differentiated from national, ethnic, and linguistic identities and are identified as converts. Moreover, the presence of Buddhist temple reflects the community's social capital enabling the groups to engage in local social service, transnational networks, and leadership. It mentions that second-generation youth retain their connection to Buddhism within their ethnic community boundaries.

The Chinese development drive in Tibet is characterised by rapid urbanisation of Tibet's small towns, along with an ever-increasing influx of migrants from China's inland provinces. Based on the author's memories and personal experiences of Lhasa, as well as his later field studies in the Tibetan capital, this article takes a critical look at the transformation of Lhasa during the past 15 years. It argues that massive government development programmes have transformed Lhasa from a 'Tibetan town' into a 'Chinese city' in which local Tibetans have to struggle for economic as well as cultural survival. The new development concept propagated by the top leadership (Chinese: kexuefazhanguan) stresses 'scientific' development, whereas concepts such as rights-based development, local empowerment and participation are still unknown terms in the current development discourse in Tibet. If this situation persists, it will contribute to further tension in Tibet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social stratification in China and specifically examines the difference in urban-rural status in the province of Tibet. Details about the large-scale movement of Han migrants into the area are provided and their role in Tibet's social stratification is explored. The social hierarchy system known as hukou is also described and examines the role the Tibet's ethnic policy plays in the social stratification. The way that native Tibetans and the Han migrants view themselves and each other is also discussed.

This paper examines the context of ethnic identity formation in schools for rural Tibetan children. It reviews rural primary education within Tibet and the secondary education for Tibetans in boarding schools across China. Data are presented on policies, student recruitment, curriculum, teachers and the campus environment, as they impact on students' identity formation. Although there is little that is multicultural about the learning process in these schools, these schools do not strictly deny Tibetan culture to Tibetan children. The school architecture, sculptures, photographs, wall paintings and so forth provide representations of Tibetan culture, albeit selectively and interpreted by the state in terms of the ideological themes of national unity, patriotism, revolutionary traditions, civilised behaviour and love of Tibet. The conclusion points to a make-or-break opportunity for state education to support a more even-handed cultural policy, rather than the dichotomy of segregation and impact integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the way of life in Tibet under Chinese rule. Distribution of land; Economic condition of Tibet; Chinese influence on Tibetans' standard of living; Chinese policies implemented in Tibet.

An excerpt from the article "The Mongol Would-be Self-Immolator" from chapter 4 of Mongoliya, a novel by Guo Xuebo is presented which focuses on the central government's stability maintenance policy; exploitation of traditional Mongolian Pasture lands by coal mining firms; and protest by Tibetans.