Homecoming: Perspectives and Experiences on Return Migration in Gandaki Province, Nepal.

The dominant scholarly conversation pertaining to the topic of migration in Nepal has framed this complex process of human movement as an in-out binary. The existing literature has proposed that Nepalis are either migrating into the urban centers of the country or out to countries abroad. This paper hopes to challenge these binaries by focusing on the under- researched area of return migration. Professor Sienna Craig, author of the The Ends of Kinship, posits that migration can better be understood through a cyclical lens as humans travel from one place to another and back again. This project focuses on the act of returning, in doing so it highlights the stories and experiences of returnees. Curated in a creative non-fiction approach these conversations will focus on the push and pull factors of returnees’ original departure but more importantly, the return of such emigrants, their experiences of transitioning back to the life they left and their perspectives on the future. The accounts collected are from 17 individuals who live or grew up in the Tsum Valley, the upper section of the Gorkha district and Pokhara, Nepal’s second largest city. The following pages center the perspectives of both returnees and people who stayed, as these individual’s oral histories shed light onto the experiences of those who left, returned and the life lived in between. In doing so this paper explores themes of a sense of abandonment in those that remained, a familial and communal responsibility to return and addressing the question of the future of the Tsum Valley.