From the Himalayas to NYC: Stories of Migration, Identity, and Belonging
The modern Himalayan diaspora took shape in the mid-20th century, with a major turning point occurring in 1959. China's People's Liberation Army began making moves to occupy Tibet with military force beginning in the late months of 1950, claiming their efforts were not merely a political move, but intended to benevolently "liberate" Tibetans from "reactionary, imperialist" religious rule.¹ By 1956, guerrilla forces in East Tibet had organized themselves into a growing, forceful resistance movement against Chinese occupation. The PLA, in response, imported more troops and began to violently target Tibetan monks and monasteries, as well as political refugees and guerrilla leaders, publicly torturing and executing them as examples. Despite many guerrilla fighters and ordinary people's brave efforts to protect their land and holy sites against the violence of occupation, the Tibetan people's rebellion was crushed and the Dalai Lama was forced to flee to India in disguise. Around 85,000 Tibetans were killed in 1959's rebellion, and in the two decades of violent political instability that followed, over a million people died from military violence or starvation.¹
After the Tibetan uprising and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India, many Tibetans left their homes and entered exile communities across South Asia. This moment established the foundation for a dispersed population that continued to grow over time, forming communities in India, Nepal, and Bhutan while also extending into Europe and North America.¹
By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, migration patterns began to shift. The population of Tibetans in India declined from 150,000 in 2011 to 85,000 in 2019, while migration out of Tibet into India also decreased sharply.¹ At the same time, migration to countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland increased. These changes were tied to limited job opportunities, experiences of discrimination, and difficulty accessing services in earlier settlement areas.¹ Migration to New York from the Himalayan region had many causes. Some individuals arrived through student visas or employment opportunities, while others left due to political conflict, such as the Nepalese Civil War from 1996 to 2006.¹ Programs like the Diversity Visa Lottery also contributed to population growth, with the number of visas granted to Nepali immigrants increasing from 376 in 2001 to 2,132 in 2010.¹
In New York City, Himalayan communities have grown rapidly, especially since the early 2000s. Neighborhoods in Queens, particularly Jackson Heights and Woodside, have become central sites of settlement for people from Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and northern India.¹ The Nepali population in New York City has nearly tripled since 2010, reflecting broader migration trends tied to both economic opportunity and global mobility. Jackson Heights, in particular, has developed into a visible center for Himalayan life, with restaurants, businesses, and community organizations shaping the neighborhood’s character.¹ Life in New York often involves difficult economic conditions. Many Himalayan immigrants work long hours in low-paying jobs while trying to support themselves and send money to family members abroad. In some cases, individuals balance school with work, while others take on physically demanding or unstable employment to meet basic needs. These conditions reflect broader patterns of immigrant labor in the city, where the cost of living places significant pressure on new arrivals. At the same time, migration is often understood as an investment in the future, especially for children and younger family members.¹
The experiences of individuals moving from the Himalayan region to New York City are wide-ranging and shaped by different social, economic, political, and personal circumstances. This section presents excerpts from oral histories and interviews that reflect on these experiences. Together, these accounts consider how individuals relate to New York City, how migration reshaped their daily lives, and how living in the city led them to reconsider aspects of their Himalayan identities and connections to home.
One example is the story of Rajan Maharjan, who moved to New York City through the Diversity Visa Lottery alongside his wife, Asmita Maharjan. The couple relocated so that Asmita Maharjan could continue pursuing legal work in New York. In Nepal, Rajan Maharjan worked for a software company, while his wife practiced law. Upon arriving in New York, however, both found themselves taking jobs far outside their previous professional experience. Rajan Maharjan worked in a warehouse, while Asmita Maharjan worked at a nail salon. Reflecting on this transition in his 2022 SAADA oral history interview, he recalls:
“I was working for a software company a month ago. She was a lawyer a month ago. She has her master’s degree. And then we’re doing this. Is this sustainable? Are we going to live our life like this? I was really questioning my decision [...] but we had to follow through, because we had left everything in Nepal.”¹
Their experience reflects a broader pattern faced by many immigrants whose educational backgrounds or professional experience are not immediately recognized after arriving in the United States. Research on immigrant labor and credential recognition describes how highly trained professionals are often pushed into lower-paying work because their prior qualifications are not fully accepted within the American job market, resulting in the underuse of their skills and experience.¹ Rajan Maharjan notes in his oral history that friends in the Nepali community warned the couple before their arrival that they might initially need to take low-paying jobs in order to establish themselves in New York. Although both later found employment closer to their previous careers, these early experiences shaped their first impressions of the city and their understanding of what migration would require from them. While New York was a new and exciting place, it was also a difficult transition, changing his relationship to himself and his home country. Later in the interview, when asked if he felt New York was a home to him now, Rajan Maharjan reflects on his changing relationship to both New York and Nepal:
“New York is my home. [...] But now, since I’m calling this my home for the past 7-8 years, the connection to my home back there in Nepal– it feels like I’m losing connection to that home. And when you think like that, it hurts.”¹
This mirrors the complicated relationship between connection and distance that appears throughout many immigrant narratives. Establishing a sense of belonging in New York can sometimes produce feelings of separation from life in previous home-countries.
In the case of Lama Aria Drolma, her experience reflects the difficulty of adjusting to life in New York while trying to maintain a sense of personal and cultural grounding. After arriving in the city from India to pursue modeling, she initially embraced the excitement and pace of New York life. Speaking about this period, she explains:
“I was really excited to live in New York and be in the fashion world and live the New York lifestyle.[...] But eventually the modeling lifestyle and the parties were becoming meaningless. It’s a very empty world and you start to question the reality and your purpose in life. It’s a very hollow and superficial life. When I started questioning my connection, my reality and that I didn’t fit in, that’s when the change started happening.”¹
Her reflections describe a growing sense of disconnection from the social world she had entered in New York. Although she had achieved access to the fashion industry and the lifestyle associated with it, she describes feeling increasingly alienated from that environment and uncertain about her place within it. Looking back to practices from her childhood, Lama Aria Drolma describes reconnecting with meditation as a turning point in her life.
“I was looking deep into my life and I couldn’t identify with the reality of it. [...] What are you here on this earth for? This question came about because my mother had passed away in her early fifties, and that’s when I found the Buddhist meditation center in Manhattan. It was a New Year’s resolution to start attending regularly because I wanted to go back into my childhood, where I learned transcendental meditation. When I started going into the meditation practice and to the center regularly, my life totally changed 180 degrees.”¹
She later left her modeling career behind and became an ordained Buddhist teacher in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. For many individuals within the Himalayan diaspora, relationships with others who share similar cultural experiences can provide support during periods of displacement and uncertainty. These community connections create spaces where people can maintain cultural practices while also adjusting to life in new places.
In her 2022 SAADA oral history interview, Maya (name changed) speaks about her experience being treated as ethnically different both in Nepal and in the United States because of her Indigenous ethnic background. Here, she explains the way that coming to the United States changed her perception of her identity due to the solidarity she found with other immigrants:
“This country belongs to a certain color of skin. And then you have come from somewhere else with low privileges– low everything– and that’s why you’re foreign here. But when you get out of that space, that space you have been in for so long, and you see from the outside, and you see what is actually happening, somehow it helps consolidate what is happening. Oh, it’s not only me who’s been feeling this, but there’s an entire generation of people who are feeling this. [...] But at this point, the belonging, the grounding happens because there’s a group of people I can sit with and have this ball of feelings together. And that’s where you don’t feel that awful foreigner feeling.”¹
Many individuals within the Himalayan diaspora look to Jackson Heights as a place to find such community and solidarity. The neighborhood functions as a social center where people can hear familiar languages, visit businesses tied to their home regions, and interact with others who share similar migration experiences. For some individuals, Jackson Heights also becomes a space for reconnecting with aspects of identity that may feel distant after migration. In her 2022 SAADA oral history, Angela Nawang reflects on visiting Jackson Heights shortly after graduating college:
“Right after I graduated college, there was a Nepali didi in Jackson Heights, I went to her and I got a nose piercing. I can't exactly pinpoint my motivations for that but I think maybe it was an effort to look more Nepali or look more South Asian.”¹
Jackson Heights provides access to forms of connection that are difficult to find elsewhere in the city. Restaurants serving Himalayan cuisine have become especially important gathering spaces within Jackson Heights. These restaurants function as places where individuals meet friends and family and maintain social ties across different Himalayan communities.¹ They also create spaces where many in the diaspora can interact with one another through shared food traditions. Speaking about the Tibetan restaurant Phayul, one worker explained,
“It’s nice to know that we’re likely to meet Tibetans whenever we come to Jackson Heights. Before we had the restaurant we would come here to meet other Tibetans and it would make us very happy that this was a meeting place. Now that we’re here with the restaurant we meet people from India, Nepal, and Tibet. This place feels like home.”¹
Food has become central to public celebrations of Himalayan identity in Jackson Heights. Since 2012, neighborhood restaurants have participated in the annual Momo Crawl, an event where businesses prepare and distribute momos, a popular Himalayan dumpling, to residents and visitors throughout the neighborhood. Participants travel between restaurants tasting different versions of the dish and voting for their favorites, while winning restaurants display plaques recognizing their participation and success.¹ For some individuals, Jackson Heights becomes deeply associated with ideas of home and continuity. Speaking about her relationship to the neighborhood, Tasi Dechen, owner of Khampa Kitchen and the Tibetan Market in Jackson Heights, stated,
“In another life when I reincarnate, I want to be in Tibet. But as long as I have my restaurant, Jackson Heights will do just fine.”
Jackson Heights brings together people from different regions, languages, religions, and migration histories. As individuals in the Himalayan diaspora adapt to life in NYC, Jackson Heights provides a place to connect.
Migration from the Himalayan region to New York City cannot be reduced to a single narrative. Individuals arrive under different circumstances and carry different relationships to language, labor, religion, family, and identity. For some, New York represents professional opportunity or economic necessity. For others, it becomes a place where older questions surrounding belonging, displacement, or cultural identity take new forms. The histories included here describe both difficulty and connection: long working hours, separation from home, uncertainty about the future, and the challenge of rebuilding lives in unfamiliar surroundings. At the same time, they describe the importance of maintaining spaces where cultural practices continue to exist and enrich the lives of people within the diaspora. Across these stories, we see how immigrant communities create networks of support within New York City, and the ways in which these networks transform the lives of those within them.
Drawing from these stories in a history classroom, students could conduct oral history interviews with someone in their community about their experiences living in New York City. Students might ask what networks, support systems, neighborhoods, religious spaces, businesses, or community organizations people relied on as they adjusted to life in the city. They could also examine how individuals maintained connections to their cultural backgrounds while adapting to new environments. This approach would encourage students to view oral history as a form of historical evidence that documents everyday experiences often left untold.
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Chhoekyapa, Tseten Samdup. "HISTORY LEADING UP TO MARCH 10, 1959." International Campaign for Tibet, n.d. https://savetibet.org/advocacy/history-leading-up-to-march-10-1959/.
Dolma, Tenzin. “Why Are Tibetans Migrating out of India?” The Tibet Journal 44 (1) 2019: 27–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/26921466.
Fix, Michael, Jeanne Batalova, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, et al. “The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in Select States.” Migration Policy Institute, December 2, 2016. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/costs-brain-waste-among-highly-skilled-immigrants-select-states.
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MacPherson, Seonaigh, Anne-Sophie Bentz, and Dawa Bhuti Ghoso. “Global Nomads: The Emergence of the Tibetan Diaspora (Part I).” Migration Policy Institute, September 2, 2008. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/global-nomads-emergence-tibetan-diaspora-part-i.
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