ABSTRACT

Over the past few decades, the mobility of young people abroad for education and labour has been rapidly increasing in Nepal, which has impacted both rural communities and household life. Based on ethnographic field data from Eastern Nepal, this paper explores how multilocality affects the socio-spatial dimensions of householding, i.e. how siblings negotiate their roles as movers and stayers in relation to household obligations, individual aspirations and shifting socio-economic opportunities. This paper draws on and contributes to scholarly debates on how migration impacts social transformation in places, with a particular focus on the dynamics of multilocal householding. We argue that a common agreement between generations and siblings that ‘the house cannot stay empty’ reinforces the importance of the household as a meaningful place exercised through the maintenance of traditional intra- and intergenerational contracts and the practice of rotating presence and absence.

摘要

在过去的几十年中，尼泊尔年轻人在国外接受教育和劳动的流动性迅速增加，这对农村社区和家庭生活都产生了影响。基于尼泊尔东部人种学的实地数据，本文探讨了多地点性如何影响住户的社会空间维度，即兄弟姐妹如何就家庭义务，个人愿望和不断变化的社会经济机会就其作为搬家者和滞留者的角色进行谈判。本文利用关于移民如何影响地方的社会转型的学术辩论，并为之做出了贡献，特别关注了多地区家庭住户的动态。