Seedless Chilies and Dried Turnip Leaves

Food and Transnational Connections between Bhutanese Migrants in Australia and their Home Villages

Abstract

Based on one year of anthropological fieldwork in a group of villages in the Haa Valley of western Bhutan, this ethnographic paper examines how Bhutanese migrants in Australia maintain connections to their home villages through food. Although migration to Australia has become a prominent phenomenon in Bhutan (and across the Himalayan region), the paper challenges mainstream accounts of rural depopulation that portray young Bhutanese as progressively detaching from their culture and villages and migration as a linear process of separation from the country of origin and integration into the society of destination. Instead, it argues that moving to Australia prompts Bhutanese migrants to engage with their home villages and social networks in ways they may not have done otherwise. The paper highlights the central role of food in how migrants reconnect, reaffirm, maintain, reinforce, and forge new ties with their home communities. It concludes that migration—particularly in a Himalayan context—should be understood not as a linear process of detachment but as one of connection and continuity, with food and food practices serving as key means through which transnational relationships are nurtured and sustained.