The rhetoric of return: Mingma or the contradictions of development in Nepal*

Abstract

Leaving for the city or going abroad to study, to later return and contribute to the development of the village. This notion is what we propose here as the rhetoric of return, a polysemic concept that is central to the narrative of development and education in Nepal. The migratory trajectory of Mingma, a young Sherpa who grew up in Sikkim (India), questions this notion based on her experience of returning to Gaun (Nepal), her family’s village. Her story allows us to understand the negotiations that stem from her ideals of development, her role as a teacher and her relationship with the villagers. The most important findings reveal the close link between mobility and knowledge regimes in Nepal and demonstrate the relevance of gender in the mobility-development nexus and its contradictions.

Keywords:

• Return mobility
• development
• gender
• education
• Nepal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although this paper focuses on mobility regimes rather than migration, considered to be a specific expression of human mobility, most of the relevant studies on Nepal focus on this latter paradigm.

2 Development, understood as progress, implies specific transformations for women, who are cast homogeneously as illiterate and victims of oppressive cultural systems (Tamang 2000), within a hegemonic tendency towards a static, homogeneous and dichotomous conceptualisation of third-world women (MacDonald 2016).

3 Mingma was always informed about the research’s aims, which were specified when we first met and again before conducting the formal interviews.

4 A small province in the northeast of India, close to the border with Nepal. Around 70% of inhabitants are Nepalese, their language is official, and Buddhism is prevalent in the region, according to the 2011 Census (Available at censusindia.gov.in). All this makes it an attractive destination for the Sherpa population.

5 Mingma uses the term ‘villager’, which in Nepal is used as a category of social distinction and identifies herself as a bikasi, a developed person (Pigg 1992).

6 Among the different social remittances, normative structures refer to the area of ideas, values and beliefs, while systems of practice refer to the specific actions and practices at an individual or organisational level (Levitt 1998, 933–935).

7 Technological changes reinforce the idea of people as mobile nodes that create movement networks (Sheller and Urry 2006).