Interview Nouveaux Regard with Françoise Robin for Diasco-Tib

The reconfiguration of the Tibetan diaspora, identities, and transmission  in exile.  

Interviewed by Jean-Raphaël Peytregnet with Françoise Robin

Jean-Raphaël Peytregnet : As a professor and head  of the Tibet section at Inalco, you are leading,  together with other colleagues, a research project  funded by the French National Research Agency  (ANR) [1] focusing on the “reconfiguration of the  Tibetan diaspora.” What do you mean by  “reconfiguration of the Tibetan diaspora”? How  does this “reconfiguration” manifest itself in  concrete terms?  

Françoise Robin for DIASCO-TIB : That is precisely  what our DIASCO-TIB research team, supported  by ANR funding, is currently studying, with a  particular—though not exclusive—focus on  France as a host country. Tibetan exiles do not  form a homogeneous group.

They come from diverse backgrounds: some  were born in India to parents or grandparents  who were themselves refugees; others were  born in Tibet; and still others were born in the  West. Among them, some originate from so called “Central Tibet,” others from Eastern Tibet  (the region known as Kham), and others still  from Northeastern Tibet (Amdo). Some have followed a religious path, while  others are laypeople. Although the vast majority  of Tibetans are Buddhists, they may belong to  different traditions within Tibetan Buddhism.  Some are educated, others are illiterate.

Diversity is intrinsic to any population, but  in the Tibetan case one must emphasize  significant linguistic diversity.

The Tibetophone world is geographically vast  and sparsely populated, and is therefore  fragmented into major dialect groups that are  not always mutually intelligible orally. To explain  this dispersion and diversity, parallels are often  drawn with the Romance-language world.

Tibetans in France—whose numbers long  remained very limited but have increased  significantly in recent years—face a number of  questions: do they aspire to reproduce this  diversity, to transmit it, or are they instead  moving toward standardization?

Similarly, are religious practices becoming more  uniform, or do they remain distinct according to  family and regional origins? Finally, what kind of  “Tibetanness” is maintained in France? Will there  be dilution over generations, or the preservation —and possibly the invention—of a newly shaped  singularity in France, with “Franco-Tibetans” or  “Tibeto-French”? And if so, what will define  them? These are the kinds of questions we are  asking.

From what I understand of your work [2], the term  “diaspora,” as applied to Tibetan emigrants living  in France or elsewhere, is not accepted by all  Tibetans in exile. Could you explain why?  

The terminological debate takes place among a  small number of Tibetan scholars in the  humanities, living in exile and publishing in  English. It is difficult to provide a definitive  answer, however. In both English and French, the  term “diaspora” has several meanings that vary  depending on scholars and evolve over time.

Which definition of “diaspora” are we referring  to? Moreover, the term “diaspora” itself is not  firmly established in Tibetan. Several competing  terms exist, and they tend to emphasize exile  and refugee status rather than the concept of  diaspora as such, clearly showing that the  notion is still in the process of being  conceptualized.

One need only consult the online Tibetan  terminological dictionary—a dictionary aimed at  standardizing neologisms, jointly developed by  fourteen major Tibetan institutions in exile (from  the academic, cultural, educational, and  journalistic spheres, among others), under the  aegis of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The Tibetan language offers no fewer than  four translations for “diaspora.”

The first is tsänchöl (བཙན་བྱོལ།), which literally  means “forced wandering” and is often used to  translate “exile.” The second, yülgyar (ཡུལ་གྱར།), can  be translated as “geographical wandering,” with  a meaning close to the first term but adding a  connotation of disorientation.

The third is chenjor (བྱེས་འབྱོར།), which can be  translated as “having arrived far away,”  conveying the idea of uprooting from one’s  place of origin. Finally, the fourth, kyabchöl (སྐྱབས་བཅོལ།), combines “refuge” (in the sense of  “rescue”) and “to entrust oneself”: one entrusts  oneself to others as a place of refuge [3].

However, these terms remain fairly technical  and have not truly entered everyday usage, with  the exception of the first, which appears in the  name of the “Tibetan Government-in-Exile” (བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་གཞུང་།), and the fourth (kyabchöl), which is  commonly used to render “refuge,” “exile,” or  “asylum.” In short, the very idea of dispersion,  which lies at the heart of the concept of  diaspora, does not seem to be captured by  these neologisms.

You mention the risk of religious, cultural, and  linguistic erosion for second- or third-generation  Tibetans born in the 1970s, whose family members  first arrived in France in the early 1960s. Why is this  risk real?  

To better understand this risk of erosion, we  need to take a detour through India. Under  Nehru’s initial impulse, India has hosted several  tens of thousands of Tibetans since 1959.  Moreover—perhaps because it is itself diverse  and politically organized as a federation—India  understood the need to maintain Tibetan  structures and institutions in exile, under the  leadership of the so-called “Ganden Phodrang”  Tibetan government (that of the Dalai Lamas).

Of course, not everything was simple within the  Tibetan exile community itself, since, as we have  seen, strong regional identities and political  allegiances existed, as T. W. Dhompa has  recently shown [4]. Nevertheless, the system  functioned relatively well.

The situation in France is quite different. The French state does not encourage  particularisms, especially among immigrant  populations. The risk of language loss is  therefore considerable.

Adult members of the Tibetan community— many of whom are deeply attached to their  language—have set up “glottopolitical”  initiatives, to use a term proposed by  sociolinguist S. Akin [5], such as Tibetan language classes on Wednesdays or  weekends.

According to our preliminary research, around  eight hundred children attend these classes.  These community initiatives often benefit from  local support (municipal provision of rooms,  support from associations), but the official  request to integrate Tibetan as an option in the  baccalauréat (third foreign language) has not  yet succeeded [6].

Meanwhile, in Tibet itself, “linguistic  devitalization”—to use a term proposed by C. Simon, a member of the DIASCO-TIB team, in a  forthcoming publication—is a real phenomenon.  [7].

Cultural and linguistic erosion is not directly  linked to the numerical size of a population, but  rather to its degree of concentration relative to  other populations and to the institutional  support it does or does not receive (factors 3  and 7 of linguistic vitality according to UNESCO)  [8].

Moreover, population circulation between Tibet  and France—a factor that could potentially  foster cultural transmission in France—is virtually  impossible. Tibetans are mostly political  refugees and are protected by France; they are  not allowed to return to Tibet. Even those who  acquired French nationality in the 2000s face  major administrative obstacles in obtaining a  visa for China. Tibetans living in Tibet, for their  part, are largely denied passports by the  Chinese authorities and cannot leave the  region.

Yet it is often through visits to family members  who remained behind that linguistic practice is  strengthened, as are transnational family ties.  As for remote communication, phone calls and  social media used by Tibetans in China are  subject to extreme surveillance, and many  refugees here have given up calling their  relatives [9].

India, with its Tibetan community of  around 60,000 people and its network of  Tibetan schools established for refugees,  now serves as the main site for linguistic  maintenance, with some parents in France  sending their children there during school  holidays.

On the religious level, while France hosts many  monasteries and centers affiliated with Tibetan  Buddhism, religious practice there is adapted for  new practitioners and Western converts, and  these institutions house very few Tibetan monks  or nuns.

This “Western-style” practice bears little  resemblance to what exists in Tibet itself or in  monasteries rebuilt in exile, mainly in India.  Outside the strictly domestic sphere, Tibetan  children are thus cut off from a religious practice —gestures, prayers, collective rituals—that  shaped their parents and helped constitute  them as Tibetans.

Take funerals, for example. When a Tibetan dies,  their family lights dozens or hundreds of butter  lamps in dedicated places and performs  prayers, often collectively. No such place exists  here. Tibetans compensate by commissioning  rituals in India, Nepal, or Tibet, but these remain  remote practices in which the family cannot  physically participate.

The domain in which Tibetans in France (and  elsewhere in Europe) have succeeded in  recreating a familiar environment is food and  catering. Tibetan restaurants now abound in  Paris, not to mention vendors selling tsampa  (roasted barley flour, a staple of Tibetan  cuisine), dried cheese, or laphing (cold mung bean noodles) in parks or through informal  networks. Another domain is the performing arts,  which we will discuss later.

What about the integration or assimilation of the  Tibetan community in France? It seems that social  pressure exists within the community to encourage  endogamous marriages in response to a perceived—whether justified or not—demographic threat. Is  this the case? Is there not a risk of ghettoization in  the opposite direction?  

Audrey G. Prost, whose 2003 doctoral thesis  examined social change and medicine among  Tibetans in Dharamsala (India), wrote: “The  Tibetan exile community […] strives to maintain  an ideal of strict Tibetan endogamy, although in  practice marriages with Indians, Nepalis and  foreigners do happen and are sanctioned as  long as they are seen to be technically  hypergamous.” [10].

According to a survey conducted by our team,  Tibetans in France do indeed very frequently  marry within the community (for many of them,  before their arrival) and often have two or three  children. The reason is also practical: migration  to France is recent, and few adult Tibetans feel  sufficiently comfortable in French to marry  someone outside their community, not to  mention the fairly marked cultural differences.

It is also possible that the perception of a  civilization and a language under threat—due to  the political situation in Tibet under Chinese  domination—and the very high esteem Tibetans  have for their own civilization encourage  marriages between Tibetans, in the belief that  such unions make it easier to raise children in  Tibetan culture and language, whereas mixed  marriages are seen as riskier in this respect.

One can expect that Tibetan children born and  socialized in France will not necessarily pursue  this matrimonial strategy.

In any case, the term “ghettoization” is certainly  too strong for a community that is fairly  dispersed geographically, in which both parents  mostly work in non-Tibetan environments, and  where children generally attend ordinary public  schools, with parents placing strong emphasis  on academic success.

In your work, you write that “one may assume that  the imperative of identity preservation—deeply  embedded in the ‘DNA’ of Tibetans in exile since  1959 (the year of the Tibetan uprising in Lhasa and  the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama to India)—will  persist all the more as the prospect of return (to  Tibet) gradually fades.”  How does this “identity preservation” manifest  itself in France? What means does the Tibetan  community employ to this end?  

In addition to the schools already mentioned,  one can point to community festivals—open to  all—that punctuate the Tibetan year and are  organized by associations in exile.

These include, for example, the lunar New Year in  February, the Tibet and Himalayan Peoples  Festival in June at the Pagode de Vincennes, the  Dalai Lama’s birthday in July, and the  commemoration of the Nobel Peace Prize  awarded to the Dalai Lama in 1989, held in  December.

Events commemorating the 1959 Lhasa uprising  on March 10 are also moments of gathering,  though of a more solemn nature. Regional  associations also organize “their” New Year  celebrations, as do associations of former  students of Tibetan exile schools.

These associations also organize an annual  celebration for newly graduated baccalauréat  students from the community. Finally, a  relatively new phenomenon in France—one that  may seem anecdotal but is not—is that young  (and less young) Tibetans like to gather on  Wednesday afternoons and Sundays at the  Jardins d’Éole, in Paris’s 19th arrondissement, to  dance the gorshey (Tib. སྒོར་གཞས།).

These circle dances sometimes attract so many  participants that they split into several  concentric circles.

These dances are moments of conviviality for  Tibetan youth, where Tibetan songs are heard  and bodies engage in a “folkloric” Tibetan  choreography, sometimes in traditional Tibetan  clothing. In short, it is a way of re-centering  body, speech, and mind (to borrow a well known Tibetan triad) around a distinctly Tibetan  cultural expression in a festive atmosphere.

Alongside the dancers, dozens or hundreds of  Tibetans gather—some playing dice, others  drinking butter tea, still others selling  homemade Tibetan food (laphing, tsampa,  dried cheese). An entire micro-society is thus  recreated for a few hours, mobilizing all the  senses around Tibetan culture: sounds and  voices, spectacle, tastes, gestures, and  conviviality.

One might imagine that the Tibetan community in  France would settle in mountainous regions such as  the Alps or the Pyrenees. Yet it appears to favor  Paris and the surrounding region. How do you  explain this?  

In this respect, Tibetans follow a trend  observed within the French population as a  whole, which is also highly concentrated in  major urban areas (90% of the immigrant  population and 82% of the non-immigrant  population) [11].

Although originating from High Asia, Tibetans  often spend several years in South Asia before  arriving in France, if they did not grow up there.  For some, life in the Indian plains is more familiar  than life in the mountains. Moreover, if they were  educated in one of the school networks  established in South Asia, they generally have  no experience of rural life, except during holiday  visits to their parents.

Furthermore, even if they lived in the mountains  in Tibet, their way of life there was entirely  different. While Tibetans in France still enjoy  spending holidays in mountain areas, very few  settle there permanently.

In addition, small mountain villages in France  are difficult to access, and above all their labor  markets are very limited. Like most people  today, few aspire to a life as farmers or herders —especially given the regulatory environment  and professional practices, which are very  different from what they may have known in  Tibet.

Finally, it is perhaps not widely known that  Tibetans arriving in France to seek political  asylum come through smuggling networks. To  recall, Tibetans do not hold passports, as the  Chinese state does not issue passports to  Tibetans; Tibetans living in Nepal have no official status; and few Tibetans have applied for Indian  nationality.

As soon as they set foot in France, they must  repay a significant debt incurred to obtain a  fake passport, the visa affixed to it, and the  journey itself.

The urgency is therefore to repay this sum as  quickly as possible, since interest accrues.

Once they obtain political refugee status—after  several months—they can begin working.  However, they do not speak French upon arrival.  It may seem surprising and paradoxical, but  most initially find employment in Chinese  restaurants.

They generally understand Chinese, and for  Chinese employers they represent a workforce  that is compliant and legally documented. This  explains why Tibetans tend to settle in Paris and  the surrounding region, or in a few other French  cities (such as Strasbourg).

If you frequent Asian restaurants run by Chinese  owners—whether serving Chinese, Japanese, or  Korean cuisine—it is not uncommon to  encounter Tibetan servers or cooks, even  outside Paris, as I have personally experienced  on several occasions.

Data published by OFPRA (the French Office for  the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons)  in early 2024 (for 2023) indicate that nationals of the  People’s Republic of China benefit from one of the  highest asylum acceptance rates.  The majority of these individuals are Tibetans,  suggesting strong protection granted by France to  asylum seekers of Tibetan origin.  Is the same trend observed in other European  countries, such as Switzerland, which has also  traditionally been a country of asylum for  Tibetans?  

The annual public reports of OFPRA classify  asylum applications by country of origin, and  Tibetans therefore appear in the list under the  “China” section. They are referred to variously as  “applicants of Tibetan origin,” “Tibetan  nationals,” or “Chinese nationals of Tibetan  origin.”

The 2024 annual report of OFPRA[12], mentioned  in the question, states (p. 66):  “Afghan, Haitian, Ukrainian, Congolese (from the  Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Syrian  nationals were, in 2024, among the principal nationalities benefiting from international  protection. Moreover, the highest protection  rates (75% and above) concerned persons  originating from China (Tibetan nationals),  Ukraine, and Syria, with Afghanistan coming  only afterward (stable at 68%).”  

The rate at which refugee status is granted to  Tibetans is therefore significantly higher than the  figure you mention, and this has been the case  for many years.

Switzerland was the first European country to  receive Tibetans, welcoming six hundred  refugees as early as the 1960s, but a tightening  of policy has been observed since 2014. It is now  not uncommon in France to encounter Tibetan  asylum seekers who were rejected in  Switzerland.

Finally, this information would be incomplete  without briefly addressing the reasons why  Tibetans have been increasingly seeking  asylum in France since the late 2000s: many  Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal have  embarked on a second exile[13].

The primary factor driving their departure  from South Asia is linked to the age of the  Dalai Lama: born in 1935, he will not  always be present to safeguard the interests  of his exiled community in India or Nepal— countries which, it should be recalled, have  not ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention  nor the 1967 Protocol.  

Tibetans are currently well received and  tolerated in India, but they fear that once their  spiritual leader is gone, such tolerance may  become a thing of the past.

Nepal is fairly emblematic of their vulnerability.  This country, bordering Tibet, has maintained  cultural and commercial ties with Tibetans for  over a thousand years (not to mention that the  northern Himalayan regions of Nepal are of  Tibetan culture). It therefore took in Tibetan  refugees beginning in 1959. However, since the  fall of the monarchy in 1996, Nepal has gradually  come under the influence of the People’s  Republic of China and has shown increasing  hostility toward Tibetans. Whereas Bouddha—an  iconic suburb of Buddhism in the Kathmandu  Valley—resembled a small Tibet up until the  2000s, over the past two decades it has been  abandoned by its Tibetan refugee population,  who have moved on to India or, more often, to a  Western country.

France (like Belgium), having a reputation for  offering a favorable environment in which to  start a new life, has seen an influx of Tibetans,  whereas this has not been the case for  Germany, Italy, Spain, or England, where the  Tibetan population is small and community life  less developed. The United States, once a  traditional destination for Tibetan migration,  may have become less attractive under the  Trump administration’s immigration policy.  Canada remains a country of choice, notably  because of its already sizeable Tibetan  community, particularly in Toronto[14].

[1] https://anr.fr/projet-ANR-23-CE41-0017

[2] “The double exile of Tibetans: to South Asia, then to the  West – The case of France” in Migrants from Asia, migrants  in Asia – Journeys, memories and accounts of little-known  migratory trajectories, edited by Pauline Cherrier, Hui-yeon  Kim and Isabelle Konuma, Collections SHS, Marseille, TERRA

HN-éditions, 2024. Online: https://www.shs.terra-hn editions.org/Collection/?Le-double-exil-des-Tibetains-vers l-Asie-du-Sud-puis-l-Occident

[3] https://tibterminology.net/dictionary/ diaspora/  https://tibterminology.net/dictionary/displaced-person/

[4] Dhompa, Tsering Wangmo. 2025. The Politics of Sorrow.  Unity and Allegiance Across Exile. New York: Columbia  University Press.

[5] Akin, Salih. 2022. “Glottopolitics and language self management in situations of linguistic minority: the case of  Berber and Kurdish speakers,” Glottopol 36. https://doi.org/ 10.4000/glottopol.724

[6] Robin, Françoise and Simon, Camille. To be published in  2026. “The Tibetan diaspora faced with a linguistic  emergency: glottopolitical initiatives in South Asia and  France,” in Coraline Pradeau (ed.), Regional, overseas and  minority languages: what are the sociolinguistic emergencies? Louvain-la-Neuve: EME Editions. A petition has  been launched: https://www.change.org/p/tibétain-au bac-བོད-ཡིག-ཧྥ-རན-སིའི-འཛིན -རིམ-༡༢པའི-ཡིག-རྒྱུགས -གྲས-སུ-ཚུད-ཐབས-ཀྱི-ཞུ-ཡིག

[7] Simon, Camille. To be published in 2026. “Policies of  linguistic devitalization in China: Tibetan in a linguistic  emergency,” in Coraline Pradeau (ed.), Regional, overseas  and minority languages: what are the sociolinguistic  emergencies? Louvain-la-Neuve: EME Editions

[8] See the report Vitality and Disappearance of Languages  by the UNESCO Special Group of Experts on Endangered  Languages (https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/00120-FR.pdf).

[9] For a study on this barrier to communication between  Tibetans in exile and their families remaining in Tibet, see  Chinese Transnational Repression of Tibetan Diaspora  Communities, written by the Tibetan Center for Human  Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) https://tchrd.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/02/Chinese-Transnational Repression-of-Tibetan-Diaspora-Communities.pdf in 2024.  See also the report by the Swiss Federal Council, Situation of  Tibetans and Uyghurs in Switzerland: Report by the Federal  Council in response to postulate 20.4333 submitted by the  CPE-N on November 9, 2020. https://www.news.admin.ch/fr/ nsb?id=104104.

[10] Prost, Audrey G. “Exile, Social Change and Medicine  among Tibetans in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India.”  Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London), 2003.  https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10107924/, p. 50.

[11] On this subject, see Chantal Brutel, “La localisation  géographique des immigrés” (The geographical location of  immigrants), Insee Première, No. 1591, April 2016. Online:  https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2121524.

[12] Online at: https://www.ofpra.gouv.fr/publications/les rapports-dactivite

[13] This process of “on-migration” has been studied by  Rebecca Frilund, who is affiliated with the DIASCO-TIB  program. See, for example, Rebecca Frilund, “(Transit)  migration via Nepal and India: Tibetans en route to the  West,” Migration Studies, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2019, Pages  21–38, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnx064.

[14] Logan, J., Murdie, R. 2016. “Home in Canada? The  Settlement Experiences of Tibetans in Parkdale, Toronto,”  International Migration & Integration 17, 95–11. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s12134-014-0382-0

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DIASCO-TIB stands for “Diasporic Convergences: A Case Study of Tibetan Refugees”, a  multidisciplinary research project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) for the  period 2024–2028 and led by Professor Françoise Robin, with Camille Simon and Anne-Sophie Bentz. It  is hosted by the French Institute for East Asian Studies (IFRAE/UMR 8043), in partnership with the Centre  for Social Science Studies on African, American, and Asian Worlds (CESSMA/UMR 245) and the  research laboratory Languages and Cultures of Oral Tradition (LACITO/UMR 7107).

DIASCO-TIB aims to analyze the various patterns of linguistic, spatial, and social convergence at work  among Tibetans in exile. The project’s central hypothesis is that, in the context of a “diasporic  moment,” increased spatial dispersion can paradoxically trigger heightened processes of social and  linguistic convergence. Rapid migratory trends—from South Asia to Europe and North America—have  already led to a large-scale spatial reconfiguration of this diaspora in the 21st century, with France  becoming a major hub within the multipolar Tibetan diasporic network. Our research is conducted  primarily in France, but also in neighboring European countries as well as in Canada and India.

DIASCO-TIB examines several domains, including languages and linguistic practices, translocal social  and economic networks, forms of collective representation (in political, civic, or artistic spheres),religious practices. Alongside the expected convergences, lines of segmentation will also be observed  as they crystallize and reconfigure the shared yet plural linguistic and social practices of the Tibetan  diaspora across its diverse contexts of settlement. To learn more about the members of the DIASCO TIB project, please consult the Research Team page. A permanent link to the project summary on the  ANR website is available at: https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-23-CE41-0017.