Family and Kinship

Because China will not permit Tibetans to leave their homeland for reunification with relatives in Canada, Tibetan Canadians are able to sponsor only those relatives who have escaped from Tibet. Canadian immigration policy has also placed limits on the extent to which Tibetan Canadians are able to reunite their extended families, although most Tibetan Canadians have made efforts to bring members of their immediate families – parents, grandparents, and siblings – to Canada. Several factors have contributed to the difficulties Tibetan Canadians have encountered in reuniting their families.

Tibetan refugees had few material resources when they arrived in Canada, and by the time most were in a position to act as sponsors, some of their relatives were either too old to qualify for entrance to Canada or had married and thus did not qualify. In addition, Canadian immigration officers, anticipating future sponsorship, asked Tibetan refugees to provide lists of their relatives before they came to Canada, but many, because of their experiences in occupied Tibet or as refugees, were disinclined to give accurate lists of relatives to government officials. Also, many refugees believed certain relatives to be dead and did not list them, only to discover years later that the relatives in question were living in Tibet, India, or Nepal. Finally, in recent years, Tibetan refugees have been treated as nationals of the last country they left, for example, as Indians, rather than as refugees for purposes of Canadian immigration applications.

All these factors, plus the fact that most Tibetans do not have birth certificates, and even the variability in Tibetan naming – such that people with different first and last names may be father and son, brother and sister, and so on – have made family reunification difficult. Tibetan Canadians with relatives in other countries, especially India or Nepal, offer financial support and arrange visits when possible.

Whereas in Tibet it was customary in most families for one son and for substantial numbers of young women to enter monastic life, in Canada most young Tibetan men and women live in the family home until they have to leave to pursue their education or until they can support themselves.

Tibetans clearly delight in their children, and family relationships are close and informal. A high value is placed on personal responsibility, independence, and respect for others. Tibetan adults do not seem threatened by the inevitable “generation gap” that arises as their children embrace aspects of urban Canadian culture. The response seems instead to be one of pleasure that the children are doing so well. Where young people do not live with their parents, they are usually in close contact with them. Many Tibetan Canadians live in extended families with two or three generations contributing to the household.

Most first-generation Tibetan Canadians were married when they arrived in Canada or later married other Tibetans in Canada. Marriages to non-Tibetans appear to have occasioned little consternation, however. The limited data regarding marriage patterns among the second generation (many of whom are in their twenties now) indicate that many are marrying Tibetan Canadians or Tibetans from other refugee communities, especially those in India or Nepal. Data from Alberta indicate that most young Tibetans there have followed the tradition of arranged marriages.