Based on eighteen months of field research conducted in exile carpet factories settlement camps monasteries and schools in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal as well as in Dharamsala India and Lhasa Tibet this book offers an important contribution to the debate on the impact of international assistance on migrant communities The author explores the ways in which Tibetan exiles in Nepal negotiate their norms and values as they interact with the many international organizations that assist them and comes to the conclusion that as beneficial as aid agency assistance often is it also complicates the Tibetans efforts to define themselves as a community