ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to a group that stands not on occupational or class but on ethnic-socio-cultural commonality fostered in generations of living in a rural locale: a group based on their ethnic identity, Hyolmos. Hyolmos, one of so-called indigenous (Janajati) communities in Nepal who have made the mountainous Hyolmo region (northeast of Kathmandu, widely known as Helambu) their home for centuries, have long been on the move to carry on their livelihood. The chapter focuses on Hyolmo women's various mobilities and their experience of them, within and without their homeland since long ago to this day, and delineates social change entangled with the more recent forms of mobilities, that is, relocation to Kathmandu and overseas migration. Women's relatively marginalized position in Hyolmo society has been related with the culturally prescribed relocation to her husband's upon her marriage. Recent trend of transnational migration for work, of which women have been integral part on par with men, seems to be transforming women's status into that nearly on par with men.
