Paper short abstract:

I discuss the contradictions between the individualistic lifestyle and the tight community of Westerners in Varanasi. How those people explain their motivations and choices? Are they migrants or tourists? In what kind of transnational field the local space of the community is constructed?

Paper long abstract:

There is a community of Westerners in Varanasi, India. Those Westerners return to Varanasi year after year but none of them stay there permanently -in between they go to their home countries to earn money. The community is both transnational and local at the same time. The members come from all over the world and easily move between various nations. Yet, while in Varanasi, they live very intensively together and create a very local and concrete community. They clearly distinguish themselves from tourists and claim to have found an ideal lifestyle. They oppose the modern West and instead value the "authentic" life they have found in India. However, their lifestyle would not be possible without their ties to the affluent west.

In my paper, I discuss the contradictions between their highly individualistic lifestyle and the tight community they form in Varanasi. I illustrate in what kind of transnational field the local space of the community is constructed: instead of transnational, a more appropriate term to describe the lifestyle could be translocal. I also describe how those people themselves explain their motivations and the choices they have made. I argue that the phenomenon could be called lifestyle migration or residential tourism although those people do not seem fit into any categories; they are not tourists, migrants nor travelers, how to label them is indeed a tricky question.

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