his unprecedented mass migra- tion of Tibetans is the result of an ongoing conflict between Tibet and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over questions of political autono- my and cultural self-determination. Tibetans continue to follow their spiritu- al leader into exile due to a fear of persecution and the ongoing repression of Tibetan religion and culture within what the Chinese government calls the Tibetan Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic. This article analyses the reasons why cultural matters have been given a high priority by a particular group of refugees and demonstrates the ways in which Tibetans have asserted their sense of communal identity and agency through the built environment and images. Education for the next generation Like all refugees, Tibetans live in the hope of return to their homeland but in his first year in exile the Dalai Lama recognised that this aspiration might not be immediately fulfilled. From the start he emphasised the need to reconstruct the monastic institutions of Tibet in exile, to preserve cultural traditions and to educate the younger generation in Tibetan values. In the year when the first refugee school was founded at Mussoorie in northern India (1962) he wrote: “It is even harder for children than for adults to be uprooted and taken to an entirely differ- ent environment... We had to do something drastic to preserve their health - and their education was also a matter of great importance. We know that our children in Tibet are being snatched away from their parents and being brought up as Chinese Communists, not as Tibetan Buddhists.... So in the next generation, the children in India may be very important people, a nucleus of the peaceful religious life we wish to retain.” 1 In order to meet this challenge he set about acquiring land from the government of India and fund- ing from NGOs. Most importantly, many of the projects established all over India incorporated a cultural component designed to assist in the process of enculturation. In general it could be argued that this culture-specific agenda has played a major role in shaping what, after 40 years, must be considered to be a very successful refugee community. The image of Tibet in exile For the frontispiece to his manual for aspiring Tibetan painters, the exiled artist Gega Lama designed an image of Tibet that placed it at the centre of the world. 2 This depiction of the vacated homeland demonstrates the pride that Tibetan exiles derive from the global awareness of Tibetan culture and their hope that Tibetan Buddhist values, pre- eminently embodied in the figure of the 14th Dalai Lama, will spread far and wide. However, it also suggests the impact of the sense of loss and displace- ment that accompanies the ‘virtual social identity’ of refugees, an identity whose core element is “the root of their troubles - they leave home because of who they are”. 3 Thinking about the Tibet they have been forced to abandon 13 December 1999, 6 culture in exile feature Imagining home: the reconstruction of Tibet in exile by Clare Harris Since 1959 when the 14th Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, more than 130,000 Tibetans have followed him into exile. T