It explores the ways in which they have established themselves, reimagined community, and redefined their identities.ĭiasporas are transnational actors that could be involved in playing a key role to amplify sustainable development in developing countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia. Does this hybridity also create a space in which exclusionary definitions of culture and religion can be rejected? This study examines the factors working for and against assimilation for the Yemeni (chiefly Ḥaḍramī) and muwallad community in Addis Ababa, and the social opportunities and implications of their migration (or that of their ancestors), considering socio-religious class distinctions, political and economic contexts, and gender.
The muwalladīn, in particular, experience degrees of discrimination in the Yemeni community, due to perceptions that they are not ‘pure-blooded Yemenis’ or that they are simply inferior because they are black. Ethiopians and Yemenis in Ethiopia have discriminated against those considered not to be maintaining ‘pure’ ethnic or religious boundaries. Living in diaspora has created pressure both to identify as ‘Yemeni’ and to assimilate into Ethiopian society. This is an analysis of the Yemeni Muslim community living in diaspora in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, through the ethnographic lens of the politics of religious and ethnic identity, with a particular focus on transnational and multiracial hybridity, and gender.
While diaspora returnees constitute a visible presence in some formerly marginalized areas of Ethiopia-including the historically disputed Somali region-large-sample data on ethnicity and nationality from Canadian censuses suggest that diaspora outreach efforts to historically marginalized groups have not (yet) effected large-scale changes in ethno-national identity, and that ongoing tensions in Ethiopia's federal politics may have different impacts on the identities of different ethnic populations. Such realignments reflect new orientations towards the homeland that impact diaspora engagement in politics and development.
#DEFINITION ANIMATIONIST SERIES#
The emergence of an 'Ethiopian-Somali' identity indicated in recent research, previously regarded as a contradiction in terms, is the most striking of a series of realignments between ethnicity and nationality. Officials in Ethiopia's largest ethnically-defined states recently began working to improve diaspora-homeland relations, historically characterised by ethnically-mobilized support for opposition and insurgency. This article addresses the intersection of 'homeland' politics and diaspora identities by assessing whether geopolitical changes in Ethiopia affect ethno-national identifications among Ethiopian-origin populations living abroad. Through this exploratory work, I challenge pervasive discourses that dominate migration literature and offer an alternative lens illuminating the ways that young diasporans produce spaces that are their own and find insightful and creative ways to express this lived experience. In this thesis I embark on this analytical pursuit through an examination of three cultural artefacts produced by young Ethiopian diasporans. What has been slower to develop is a critical analysis of how second generation (im)migrants also build their lives, make decisions, create meaning, and form communities in ways that cross, intersect and transverse national borders. The development of new fields and schools of thought such as Diaspora, Refugee, and Transnationalism Studies, has helped create nuanced and complex understandings of these increasingly salient issues.
*MASTER'S THESIS* Historic and contemporary migration flows have sparked interest in the ways that migrant communities simultaneously adapt to their new homes and maintain ties to their homelands.
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