Identity, Home and Belonging (2025)

African migrants negotiate ‘home’ and ‘belonging’: re-framing transnationalism through a diasporic landscape

International Migration Institute Working Paper 41, 2011

In recent years the volume and dynamics of migration from Africa to Europe have come under increasing study. The resulting breadth of research is impressive and includes such topics as gender and migration, migration and development, refugees and transnationalism. However, this work still suffers from the limitations imposed by existing migration theories that privilege the host context over the sending context focusing on linear processes and bounded conceptual frameworks. Through field work with Ugandan migrants and their descendants in Britain, this paper challenges existing theoretical limitations by proposing an inter-disciplinary approach that draws on transnationalism, diaspora and cultural geographical perspectives on landscape. Through this lens the concept of diasporic landscape emerges as an innovative contribution to migration theory as it highlights the embeddedness of migrants’ lives, within processes of production and reproduction of a discursive terrain that straddles Uganda and Britain. It captures the multi-faceted physical and symbolic impacts of migrants’ lived realities and privileges the continued impact of the sending context, cultural and temporal dimensions. The contours that emerge through migrants’ everyday practices of ‘belonging’ highlight asymmetric power relations. These shift in complex patterns disrupting such bounded notions as migration, immobility, the migrant, non-migrant, refugee, citizen or undocumented person.

On Being and Belonging: Transnational migration and its bearing on my identity and sense of belonging

2021

Movement of people within or between countries has taken place for millennia. Migration is a common phenomenon, where migrant experiences are known to be vast and varied. Although migration has been studied globally, there is a need to document personal migrant experiences to understand their struggles in order to build inclusive communities. This narrative describes the author’s transnational experiences and struggles in trying to grapple with her identity and sense of belonging.

Diasporas reimagined: Spaces, practices and belonging

Drawing on contributions from Oxford Diasporas Programme core staff and associates and covering a range of disciplinary traditions, including social anthropology, sociology, human geography, politics, international relations, development studies and history, the chapters brought together in Diasporas Reimagined evoke a world increasingly interconnected through migration, and yet layered with the sediments of previous encounters (not necessarily peaceful ones). This publication marks the end of ODP, and offers the chance to look back on the work carried out during the lifespan of the programme while also looking forward to a future research agenda in diaspora studies. While it is not intended to offer an exhaustive overview of diaspora studies, we wanted to capture the vitality and variety of research being carried out in this field. Different epistemological standpoints inform the ways in which contributors use the term ‘diaspora’. They fall along a spectrum between emphasising group identity as the bounded object of institutional intervention, to understanding diasporic belonging and mobilisation in more fluid, dynamic and performative ways.

Diasporas Coming Home: Identity and Uncertainty of Transnational Returnees in Postcommunist Lithuania

Postsocialist Europe: Anthropological …, 2009

Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’: 2. Diaspora, Memory and Intimacy ed. by Sarah Barboar, Thomas Lacroix, and Judith Misrahi-Barak

ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 2017

Migration & Society, 2019

This contribution introduces the collection of texts in this special section of Migration and Society exploring contemporary patterns of im/mobility between Africa and Europe. It proposes an ontological-epistemological framework for investigating present-day movements via three core dimensions: (1) a focus on im/mobility explores the intertwinement of mobility and stasis in the context of biographical and migratory pathways and thus goes beyond a binary approach to migration; (2) an existential and dialogical-ethnographic approach zooms in on individual experiences of im/mobility and shows that the personal-experiential is not apolitical, but represents a realm of everyday struggles and quests for a good life; and (3) a genealogical-historical dimension explores present-day migratory quests through their embeddedness within legacies of (post)colonial power relations and interconnections and thus counteracts the hegemonic image of immigration from Africa as having no history and legitimacy.

Four Works on the African Diaspora: A Collective Review Essay:Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora.;The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities.;Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora: The New Urban Challenge.;Lamentation: An Immigrant'...

Transforming Anthropology, 2002

Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora. Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod (eds.). Bloomington, IN, and London, UK: Indiana University Press, 1999. xxv+ 491 pp. (Cloth US$29.95)The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Isidore Okpewho. Carole Boyce Davies. and Ali A. Mazrui (eds.). Bloomington, IN, and London, UK: Indiana University Press, 1999. xxviii. 566 pp. (Cloth USS59.95)Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora: The New Urban Challenge. Charles Green (ed.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997. xiv. 396 pp. (Cloth US$25.95)Lamentation: An Immigrant's Dilemma. Cyril J. Orji. Matawn, NJ: Azbock Publishing, 1999. 301pp. (Paper USS 19.95)

African Identities Where is my home? Rethinking person, family, ethnicity and home under increased transnational migration by Zimbabweans

This article is premised on the idea that Zimbabweans have had a fractured concept of home along historical, spatial, political, racial, ethnic and personal lines – indeed, a multidimensional intersection of all these factors. Psychic tension induced by the poverty of home pre- and post-independence is examined alongside personal ambition in the context of migration. Language and education, two key determinants that have impacted on the migration experiences of Zimbabweans, are also explored. An argument is made that increased transnational migration has had an ambiguous effect on the concept of Zimbabwe as home. On the one hand, there is a confirmation of enduring ethnic and political rifts, and on the other, what appears to be the dissolution of these fissures. Thus, the collective trauma of Zimbabweans at one level perpetuates and, at another, reconfigures associational life between different ethnic groups, suggesting a trans-ethnic identity characterised by weakened class structures. The article also discusses how at a most personal level, transnational migration has affected Zimbabweans

Home Is Where You’re Born: Negotiating Identity in the Diaspora

Studia Neophilologica, 2014

Over 20 million Indians do not live in India, either as people of Indian origin (PIOs) or non-resident Indians (NRIs). This paper looks into the double diaspora situation of Indians who are descendants from indentured labourers in the Fiji islands but who, due to the political situation in Fiji, decided to migrate to New Zealand. The data come from a series of interviews conducted with first and second generation Fiji Indians in Wellington, New Zealand. The focus is on the discursive construction of identity in this double diaspora situation, particularly the role that 'place' plays in this process. The key concept investigated is that of HOME. Taking a dictionary definition as its starting point, the analysis of the interview data shows that none of the places construed as HOME as part of their identity is unproblematic for the community. In particular, the meaning components 'ancestral home', 'country of origin' and 'country of residence' contribute to the dynamic social realities of different members of the community. The data also reveal that there is an additional meaning component not included in the dictionary definition, namely the idea of the 'colonial country as cultural home'.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Mobilising towards and imagining homelands: diaspora formation among U.K. Sudanese

This paper examines diasporic identity formation among Sudanese migrants in the U.K.. From constructivist perspectives, diasporas form when mobilisations towards a ‘homeland’ initiate processes of collectively imagining that homeland. These mobilising agendas have been analysed as either emotional and/or political and correspond to processes of collective remembering, forgetting or future-making. Drawing on interviews with, and observations of, Sudan-born residents of the U.K., this paper examines diaspora formation among U.K. Sudanese. It asks what mobilising agendas unite U.K. Sudanese and what kinds of imaginative processes orient them towards their shared homeland(s). This investigation uncovers how multiple and seemingly contradictory processes of diasporic identity formation overlap within the same ‘national’ migrant community. It analyses how different mobilising agendas initiate imaginative processes of ‘past-making’ and ‘future-making’ which correspond to various types of diasporic identity. In doing so, this paper contributes to debates within constructivist approaches to diaspora formation.