Somalis have been travelling outside the Somali Peninsula since time immemorial, but the most outstanding exodus of their recent historical and contemporary mass migration – displacement would be a better term – occurred after the 1970s, when the mobility and movement of the Somali diaspora to the Arab Peninsula, especially to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, attracted many Somalis. In comparison with other African diaspora communities, it is striking that the Somali diaspora – which constitutes one of the largest in the West and provides one of the most vibrant trading communities in Africa and the Middle East – has attracted less attention in diaspora studies.

The only previous books on the Somali diaspora were Rima Berns-McGown's Muslims in the Diaspora: the Somali communities of London and Toronto (1999); Abdi M. Kusow and Stephanie Bjork's edited volume From Mogadishu to Dixon: the Somali diaspora in a global context (2007); A. Osman Farah, Mammo Muchie and Joakim Gundel's edited volume Somalia: diaspora and state reconstitution in the Horn of Africa (2007); and Nahla Al Huraibi's Islam, Gender and Migrant Integration: the case of Somali immigrant families (2014). With the publication of these two well-researched books under review, the anthropology and sociology of the Somali diaspora may no longer be misread or misrepresented.

Cawo Abdi's and Stephanie Bjork's books provide differing explanatory analyses on the cultural and trade dynamics of the Somalis who migrated out of Somalia, following the collapse of Somalia as one unitary nation state when the military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre fled the capital in 1991. The result was Somali migrants scavenging for social, economic and physical security around the globe, with a preference for the West due to the perceived notion of finding solace there. Migrating overseas was seen as going to Jannah (paradise). It has become normal to find a Somali in every continent of the world.

The widespread displacement of the Somali diaspora remains a clear reminder that Somalis no longer live solely in East Africa or the Horn of Africa, but also form a critical refugee group in the USA, Australia and Europe. Despite their increasing presence in the diaspora, the history of the Somali global diaspora is yet to be written. Any serious study along this line would start with the Berber Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who hinted in 1331 at the presence of Somalis in Arabia and India, and even in the Maldives.Footnote ¹

The prevailing theme that dominates much of the analysis on contemporary Somali society is the enduring relevance of the clan system. This was extensively studied in the scholarship of the late British anthropologist Ioan M. Lewis, who spent almost five decades defending the supremacy of the clan in all things Somali. It is difficult to deny that cultural identities have been economically, socially and politically crucial for Somalis in the diaspora and back home. Economically, Somalis find insurance in clan networks. Politically, they seek contemporary power positions through clan mobilization after the institutionalization of clans in post-conflict Somalia.

However, clan has its own limitations. Both authors reviewed here use various research methods, such as survey data collection and ethnography, to study the action and inaction of the clan aspect of their subjects. Given their different disciplines in using anthropological and sociological tools, the authors reach different conclusions. Abdi, a sociologist, refuses to confer any role to clan in her study, downplaying its importance in the social interactions of the Somali diaspora. In contrast, Bjork, an anthropologist, emphasizes the weight of clan in the Somali diaspora, although at the same time she points out the constraints of the clan.

Bjork challenges the dichotomous dominant discourses of the clan as primordial or constructed, suggesting how the clan remains situational in personal and political aspects of the Somali diaspora and influences the locality and positionality of diasporic Somali communities. Abdi critiques the clan scholarship as well as the literature on transnationalism. Interestingly, the two authors take two familiar, but different, positions about clan in Somali studies, one emphasizing the maximization of clan, the other its minimization.

Exploring the lives and businesses of Somali immigrants in three different countries – South Africa, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the USA – Abdi contends that clan networks are unimportant for her informants. Many of them were born and came of age at a time when the mention of clan names was theoretically forbidden in Somalia at the beginning of the military regime (although clan was practised privately, both institutionally and politically). Bjork suggests the opposite, revealing the significance and salience of clan among Somalis in Finland, mainly from the so-called majority clan groups or clan families. For Bjork, clan is something to be shared, negotiated and contested in everyday life in Finland because it influences many day-to-day practices, from asylum decisions to managing hawala (transfer) money. The unanswered but important question that comes to mind when reading both these books is: why do some Somalis benefit from clanship more than others?

The importance of clan relations continues to be prevalent among Somalis in the diaspora. The main challenge to the culture of clans stems from ‘Westernized’ Somalis, many of them born and bred in the diaspora, while there are other ‘non-Westernized’ Somalis who have varying levels of allegiance to the conception of clanship. Bjork presents how Somalis who embraced Western modes of culture and those who retained their own culture provide two contrasting views on the everyday realities relating to clan members. However, there are other elements that limit the power of the clan: the Islamic faith and the socio-cultural institution of marriage among Somalis both supersede clan identities.

Bjork uses one research field site where a small number of Somalis live (Finland), in contrast to the multi-sited research of Abdi (South Africa, UAE and the USA). Abdi's most important field is South Africa, where Somalis who fled there mapped out unique ways of survival under the post-apartheid regime. However, in South Africa, as in Finland, clan identity exists along with other national and religious identities. The triple heritage identity of Somalis – Arab, African and Muslim – helps them find shelter in the most difficult human conditions of exile, as they intermingle and interact with South African Muslims, Indians, Pakistanis and Southeast Asians. Yet, Somali refugees struggle to survive in South Africa. Abdi concentrates less on the harsh conditions of the foreign countries where Somalis live, focusing instead on a range of positive experiences, such as the businesses they established in South Africa, the UAE and the USA. One would not find in these pages the horrors we occasionally see in the news about Somalis in South Africa being burned alive or killed by machete, the Somalis occasionally deported from the USA to war-torn Somalia, or those whose businesses are being shut down in the UAE for various reasons.

While briefly mentioning her own reflections in the diaspora and at home, Abdi shows how Somalis in the UAE and South Africa fare better than their counterparts in the USA. These were not essentially refugees, but mostly economic immigrants who fled for better job opportunities. So why are Somalis in the UAE opting to travel to Europe, while those in South Africa are looking to the USA? For immigrants, there are lopsided prospects for a better life in the West (idealized in the Jannah) and the life-long ideal of one day returning ‘home’ (Somalia). In addition, the systems in the host countries determine their relations between one another and with immigrants from elsewhere. In the UAE, for example, men and women work hand in hand, but, in South Africa, they rarely work together or women stay and bear children at home (as tended to be customary among Somalis back home).

The two contrasting positions notwithstanding, the fact that Abdi and Bjork deal separately with some crucial patterns and practices of everyday life in the Somali diaspora living in specific countries makes the books indispensable for scholars and students seeking to understand the dislocation of Somali society. That both books include women's perspectives in their descriptions of the roles of Somalis in the diaspora, and a detailed explanation of how gender power relations affect their interlocutors, is itself commendable. Abdi and Bjork provide a good service to current and future generations of students studying the recent history of the Somali diaspora.