Focusing on one of ‘the largest African sources of transnational migrants’ (p. 2), this volume deals with historical, theoretical and methodological issues in transnational migration and the making of the Ethiopian diaspora across time and space. Guided by social constructivism and interdisciplinarity, various approaches are adopted, ranging from the analysis of cultural productions such as music to archival sources. Digital and ethnographic materials are also used to make sense of the complexity of belonging at the home–diaspora interface.
The editors begin by laying out the background to the thirteen chapters organized under three major themes: namely, the histories and historiographies of Ethiopian migration, the geography of migration, and transnational experiences. They identify gaps in the existing scholarship and chart new ways forward. They describe three phases that have dominated research on transnational migration in Ethiopia and what anchors each phase. Accordingly, the 1980s and 1990s are characterized by examining mobility that was instigated by the dictatorial political climate; mobility in the late 1990s was driven by economic hardship. While these two strands focus on causes, the recent trend highlights notions of return and circularity in transnational migration. Recognizing the irreducibility of a complex process to any binary, this scholarship ‘transcend[s] geographic, conceptual, and methodological boundaries and explore[s] both areas as two interconnected and interpenetrating spatial, conceptual, and temporal constructs in which new forms of affinities and affiliations, new imaginings and practices of belonging are made possible but also continuously recalibrated’ (p. 13). It is within this nuanced research tradition that the volume is situated.
The chapters by Mary Goitom and Elizabeth Chacko and Peter H. Gebre fall within return and circularity. Goitom describes the role of informal institutions such as Maheber and Iddir in the social well-being of Ethiopians in Canada, showing how practices and institutions travel with people. Chacko and Gebre discuss philanthropy by the Ethiopian diaspora as ‘giving back to the community’ one comes from. The book offers another framework that defies dichotomies of forced/voluntary migration. Tekalign Ayalew’s chapter contributes to this by focusing on the motivations behind the decision to migrate. Fitsum R. Teddla and Tesfaye Semela complement this by highlighting the frustration with unmet expectations in Europe after going through a horrendous journey (a process that the forced/voluntary binary cannot adequately capture). Furthermore, the chapters on South Africa (Mulugeta F. Dinbabo) and the Middle East (Marina de Regt) destabilize North American/European supremacy in discussions of transnational migration by shedding light on the truly global nature of the Ethiopian diaspora.
Regt’s chapter also focuses on female migrants and their agentive roles, introducing yet another marginalized subject to the discussion. Staying with the marginalized subject, the concept of ‘invisible diaspora’ is mobilized by Kassaye Berhanu-Mac Donald to describe the neither here nor there situation of adoptees. The chapter demonstrates that belonging to a community is never straightforward even when one has Ethiopian ancestry. The question of Blackness is crucial in further complicating these sense-making processes for adoptees, where their racial identity is in tension with their upbringing by white adoptive parents. Blackness as a new experience is also something Hewan Girma focuses on in her discussion of the making of the Ethiopian diaspora in Australia; faced with anti-Black racism, they begin to confront their (self)-identification as Black/Africans as opposed to Ethiopia’s distance from Blackness.
When it comes to the role history plays in the (un)making of the Ethiopian diaspora, the book grapples with the role of Ethiopia’s past in the articulation of identity, belonging, community and relationship to the (idea of) Ethiopia. For instance, Alpha Abebe demonstrates how children of parents who left the country in the tumultuous years of the 1970s navigate whatever their parents impart as history. Nassisse Solomon, too, delves into how the social, cultural and political history of the Horn of Africa shapes the diaspora’s relationship with Ethiopia. In both cases, the younger generation of Ethiopians, to quote from Amsale Alemu’s chapter, ‘wage a critique of diasporic translocation’ (p. 49) instead of (dis)identifying with Ethiopia based on received wisdom from parents or other stakeholders. Foregrounding the virtual space as a site of political contestation whose impact can no longer be underestimated, Shimelis Bonsa Gulema calls for a ‘critical reckoning with the past’ (p. 298) as a way out of the current political conundrum that compounds home–diaspora relations.
The Introduction promises to foreground new approaches by offering alternative ways and vocabularies to existing methods and theories. On top of delivering on this promise, the chapters bring attention to scholarship that has been marginalized within Ethiopian Studies. However, the book’s innovative theoretical and methodological contributions could have had an even more far-reaching purchase if put in conversation with scholarship coming from elsewhere on the continent. This is pertinent considering the intention of the volume, which is not only to contribute to Ethiopian Studies but also to challenge the isolating notion of Ethiopian exceptionalism. I hope for a closer and more serious engagement with the literature on transnational migration and diasporization within African Studies in the second volume.
