The Global Ethiopian Diaspora is a groundbreaking contribution to migration and African studies, in general, and Ethiopian studies, in particular. It is an edited collection of fifteen chapters contributed by fourteen writers. The disciplinary background of the authors (history, geography, sociology, social work, economics, and anthropology), and the book’s geographic expanse make it remarkable. The case studies capture immigrant experiences in nine host nations located in five continents—Africa, North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The chapters are organized under three analytical themes that flesh out the “histories” and “geographies” of Ethiopian migration as well as the “connections” of the Ethiopian Diaspora to its homeland.
The book opens with an account on Prince Alemayehu Tewodros, an Ethiopian prisoner of war in Britain in the late nineteenth century. Subsequent chapters recount the histories of political violence in post-1974 Ethiopia and how these episodes unleashed waves of migration to Europe and North America. The book then delves into the life worlds of children of the first generation migrants. It captures the experiences of Ethiopia’s “1.5 generation” who were born in Ethiopia but migrated abroad before adulthood. The remaining chapters of the book discuss recent (post-1991) trends of economic migration to the Middle East and South Africa, as well as the trafficking of migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.
The editors preface the case studies outlining the need for “liberating Ethiopian Diaspora scholarship from its embeddedness in an approach that focuses on Euro-American experiences” (17). They also recommend “interrogating the Ethio-centricity of Ethiopian studies” itself (17). Such an act, they suggest, needs to look at the mobility or flux of Ethiopians and their interconnections with other worlds via flows of capital, labor, and culture. The book also discusses problematic binaries Ethiopians deploy to construe migration.
The editors write how positive depictions of the migrant as the “prudent adventurer” sit alongside representations of one who “betrayed” Ethiopia with the very act of migration (14). Many Ethiopians desire to migrate and seek greener pastures abroad. Yet, portrayals of the migrant as the “lone ranger,” the “uprooted,” “unhappy stranger” in faraway lands who neither made the fortune nor maintained their connections with home are rife. Hewan Girma’s chapter, “Songs of Sidet,” chronicles how contemporary Ethiopian songs dwell on “celebrating migrations and migrants on one hand and lamenting their uncertain fates one the other” (305).
The book also illustrates how Ethiopian migrants are active agents of economic and cultural production despite confining politico-legal structures they navigate in host countries. Marina de Regt’s piece on “Female Migrants to the Middle East” is an exposé of how the extreme immobility of Ethiopian female migrant workers still offers room for maneuver. These workers confront abusive employers, change homes where they work at, or countries where they work in, or decide to return back to Ethiopia. Accordingly, the book has archived associational practices that include businesses, religious, self-help, alumni, community and hometown associations, and philanthropic initiatives.
The book invites a number of theoretical questions. The issue of “race” looms large throughout the book. The question is: how do Ethiopians frame the notion of race when they are introduced to prime-racialized communities? How do they construct their Blackness and others define them as such? For instance, Nassise Solomon writes about one of her respondent’s introduction to racialized identity in Canada as follows: “The act of being called an African is not what is offensive to Elias rather the reductive and dismissive manner in which it is appropriated” (60). Writing about Ethiopian migrants in Australia, Hewan Girma points at the need to further explore “the racialization process that Ethiopian migrants undergo as Black Africans in a white hegemonic society” (151).
Racialization gets more nuanced with children of Ethiopian immigrants whose conversations with their parents about race, to say the least, are fraught. Alpha Abebe writes how Ethiopian parents “promoted a form of Ethiopian exceptionalism and worked to de-emphasize their children’s blackness” (89). Here, the case of Ethiopian children adopted by white parents presents a unique dynamic. In a riveting account, Kassaye Berhanu-McDonald shares the story of French adoptees where “speaking Amharic was banned at home in the hope that they would speak French well and assimilate faster into French culture” (338). All of these call for critical inquiry about what happens to self-concept when host communities insist on racial and linguistic assimilation and identification at the expense of Ethiopian languages and heritage.
Diaspora constructions of “home” and “belonging” also deserve further exploration. Alpha Abebe outlines how Young Diaspora of Ethiopian Origin (YDEOs) grapple with conceptions of gender and sexuality given how Ethiopian societies are predominantly patriarchal and heteronormative. Some relate to Ethiopia in defiance of what they consider were the excesses of their parents. For instance, Alpha narrates how some are skeptical of the hyper-emotional and rancorous politics of their parents’ generation. In response, the children “recast their love of Ethiopia as allegiance to the people rather than the state and spoke about their responsibility as an expression of depoliticized affinity to the country” (94). Many resort to engage with “Ethiopia” via academic and philanthropic interventions which they consider are more helpful for the people of Ethiopia. It may be useful to study whether this is true for children of all ethnic and cultural communities of the Ethiopian diaspora or not.
To sum up, this book invites us to further explore how the global Ethiopian diaspora constructs various renditions of identity, “home,” “belonging,” “going back” to Ethiopia, “giving back” to Ethiopia, or “staying back” in Ethiopia. It is an important and timely contribution to migration scholarship which will no doubt shape public debates on immigration, belonging, and identity beyond Ethiopia.
