Beyond Plurality in the African Diaspora:

Ethnicity, Congregation, Networking and Citizenship

ESRC End-of-Award Conference

Keele University

25-27 September, 2008

Seen worldwide, African migration is now a significant movement which has created new African diasporas throughout the Western world and beyond it, in Africa and Asia, during the post-war era. The African continent with its plural, multiple and cross cutting identities of language, religion, ethnicity, and nationality, divided also by class, education and colonial history, is hardly a basis for social organisation in the diaspora. Indeed much of the research to date has tended to find that most postcolonial African migrants are encapsulated during the first phase of migration in communities composed of fellow migrants speaking the same language and/or belonging to the same religious tendency, whether mainstream or evangelical, Christian or Muslim. Such congregational communities form support networks and create havens for incoming migrants.

This tendency towards encapsulation in homeboy networks is strengthened by transnational networking and the conviction of imminent return home, to Africa. Many Africans have gone overseas to acquire higher educational qualifications, diplomas, MAs and even PhDs, in the hope of returning home when times improve financially and politically, to join the expanding elites there. These postcolonial migrants are the cosmopolitans, fluent in English or French, who often form multi-ethnic NGOs in their countries of settlement, or join the ranks of their civil services. Some become traders and entrepreneurs.

Other migrants are undocumented overstayers, refugees and asylum seekers, tourists whose visas have expired, eternal students. By working, often in the informal economy, their hope is to save enough to return home to build a house, buy a piece of land, or start a business, but their stay is often prolonged indefinitely without leading to their sinking roots locally. Often, children are kept at, or sent back home.

The question is: is the process of settlement also the process of expanding horizons, of permeable ethnicity, of intercultural communication and of citizenship making? Do migrants who live in the same neighbourhoods or work in the same workplaces (such as care homes) develop new ways of interacting with one another? And what effects have government (or church) policies supporting the work of local African diaspora NGOs, and – in the British case – networking for purposes of consultation, community ‘cohesion’ or reaching out to ‘hard-to-reach’ groups, have on the ideas of African diasporans’ about citizenship? Do such multicultural policies lead to greater cohesion across the diaspora, despite regional conflicts in various parts of Africa south of the Sahara, or are they merely symbolic gestures? In what ways do they help alleviate the serious social problems of poverty, ill health, dislocation and family breakdown which new migrants experience?

Diasporas, we have argued elsewhere, are chaordic social formations: they tend to reproduce themselves in rather similar ways in different social contexts, to engage in diasporic politics beyond the control of their own home governments, and to build institutional completeness and transnational connections in unique ways. They may develop hybrid identities and inclusive cultural or religious festivals. To what extent do Ghanaian, Nigerians, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Zambians, Congolese (to mention but a few of the larger diaspora groups), West, East, Central and Southern Africans, engage in diaspora politics and create new diaspora institutions in predictable ways across Europe, the US, Africa and Australia, despite differences of context and legal regimes?

Finally, diasporas are also aesthetic formations. How do the aesthetics of popular culture, music, song, dance, film and fashion affect communication within and across different diaspora communities? What role do artists, novelists, painters and intellectuals play in reaching beyond their encapsulated groups to wider audiences within and beyond the African diaspora?

The conference will attempt to address some of these themes. It will take place over three days: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 25-27 September 2008.

The conference builds on an ESRC award on Africans in London: ‘New African Migrants in the Gateway City: Ethnicity, Religion Citizenship’ (Ref No. RES-000-23-1234). The main research fellow in the project has been Dr. Mattia Fumanti.

The intention is to have a small, entirely plenary-based conference with lots of brainstorming and good food and drink, building on prior workshops held over the past two years. We intend to invite a range of policy makers to speak at the conference, but first we need to finalise the programme.

Keynote Speakers

Paul Stoller and Benetta Jules-Rossette

Participation is by invitation only

Pnina Werbner p.werbner@appsoc.keele.ac.uk

Mattia Fumanti m.fumanti@humss.keele.ac.uk

Keele University