Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101006
Tilmann Heil
Based on my time with im/mobile West Africans in Senegal and Spain since 2007, I propose conviviality to conceptualise the complexity of my interlocutors’ local and diasporic tactics and views of living with difference. Simple everyday encounters such as greeting and dwelling in urban spaces serve to disentangle their various levels of reflection, habitual expectations and tactical action. They had local to global reference frameworks at their disposal. Not pretending to represent their knowledge, I discuss the inspirations I received from trying to understand what they shared with me non/verbally regarding living with difference. To start from this decentred set of premises challenges established Western/Northern politics of living with difference. Through conviviality, I show a distinct way of engaging multiple and overlapping ways of differentiating and homogenising practices and raise awareness for the importance and feasibility of minimal socialities in diasporic configurations, transnational migrations and the respective local urban contexts.
{"title":"Conviviality as Diasporic Knowledge","authors":"Tilmann Heil","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Based on my time with im/mobile West Africans in Senegal and Spain since 2007, I propose conviviality to conceptualise the complexity of my interlocutors’ local and diasporic tactics and views of living with difference. Simple everyday encounters such as greeting and dwelling in urban spaces serve to disentangle their various levels of reflection, habitual expectations and tactical action. They had local to global reference frameworks at their disposal. Not pretending to represent their knowledge, I discuss the inspirations I received from trying to understand what they shared with me non/verbally regarding living with difference. To start from this decentred set of premises challenges established Western/Northern politics of living with difference. Through conviviality, I show a distinct way of engaging multiple and overlapping ways of differentiating and homogenising practices and raise awareness for the importance and feasibility of minimal socialities in diasporic configurations, transnational migrations and the respective local urban contexts.","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18725465-01101006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49462108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101011
Christian Vium
Based on recurrent ethnographic fieldwork with West African undocumented (im)migrants in Paris (France) since 2006, this photo-essay describes one particular housing complex inhabited by a vast West African diaspora. In addition to a descriptive analysis of my work with photography in the context of anthropological research in this particular setting, the article explores the notion of sacrifice as experienced and recounted by men who have undertaken the long and perilous journey to Europe to find means to support their families back home. Finally, I argue in favour of an approach to aesthetics that acknowledges the fundamental ambiguity of the photographic image and its use within the context of undocumented migration.
{"title":"Spectres of Undocumented Migration in Paris","authors":"Christian Vium","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Based on recurrent ethnographic fieldwork with West African undocumented (im)migrants in Paris (France) since 2006, this photo-essay describes one particular housing complex inhabited by a vast West African diaspora. In addition to a descriptive analysis of my work with photography in the context of anthropological research in this particular setting, the article explores the notion of sacrifice as experienced and recounted by men who have undertaken the long and perilous journey to Europe to find means to support their families back home. Finally, I argue in favour of an approach to aesthetics that acknowledges the fundamental ambiguity of the photographic image and its use within the context of undocumented migration.","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18725465-01101011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41761809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101001
Deborah A. Thomas
This paper asserts that we are currently experiencing an epochal shift equal to that which inaugurated modernity. If the Caribbean was central to the production of modernity and the subsequent dominance of the West, it is also central to the current epochal shift. By exploring two dimensions of this shift as experienced in Jamaica – the growing influence of China globally, and the challenge contemporary feminist and sexual activism are posing to gendered notions of racial respectability that had previously served as the backbone of nationalism – the paper reflects on how we are being required to imagine sovereignty in new terms. If we are, in fact, witnessing the death of the West, or at least the destabilisation of the dominant parameters of Western liberal governance, what can the space of the Caribbean, and particularly Jamaica, tell us about what sovereignty might mean now and into the future?
{"title":"The End of the West and the Future of Us All","authors":"Deborah A. Thomas","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper asserts that we are currently experiencing an epochal shift equal to that which inaugurated modernity. If the Caribbean was central to the production of modernity and the subsequent dominance of the West, it is also central to the current epochal shift. By exploring two dimensions of this shift as experienced in Jamaica – the growing influence of China globally, and the challenge contemporary feminist and sexual activism are posing to gendered notions of racial respectability that had previously served as the backbone of nationalism – the paper reflects on how we are being required to imagine sovereignty in new terms. If we are, in fact, witnessing the death of the West, or at least the destabilisation of the dominant parameters of Western liberal governance, what can the space of the Caribbean, and particularly Jamaica, tell us about what sovereignty might mean now and into the future?","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47744118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101003
L. Wagner
The future of diaspora goes together with the future of diversity, and the different ways in which states and nations can reconfigure how their mobile, multifaceted members are accepted as belonging. The 2018 FIFA World Cup, like many international sporting events, crystallised some of debates about citizenship and belonging as applied to specific players and, notably for this event, to the ‘foreign-born’ men playing for the Moroccan team. Though public debates often focus on evaluating the ‘belonging’ of individuals who are chosen for elite events to represent the nation, that lens did not seem to be applied to the Moroccan team. By exploring how diversity and diaspora were debated in relation to players for European teams in this same tournament, I explore here how the Moroccan example represents perhaps a new direction for diaspora: one which connects descendants across multiple nations and states without character judgments about who can belong.
{"title":"Choosing Teams","authors":"L. Wagner","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The future of diaspora goes together with the future of diversity, and the different ways in which states and nations can reconfigure how their mobile, multifaceted members are accepted as belonging. The 2018 FIFA World Cup, like many international sporting events, crystallised some of debates about citizenship and belonging as applied to specific players and, notably for this event, to the ‘foreign-born’ men playing for the Moroccan team. Though public debates often focus on evaluating the ‘belonging’ of individuals who are chosen for elite events to represent the nation, that lens did not seem to be applied to the Moroccan team. By exploring how diversity and diaspora were debated in relation to players for European teams in this same tournament, I explore here how the Moroccan example represents perhaps a new direction for diaspora: one which connects descendants across multiple nations and states without character judgments about who can belong.","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18725465-01101003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42065493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101007
L. Beeckmans
In this article I introduce the concept of ‘mobile worlding’ in relation to African diaspora's urban world-making practices. Conceptualising 'mobile worlding' is an endeavour to look beyond a certain dualism apparent in transnational migration studies, where transcultural exchanges are mainly studied between migrants’ host and home countries, but in which the trans-urban circulation and interconnectedness of migrants’ urban world-making practices is rarely brought to the fore. A profound study of this 'mobile worlding' has the clear potential to enhance our understanding, not only of (the interconnectedness of) migrants' contributions to contemporary city-making, but also of the contemporary diasporic experience, i.e. as something which is deeply anchored in specific urban contexts, but at the same time highly mobile as African diaspora both online and offline incessantly move in polycentric urban networks along which also their urban world-making practices circulate in multidirectional ways. I illustrate this by highlighting my own empirical research on African diaspora's religious place-making in European cities, as well as by foregrounding other scholarship in which instances of diasporic ‘mobile worlding’ are brought to the fore, for instance through hip hop and fashion, but without being conceptualised as such.
{"title":"Migrants, Mobile Worlding and City-Making","authors":"L. Beeckmans","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101007","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I introduce the concept of ‘mobile worlding’ in relation to African diaspora's urban world-making practices. Conceptualising 'mobile worlding' is an endeavour to look beyond a certain dualism apparent in transnational migration studies, where transcultural exchanges are mainly studied between migrants’ host and home countries, but in which the trans-urban circulation and interconnectedness of migrants’ urban world-making practices is rarely brought to the fore. A profound study of this 'mobile worlding' has the clear potential to enhance our understanding, not only of (the interconnectedness of) migrants' contributions to contemporary city-making, but also of the contemporary diasporic experience, i.e. as something which is deeply anchored in specific urban contexts, but at the same time highly mobile as African diaspora both online and offline incessantly move in polycentric urban networks along which also their urban world-making practices circulate in multidirectional ways. I illustrate this by highlighting my own empirical research on African diaspora's religious place-making in European cities, as well as by foregrounding other scholarship in which instances of diasporic ‘mobile worlding’ are brought to the fore, for instance through hip hop and fashion, but without being conceptualised as such.","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44639828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101008
Sarah Fila-Bakabadio
This paper explores Brent Edwards’s 2001 notion of “décalage” and its role in the evolution of the African diaspora studies. I argue that this notion should be profoundly considered in envisioning the future of the field since it not only reflects the original chasm between African and African-American understandings of the diaspora as Edwards states, but it also illustrates how the diaspora has gradually turned into multiple and sometimes scattered diasporas. I also contend that this multiplicity forces us to question what unites African and Afro-descendants today. I do so relying on Gilles Deleuze’s disjunctive synthesis to examine these three dimensions of diasporan relations. I also discuss how ideological frameworks such as Pan-Africanism or Négritude bridged differences thanks to key ideas of emancipation, black existence and connected struggles. I finally explore contemporary models that could renew diaspora studies: Africana and Afro-liminalities.
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Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101014
Tanja R. Müller
{"title":"Editors’ Statement: Tanja R. Müller","authors":"Tanja R. Müller","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18725465-01101014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49111804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101002
P. Zeleza
In this paper I seek to share some of the insights I have gained from my studies on the African diaspora over the past two decades. It begins by mapping out some of the analytical framings of African Diaspora Studies, with particular reference to the spatial scope and temporal dimensions of the African diaspora. This is followed by an examination of the multiple and multi-layered contributions that African diasporas have made and continue to make to African societies and countries. The paper analyses some of the challenges that undermine more productive engagements between the diasporas and their countries or regions of origin. The paper concludes by focusing an academic initiatives that aim to strengthen the project of engaging African diasporas for Africa’s sustainable development, namely, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program.
{"title":"Leveraging Africa’s Global Diasporas for the Continent’s Development","authors":"P. Zeleza","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper I seek to share some of the insights I have gained from my studies on the African diaspora over the past two decades. It begins by mapping out some of the analytical framings of African Diaspora Studies, with particular reference to the spatial scope and temporal dimensions of the African diaspora. This is followed by an examination of the multiple and multi-layered contributions that African diasporas have made and continue to make to African societies and countries. The paper analyses some of the challenges that undermine more productive engagements between the diasporas and their countries or regions of origin. The paper concludes by focusing an academic initiatives that aim to strengthen the project of engaging African diasporas for Africa’s sustainable development, namely, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program.","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18725465-01101002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48543218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-09DOI: 10.1163/18725465-01101004
Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe
Based on auto/biographical and ethnographic narratives and conceptual theories, this essay explores the Global African Diaspora as a racialised space of belonging for African diasporas in the US, the UK, and – more recently – the clandestine migration zones from Africa to southern Europe. Both approaches are used to illustrate the author’s roots, routes, and detours; an interpretive paradigm highlighting the interconnectedness across time and space of differential African diasporas. The critical analysis interrogates transnational modalities of black and Global African Diasporic kinship, consciousness, and solidarity engendered by shared lived experiences of institutionalised racism, structural inequalities, and violence.
{"title":"Entangled Belongings","authors":"Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe","doi":"10.1163/18725465-01101004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Based on auto/biographical and ethnographic narratives and conceptual theories, this essay explores the Global African Diaspora as a racialised space of belonging for African diasporas in the US, the UK, and – more recently – the clandestine migration zones from Africa to southern Europe. Both approaches are used to illustrate the author’s roots, routes, and detours; an interpretive paradigm highlighting the interconnectedness across time and space of differential African diasporas. The critical analysis interrogates transnational modalities of black and Global African Diasporic kinship, consciousness, and solidarity engendered by shared lived experiences of institutionalised racism, structural inequalities, and violence.","PeriodicalId":42998,"journal":{"name":"African Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18725465-01101004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45731725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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