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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Genealogies of diasporic practices and transformations at home: the Somaliland/Gulf States connection
| Panel |
80. Memories of own country: maintaining social networks across boundaries
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| Paper ID | 322 |
| Author(s) |
Ciabarri, Luca
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The paper draws upon an ongoing field research concerning the current and historical relationships between present Somaliland and Arabic and Gulf States. Involving labour migration, which progressively took the form of forced migration, as well as commercial exchanges and money and remittances transfer, such external link represents now for Somaliland one of the major forces transforming and producing the local social landscape and local subjectivities. As a long term historical relationship constantly reshaped over time, such circuit entails a transit of goods, people, social values and behavioural patterns, where strategies of maintaining and producing social networks are deployed and have been experienced.
My presentation will consist of two parts: first, taking into account the example of the Gulf link, I'll describe some genealogies of the technologies and practices of "maintaining social networks" as utilised nowadays by Somalis and partly developed from the Gulf experience.
Second, I will analyse such strategies of maintaining contact as they work on the ground examining the impact in Somaliland of diaspora activities and of those who have decided to return, permanently or just temporarily. In such an analysis a specific focus will be devoted to the motivations and representations underpinning these enterprises. In particular, two examples will be discussed: the production of new urban landscapes emerging now in Somaliland and the external contributions of diaspora and returnees to local political dynamics.
Studying such circuits and their importance for Somali areas the issue raised of course is that of their permanence and continuity, which again refers to the critical aspect of the memories in the diaspora and the generational change in it.
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