Emigrants and the state in Ethiopia: transnationalism and the challenges of political antagonism

ABSTRACT

Since the fall of military-socialist government in 1991 in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has embarked on the total restructuring of the state. It has presented ‘Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ as an ‘organizing principle’ and it has been working towards the rebuilding of the Ethiopian state along this line. The focus of this paper is EPRDF's policies and practices of engagement of Ethiopian emigrants. The analysis is based on information and interviews with government officials in Addis Ababa and with Ethiopian migrants in Washington DC during February–May 2013. This study indicates that the EPRDF government gradually started to focus its attention on Ethiopian migrants around the world, mainly due to the growing economic significance of their transnational engagement in Ethiopia. The study also shows the circumstances in which political debates about the conditions in Ethiopia has been permeating interactions within Ethiopians emigrants.     

(Trans)regionalism and South–South cooperation: Afrasia instead of Eurafrique?

The paper engages critically with the increasing importance of South–South cooperation and the shift from African–European to African–Asian interaction. It argues that South–South cooperation is too often framed in a spatial logics of regional integration and transregional cooperation and thus reproduces spatial understandings that are characteristic for African–European relations but misplaced in the context of African–Asian relations. Moreover, it analyses perceptions about the difference of European and Asian cooperation partners amongst political and societal elites in Kenya and Tanzania, arguing that instead of a shift from African–European to Afrasian spaces of interaction, the two mutually coexist and fulfil complementary functions.     

“Illiberal Spaces:” Uzbekistan's extraterritorial security practices and the spatial politics of contemporary authoritarianism

Research on comparative authoritarianism has tended to neglect spatial approaches to the politics of non-democratic states. This article argues that spatial theory offers a useful framework for exploring extraterritorial security practices designed to counter political opposition among migrant and exile communities. A case study of Uzbekistan explores how the state responded to the perceived security threats posed by rapidly growing communities of labor migrants and the activities of many political and religious activists in exile. The security services developed a network of extraterritorial intelligence and security mechanisms – including surveillance, detention, interrogation and forced returns – to pre-empt or respond to any perceived threats to the regime emanating from abroad. These security practices extended the state in complex ways beyond its borders, resulting in new “state spaces” that reproduced elements of domestic repression in other jurisdictions. The article suggests that such extraterritorial practices are typical of contemporary authoritarian regimes, as such states seek to manage the spatial challenges produced by mass global migration, international financial flows, and transnational processes of knowledge production.     

Islands and a Carceral Environment: Maltese Policy in Terms of Irregular Migration

Although security has become a common framework for analyzing dispositifs that aim to control irregular migration, island spaces themselves are seldom considered as security dispositifs. The case of Malta, where detention is mandatory upon arrival, epitomizes what could be conceptualized as a “sentinel island” within the European Union. This article demonstrates how the interaction between political discourse, administrative practices, and migrants’ experiences contributes to turning the island into a form of total-institution setting. The empirical data is based on qualitative fieldwork that combines ethnographic observation, migrants’ individual narratives and semi-structured interviews conducted with European and national policy makers.     

Transnational networks and kin states: the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, 1878–1940

This paper focuses on the development of national identity and the formation of political organizations in the Turkish minority in the early years of the formation of the Bulgarian state from 1878 to the 1940s. It studies transnational aspects of nationalism, which is usually considered territorially bounded, by studying the impact of connections between the Turkish minority and the Ottoman Empire and later with Turkey. In addition to studying inter-state relations and their reflection in the legal and political sphere, this paper studies the flow of ideas across borders, transnational networks among political activists, and the resulting cleavage formation. Findings show that transnational connections and actors played dual roles. The circulation of political activists, contributed to the formation of national organizations which played a crucial role in (re)formulating national identity. Transnational connections increased political activity in the name of the Turkish minority. Through these organizations the community was able to make collective demands from the Bulgarian state. However, transnational connections carried debates and divisions in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. By dividing the community, they decreased the capacity for collective action.     

Identities in a ‘fragmegrated’ world: black cyber-communities and the French integration system

Constrained by racism and increasing white ownership of the music industry in the United States, African-American jazz drummer Kenny Clarke exited the New York jazz scene for Paris in 1956. Clarke's migration not only represented social freedom but also creative freedom. Through his mentorship of French artists and his work to universalize jazz beyond the authority of just African-American musicians, Clarke signified blackness and Europeaness. In the process of his migration, musicianship and mentorship, Clarke used jazz to meld African-American culture with the music, culture and socio-political concerns of European musicians and fans. This paper argues that even though he was not born in Europe or colonized by European countries, Kenny Clarke and other exiled African-American artists offer an alternative narrative to the negotiation between being black and European.     

A new generation of Ethiopianists: the Universal Ethiopian Students Association and The African: Journal of African Affairs, 1937–1948

Abstract

This paper explores the obscure Universal Ethiopian Student Association (UESA) and the journal that began as their organ, The African: Journal of African Affairs (1937–1948), as an example of modern Ethiopianism. It analyzes The African for clues about what the UESA was, who was involved, who it purported to speak for and to, and the kinds of cross-metropole (and metropole-colony) networks and associations it fostered. The author asserts that unlike many similar political and student organizations of the time, the UESA represents a new generation of Ethiopianists: African nationalists in the traditional sense, committed to the nascent decolonization and pan-african political movements of the era. They also supported Ethiopia and Haile Selassie I at almost all costs, championing both the nationalist and imperialist nature of the modern Ethiopian state in the name of preserving its political sovereignty and role as a leader in Africa and the black world.     

Politics at the margins: alternative sites of political involvement among young people in Cameroon

This paper analyses young people’s political discourses and experiences, highlighting their disillusionment with the postcolonial state. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with young people in the city of Bamenda, the article argues that young people’s perspectives and discourses on politics constitute alternative forms of political involvement and resistance. Their actions, inactions and discourses about politics and political personalities are informed by their specific identities and positionalities. However, taken collectively, these voices reveal current national anxieties about the postcolonial state whose legitimacy is widely believed to have eroded.     

The ugly face of the state: Nigerian security forces,human rights and the search for Boko Haram

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the aggressive and gratuitously violent insurgency in northeastern Nigeria – Boko Haram – is the entirely understandable consequence of more than a half-century of misrule by what I call the parasitic and predatory Nigerian political class. Evidence of widespread human rights abuses including extortion, rape and theft comes from investigations by various international human rights organizations, international non-governmental organizations, church groups, press reports and interviews. I focus primarily on incidents and practices in the northeast but examples are adduced from other parts of the country as well. I discuss the policy of coercion and brutality embedded in the very nature of the colonial and post-colonial state using Crawford Young’s concept of bula matari (the state as rock crusher).     

The Political Context in Everyday Social Work Practice

Social work is political-normative work (De Boer & Duyvendak, 2004). Hence, the political and policy context in which social work practices take place is crucial in understanding social work as a profession and its social task as a product of the welfare state. The political comes to the fore very explicitly when studying social work interventions with clients of immigrant backgrounds, especially due to the prioritization of the “integration” of migrants on various European political agendas. This article studies how frames on “good citizenship” determine the everyday practices of social workers using data on the Netherlands.     

Municipality size,political efficacy and political participation: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

It is an old adage that local government is a training ground for democracy. Its human scale means that political amateurs can contribute effectively and meaningfully to the politics of a state. But in a political climate seemingly driven to consolidate local government into ever larger units, can a not so local local government still elicit an efficacious and participatory citizenry? This paper explores the effect of municipality population size on two important aspects of democratic culture: political efficacy and political participation. Via a two-part systematic review, the paper examines how extant empirical literature bears on the relationship between size and both of these aspects, hypothesising that political efficacy plays a mediating role between size and participation. The findings are unequivocal: citizens of smaller municipalities feel a greater sense of political efficacy and participate to a greater degree in local politics.     

The political economy of the cycles of violence and non-violence in the Sikh struggle for identity and political power: implications for Indian federalism

This paper presents a critique of the essentialist notions of any community as a pacifist or militant community by examining the long history of the cycles of violence and non-violence in the evolution of the Sikh community in the Indian subcontinent. The theoretical premise of the paper is that communities' resort to violence and non-violence is determined by their strategic perspectives to achieve their politico-economic goals and not from any doctrinal adherence to violence or non-violence. The paper attempts a panoramic view of over 500 years of Sikh history (1469 – 2006) and offers a reinterpretation of that history by locating cycles of violence and non-violence in their historical context. It then provides a politico-economic perspective on violence and non-violence in their struggle for identity and political power. It focuses more on an analysis of the recent political conflict between Sikh militants and the Indian state, and concludes by drawing out the policy implications of that analysis for the politics of the modern Indian state regarding the Sikhs of Punjab. It identifies federal arrangements and human rights as issues of key importance in the political economy of this relationship.     

Repositioning Restorative Justice in Europe

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, the European Union (EU) has invested considerable amount of resources in supporting policies and legislation that promote mediation and other restorative justice (RJ) practices at the national and regional level. Alongside these developments a series of legal safeguards, standards, and regulations were introduced to mainstream restorative justice in European criminal justice systems. While we are far from claiming that a unified restorative justice model exists across European countries, the standardization of restorative justice through top-down approaches raises serious concerns around its viability as a community-born ethos. This article draws from the findings of an EU-funded research project that focused on the implementation of the restorative justice articles of the. Victims’ Directive. The article argues that if restorative justice is not repositioned in Europe through innovation and bottom-up structures of community, unregulated, unregistered, and localized projects, it will soon face its demise. The mainstreaming, regulation, and state control of restorative justice in Europe must be balanced against what Nils Christie identified as its original intention of returning conflicts re property.     

War,reconstruction and dependence in Mozambique

It is often asserted that pressures for North African migration to Europe would be reduced if the European Union encouraged economic development on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Such arguments prompt questions about the efficacy of past and present endeavours by Europe to support economic development in North Africa. This article argues that the European Union's efforts have ironically encouraged a form of economic development in its southern neighbours that abets, rather than discourages, migration. Deeper economic reform is necessary by the European Union itself-within the economic space that Europe dominates-if genuine progress is to be made on North African migration pressures.     

‘For you were strangers’: Jewish ritual,black musics,and commemorative politics in Tel Aviv’s Refugee Seder

ABSTRACT

Each Passover since 2009, hundreds of East African asylum seekers and Israeli activists have gathered for ‘Refugee Seder’, a public event to support Sudanese and Eritrean communities in Israel. Featuring a ceremonial seder meal, storytelling, speeches, and a dance party, Refugee Seder draws on age-old Jewish rituals and contemporary global black pop musics to symbolize Africans as members of the Israeli national collective. This article explores Refugee Seder’s modified commemorative practices, which engage dual narratives of Jewish nationalism and cultural cosmopolitanism. I show how seder rituals enable African participants to temporarily embody a Jewish spiritual identity, and how black pop musics help publicly reframe Africans’ ‘blackness’ as a cultural asset instead of a political liability. Ultimately, I argue that Refugee Seder distills larger ideologies of identity and belonging that are deeply rooted in Israeli collective consciousness, and which shape the trajectories of ‘refugee issue’ politics and policy-making.     

Citizens of sound: negotiations of race and diaspora in the anthems of the UNIA and NAACP

Abstract

The development of large-scale black protest organizations in the early decades of the twentieth century precipitated an unparalleled amount of communication and exchange between African descended populations. This paper argues the centrality of black organization anthems to the enterprise of black diaspora formation and solidarity. Through the composition and ritualization of their anthems, black organizations defined and announced an agenda for their membership, who similarly constructed their identities through the performance of the song. Anthems were central to the efforts to solidify and mobilize these organizations yet they also contained important contests that highlighted the differences in access and experience amongst the membership. The anthems of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are central to an examination of these complicated processes. The organizations’ sonic histories are highlighted here in order to trace the creations of modern, black citizenship.     

Strategy of tension: The Belgian terrorist crisis 1982–1986

Abstract

Between 1982 and 1986, Belgium suffered a series of terrorist attacks that claimed more than 30 lives, making this campaign one of the most destructive in the recent history of western Europe. Two major groups were involved: one was purportedly a leftist radical sect, the other an anonymous cell popularly known as the “mad killers,” whom subsequent investigation has shown to be connected to neo‐Nazi organizations. Both groups were apparently seeking to destabilize the Belgian state at a time of intense political conflict, and it was widely suggested that the apparently opposed political extremes were actually allied in a common cause. In addition, official enquiries established connections between the terrorist groups and agents of Belgian state security. This paper discusses the use of terrorism in a political “strategy of tension” modeled on that developed in Italy in the late 1960s. It also suggests that the contemporary structure of European terrorist groups readily lends itself to manipulation in the cause of provocateur activity.     

Governance or Self-governance in Poland? Benefits and Threats 20 Years Later

The 1989–1990 revolution that took place in Poland as well as in the rest of central and east Europe led to fundamental changes at the local level. The aim of the decentralization reforms was to establish new governing structures and governance practices and to create local self-government as a strong local actor, autonomous from central control. The administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization was to change drastically the role of the central state by providing local authorities with a new set of responsibilities, fiscal resources, and the decision-making power to implement them. Such a shift also implied major clashes over power, resources, and group interests. Why then do such tensions continue to persist? What are the processes through which the central state is returning to the local level? This paper argues that the return of the central state and its increasingly visible presence at the local level is caused by persistent conflicts surrounding the form, structure, and function of the Polish state. These conflicts are aided by a weak civil society and fragmented party system. This paper will examine the case of Poland and ways through which the central state has been (and still is to the present day) imprinting its presence on local spaces of democracy and governance during the last two decades.     

The Force of a Weak Field: Law and Lawyers in the Government of the European Union (For a Renewed Research Agenda)

Rather than considering legal and judicial arenas as the mere surface of the weighty social processes that shape European integration, this article contends that they are actually one of the essential spaces where the government of Europe is being produced. To account for this paramount role played by law in EU polity, two hitherto unexplored research paths are followed. First of all, a socio-historical perspective focuses on the critical junctures at which Law has been formalized as a science of European government providing critical devices for integration. Second, a more sociological stance is taken in relation to the functioning of the "European legal field" (ELF). A preliminary inquiry leads to its characterization as weak , with porous internal and external borders. This article argues that this weak autonomy is what makes it strong and influential when it comes to shaping the representations and principles of EU government.     

China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: sub-national regions and networks of global political economy

This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduction of capitalist developmental ideas expressed particularly in the form of networks, which themselves have become a feature of contemporary global political economy. In other words, the Silk Roads vision is more of a ‘spatial fix’ than a geopolitical manoeuvre.