Diasporas And Ethnic Identities In Africa

Despite the enormous work on diasporas relating to Africa, the majority of this work focuses on trade diasporas located in West African groups, only mentioning the pre-colonial period in passing. Therefore, there is a need to redirect research on diasporas from within Africa to include non-economic diasporas during this time period. Diasporas and Ethnic Identity in Africa: The Edo ne Ekue among the Northeast Yoruba, 1485–1995 fills a gap by discussing the existence of diasporas in pre-colonial Africa that have been neglected by African scholars. Using the Edo ne Ekue as a case study, Uyilawa Usuanlele examines Edo people by shedding light on their political institutions, trading networks, and associations as autonomous and distinct within the Benin Kingdom. This book also discusses how the Edo ne Ekue simultaneously linked their institutions with the royal court of the Benin Kingdom at the expense of the local rulers of their host communities. Throughout this study, Usuanlele provides a better understanding of ethnic identity, state by state relations and their members outside their territorial boundaries to discover the dynamics of political, economic, and social changes within and between communities during and after pre-colonial times.

This book addresses the conceptual difficulties and political contestations surrounding the applicability of the term "African-Canadian". In the midst of this contested terrain, the volume focuses on first generation, Black Continental Africans who have immigrated to Canada in the last four decades, and have traceable genealogical links to the continent.

Diasporic Identities within Afro-Hispanic and African Contexts explores the complexities underlying the identity formation of peoples of African ancestry in the Spanish-speaking world and of expatriate immigrants who inhabit colonized territories in Africa. Although current diaspora studies provide provocative perspectives on migration that have various cultural, national, political and economic implications, any engagement of the subject readily runs into theoretical and practical challenges. At stake here is the question of finding an ideal conceptualization of diaspora. Should the term be limited to migration that is purely voluntary or to a traumatic exile? What about generational differences that, invariably, impact the imagining of diaspora? How does diaspora relate to creolization, hybridity and transculturation? This volume does not argue for what constitutes a proper diaspora, but rather re-contextualizes the concept of diaspora from the point of view of identity formation on the basis of voluntary and non-voluntary migration. The essays gathered together here engage with the unified topic of identity, but radiate a stimulating variety in geographic coverage – examining countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Morocco, Angola, and Spain – and in thematic approach – from religion to a poetics of self-affirmation to issues of political conflict, subalternity and migration.

Markers of identity define human groups: who belongs and who is excluded. These markers are often overt – language, material culture, patterns of behaviour – and are carefully nurtured between generations; other times they can be invisible, intangible, or unconscious. Such markers of identity also travel, and can be curated, distilled, or reworked in new lands and in new cultural environments. It has always been thus: markers of identity are often central to the ties that bind dispersed, diasporic communities across lands and through time. This book brings together research that discusses a very wide range of scholarly approaches, periods, and places – from the Viking diaspora in the north Atlantic, and Anglo-Saxon treasure hoards, to what DNA can and cannot reveal about human identity, to modern, multicultural Martinique, East London, and urban Africa, and the effect of the absence of geopolitical identity, of statelessness, among the Roma and Palestinians – to better understand how markers of identity contribute to the impact of diasporas. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Antonio Olliz Boyd is an emeritus professor of Latin American literature at Temple University. He holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MS from Grorgetown University, and a BA from Long Island University. Dr. Olliz Boyd has published various essays on Afro Latino aesthetics in literature in volumes, such as the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern Latin-American Fiction Writers; Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejon; Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity; Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays among others, as well as articles on Afro Latino literary criticism in various refereed journals. --Book Jacket.

The poor economic performance of some African countries since independence has been a major concern to both African leaders and policy makers. This volume, which draws together contributions from academics based in Africa and its diaspora, situates the continent within its historic and socio-political background: from the 1960s, the decade of independence, through to its development outlook as the new millennium unfolds. It examines a broad range of contemporary issues -- from development and culture to linguistics and is unique in identifying and examining issues that are common both to Africa and the diaspora.

There has been much recent celebration of the success of African 'civil society' in forging global connections through an ever-growing diaspora. Against the background of such celebrations, this innovative book sheds light on the diasporic networks - 'home associations' - whose economic contributions are being used to develop home. Despite these networks being part of the flow of migrants' resources back to Africa that now outweighs official development assistance, the relationship between the flow of capital and social and political change are still poorly understood. Looking in particular at Cameroon and Tanzania, the authors examine the networks of migrants that have been created by making 'home associations' international. They argue that claims in favour of enlarging 'civil society' in Africa must be placed in the broader context of the political economy of migration and wider debates concerning ethnicity and belonging. They demonstrate both that diasporic development is distinct from mainstream development, and that it is an uneven historical process in which some 'homes' are better placed to take advantage of global connections than others. In doing so, the book engages critically with the current enthusiasm among policy-makers for treating the African diaspora as an untapped resource for combating poverty. Its focus on diasporic networks, rather than private remittances, reveals the particular successes and challenges diasporas face in acting as a group, not least in mobilising members of the diaspora to fulfill obligations to home.

African Diaspora Identities provides insights into the complex transnational processes involved in shaping the migratory identities of African immigrants. It seeks to understand the durability of these African transnational migrant identities and their impact on inter-minority group relationships. John A. Arthur demonstrates that the identities African immigrants construct often transcends country-specific cultures and normative belief systems. He illuminates the fact that these transnational migrant identities are an amalgamation of multiple identities formed in varied social transnational settings. The United States has become a site for the cultural formations, manifestations, and contestations of the newer identities that these immigrants seek to depict in cross-cultural and global settings. Relying mostly on their strong human capital resources (education and family), Africans are devising creative, encompassing, and robust ways to position and reposition their new identities. In combining their African cultural forms and identities with new roles, norms, and beliefs that they imbibe in the United States and everywhere else they have settled, Africans are redefining what it means to be black in a race-, ethnicity-, and color-conscious Americansociety.