AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	42. Transnational spaces/cosmopolitan times: African associations in Europe
Paper ID	409
Author(s)	Mercer, Claire Charlotte; Page, Ben ; Evans, Martin
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	Across the African continent migrants who share a rural home place have historically supported each other in the plantations, mines, and towns and cities to which colonial labour migration took them. In the twentieth century more formalised ‘hometown associations’ (what we refer to here as ‘home associations’) were established, bringing together those who had migrated from a common home place. The historical and geographical persistence of these associations within Africa suggests that they are a product of a synergy between political-economic structures and individual African agency. As Africans have migrated internationally they have taken the practice of establishing home associations with them, so that the initial ideal model of these associations is of a spider’s web, with national and international chapters focused on a hometown or home area. In Britain, contemporary home associations now have two general areas of concern; the welfare of those in the diaspora, and the development of the home place in Africa. This latter activity has received interest recently among development policy makers in Britain, who see diaspora groups as offering a sustainable and appropriate approach to development on the continent. In this paper we draw on recent fieldwork which traced the diasporic networks emanating from four rural home areas in Cameroon and Tanzania which spanned cities in those countries and in Britain. We make two points; first, that these African home associations in Britain form a largely invisible diasporic public sphere; they are small, dispersed, autonomous, fissile, transitory, and economically weak. In developmental terms they are generally talking shops; they don’t actually do much development work and they embrace only a limited number of members of a limited number of diaspora groups. Second, we show that the organisation of African diaspora groups in Britain does not match the image of international ‘branches’ linked to a home association. Rather, Cameroonians and Tanzanians in Britain meet their obligations to other diasporans, and to home, through membership of a changing array of dynamic diasporic associations organised around clan, village, district, ethnic, linguistic, sub-national, and national identities. As such, they are a symptom of a much wider but underexplored loyalty to place which merits further explanation. The place-based identities around which people form associations are not fixed in time or space, and the particular ways in which these identities are materialised through home associations are unpredictable, revealing the dialectical relationship between diasporic agency and the socio-economic contexts in which African migrants find themselves in contemporary Britain. We conclude that participation in these associations is driven primarily by (i) a desire for conviviality and mutual support in Britain, rather than a concern for ‘development’ at home, and (ii) by a desire for recognition both within the diasporic community and at home.

Loose connections: African home associations in Britain