Young Diasporans of Ethiopian Origin: A Historically Grounded Generation
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abstract
The Ethiopian diaspora in North America was largely constituted by people fleeing political violence after the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia, or those who were forced to overstay work or study visas to evade the turmoil. Conflict-generated diaspora groups, like this particular wave of migrants, have an inherently complex social, political, and emotional relationship with their countries of origin. Much of this complexity is manifested in the diaspora-state relations of émigrés, but also seeps into the personal and everyday discourses and practices that characterize diasporan lives. While there have been subsequent waves of forced migrants from Ethiopia, each of these waves have a unique shared experience in terms of the conditions of their departure, and the nature of their reception and settlement in the West.
Berg and Eckstein (2009) argue that pre- and post-emigration experiences may be more significant in defining generations of migrants and their children than birth and age cohort. They developed a conceptual framework termed ‘historically grounded generations’, and argue “if migrants from any one country uproot at different times with different lived experiences, they would constitute different historically embedded generations” (Berg & Eckstein, 2009, p. 9). Based on this framework, the large cohort of migrants who fled Ethiopia’s Derg regime in the 1970s and 1980s and settled in cities across North America would constitute a specific historically grounded generation. That is, the socio-political environment in Ethiopia before their migration, and the nature of departure from the country has profoundly shaped their post-migration lived experiences, including their settlement patterns, social relations, diasporic identities, and homeland engagement. However, the story does not begin and end with them, but rather, continues to unfold with their North American born/raised children – a group I call young diasporans of Ethiopian origin (YDEOs).
This paper is informed by fifty-five in-depth interviews conducted between 2012-2014 with young diasporans of Ethiopian origin (YDEO) across North America. Roughly seventy-five percent of my respondents, who ranged in age from 15-35, were the children of people whose emigration was precipitated, or made permanent, by the 1974 revolution. While my respondents grew up in various cities across North America and had unique lived experiences and personality traits, there was a rhythm and pattern to their narratives as they described their upbringing, decision-making processes, and various social and transnational practices. There was continuity to their life histories, and from our conversations emerged a number of stock characters and common scenes, acts, and plot twists. Through an examination of these shared experiences, I argue that the population sampled in my research, that is, the first large cohort of people of Ethiopian descent born and/or raised in North America, have been defined by a unique and powerful set of socio-political circumstances and cultural influences, and are in themselves a ‘historically grounded generation’.
