Public Lecture presented at the Center for Advanced Study, Seminar Series on Immigration: History and Policy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, November 3, 2008.
Let me begin by thanking Terri Barnes for that kind introduction, and Gale Summerfield and Jim Barrett for inviting me to present this lecture this afternoon. Accepting the invitation was of course easy since I am always eager to return to Urbana-Champaign and UIUC, where I spent eight years, some of the best years of my personal and professional life. It is always a pleasure to meet old friends and colleagues, such as Don Crummey, Merle Bowen, and Sue Swisher from the Center for African Studies, and Sundiata Chajua, Clarence Lang and Adlai Murdoch from the Department of African American Studies who are in the audience and of course many more.
People from Africa have been migrating across the world since time immemorial, indeed beginning with the great migrations out of the continent some 60,000 years ago of small bands of modern humans who went on to populate our lovely, little planet. Of course, this is not often what we mean by African global migrations, let alone African diasporas, and certainly that is not what I intend to speak about this afternoon. Nor will I, for the historical times, cover the ancient African migrations across the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea that took people we now call Africans to Asia and Europe and brought those we call Asians and Europeans to Africa. I will also resist the temptation to discuss the Atlantic migrations of the 15th to 19th centuries that brought Africans to the Americas.
But I mention these migrations to underscore two simple, but crucial points: African global migrations have a long and complex history, and Africa's contemporary migrations and processes of diasporization are interwoven with the earlier migrations and diasporas in equally complex ways. By new global migrations, then, I refer to the migrations of the 20th century and the diasporas they gave rise to. But even for the 20th century, the focus of my presentation is on the period since 1960-the postcolonial era-in which both Africa and the world system entered a new age marked by decolonization and transformations in the historical processes and patterns of globalization.
The presentation is divided into four parts: first, I examine contemporary global migrations, second, the dynamics of Africa's contemporary global migrations, third, interrogate the theories that have been advanced to explain them, and finally, I survey the phenomenon of "overlapping diasporas"-the making of the new diasporas in the context of preexisting, historic diasporas formed out of earlier migrations. The two diasporas, I argue, vary in their engagements with both their countries of residence and Africa, and the relationship among them differ across regions and countries. In the Americas, the demographic and social weight of the historic diasporas is more pronounced than it is in Europe so that the capacity of the new migrants to reshape diaspora identities in the two regions varies. But even in the Americas there are subregional and national differences. If Afro-Latin America enjoyed migratory reinforcements from Africa longer than Afro-North America because of its belated abolitions of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, the latter virtually monopolizes the revitalizing diaspora linkages of contemporary migrations from Africa.
On the eve of the grueling presidential elections, you will understand if I begin and end with Senator Obama's story. An Obama is unthinkable in both contemporary Europe, where Afro-Europeans remain invisible in national histories, and Latin America which attracts relatively few contemporary African migrants. A product of Africa's new migrations, Obama's personal and political biographies symbolize the braided histories of the old and new diasporas; he is the biracial son of an African foreign student, whose narrative as the first prospective black president of the United States-we will find out tomorrow whether America is finally ready to cross the racial Rubicon-is immersed in the trajectory of African American history which is integral to American history, notwithstanding the historic marginalization of African Americans. Obama reconnects the diaspora to Africa and vice-versa in more immediate, intimate, and innovative ways.
Dynamics and Directions of Global Mobility
The late twentieth century has been characterized as the age of globalization marked by the rapid movements of capital, commodities, and cultures across communities, countries, and continents. To what extent can it also be seen as "the age of migration," to quote the title of Castles and Miller's (1998) book? Going by the hysterical pronouncements of politicians and the media, and the inflated rhetoric by the academic seers of globalization one would think the world is undergoing massive and unprecedented waves of international migration. The reality is far more complex.
It is important to note that contemporary global migrations are not unprecedented. In much of the current literature there is a tendency to ignore earlier waves. Global mass migrations rivaling those of today characterized the second half of the 19th century and the first four decades of the 20th century. These migrations involved three global theatres-to the Americas (involving 55-58 million people, mostly from Europe and another 2.5 million from India, China, Japan and Africa); to Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean rim, and South Pacific (involving 48-52 million people from India and southern China and another 4 million from Africa, Europe, northeastern Asia and the Middle East); and to Manchuria, Siberia, Central Asia, and Japan (involving 46-51 million people from Northeastern Asia and Russia).
The available evidence on contemporary global migrations-since 1960-points to two broad conclusions. First, while the number of international migrants has grown significantly in absolute terms, the percentage of people who have left and remained outside their countries of origin has remained remarkably steady and small. The number of foreign-born persons, including migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, worldwide increased from 75.5 million in 1960 to 190.6 million in 2005, implying an annual growth rate of 3.4%, which was only slightly above the global population growth rate, but far below the rate of international tourist arrivals during the same period, let alone the phenomenal growth in world trade and capital flows. The proportion of migrants in the world population changed only slightly, from 2.5% in 1960 to 3% in 2005. This compares to 2% in 1910 and 2.1% in 1930.
In all world regions there was an absolute growth in the numbers of migrants between 1960 and 2005. Europe overtook Asia as its migrant population more than quadrupled to 64.1 million, compared to Asia's which rose from 28.5 to 53.3 million. Also experiencing fast growth was North America whose migrant population more than trebled, while that of Oceania more than doubled but only from 2.1 million to 5 million. Latin America and the Caribbean's migrant population experienced the slowest growth, from 6 million to 6.6 million. Altogether, Asia, Latin American and Oceania experienced declines in their percentage of the global stock of migrants, while it rose for Europe and North America. Also, less remarkable than often thought, has been the proportion of women among international migrants; it rose from 46.6% in 1960 to 48.8% in 2000.
While the quantitative magnitude of international migration is not as extensive as it is often assumed, the changes in the composition and direction of international migration have been quite profound. Thus, the second broad conclusion is that there have been significant changes in the character and direction of international migration. We can isolate three critical developments. One, there has been growing diversification of sending and receiving countries. Two, despite the growth of international migration over long distances-across regions and continents-the majority of migrants still reside within their respective regions. Three, skilled migration has assumed greater importance both in terms of the actual flows and in the formulation of migration policies at national, regional, and international levels.
The bulk of migrants from the developing countries still go to other developing countries-47% compared to 40% who reside in the high income OECD countries. Similarly, in many European Union countries the leading countries of origin of migrants are the EU countries themselves. This is because proximity reduces the financial, social and cultural costs of migration, and maximizes ethnic, community, and family networks. Although the numbers of migrants from the global South to the global North are smaller than is often postulated, their growth play an increasingly important role in the politics of state renewal, national memory, social mobility and control; their racialized presence serves both as an alibi for national failings and a beacon to multiculturalism, as threads that tie the nation together and threats that tear asunder the cherished but increasingly troubled marriage between nation and state, and threaten the old promises of migration and assimilation of previous intra-Northern migration flows.
Overall, the world distribution of migrants has shifted: the share of the least and less developed countries declined from 65.7% in 1960 to 45% in 2005, while that of the developed countries rose from 42.8% to 60.5%. It is evident that the flows of international migration have shifted from the global South to the global North. There are considerable temporal, national, and regional variations in the migration patterns to the global North. The available data shows that until the mid-1990s international migration was more pronounced in the traditional countries of immigration such as the U.S., Canada, and Australia than in many parts of Europe. The 2005 foreign born population in the United States estimated at 38.4 million was nearly one-and-half times the combined foreign born population of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. But the "non-settler" OECD countries in Europe have been catching up in the relative size of their immigrant and foreign born populations. In 2000, the percentage of foreign born in the United States and Sweden and Germany was about the same-12%.
Migration to the global North over the last two decades has been characterized by several new trends amidst the persistence of old ones. Many governments are pursuing a two track policy: the recruitment of highly skilled immigrants who are provided with opportunities for permanent settlement and citizenship, and the resort to temporary immigrants for low-skilled work to meet labor market needs. As part of the drive for greater selectivity, there is fierce competition for international students as potential skilled immigrants, sometimes accompanied by acceleration of asylum requests and periodic regularization programs. In the meantime, the recourse to seasonal workers has been accompanied by more restrictive measures and tighter border controls to combat illegal entry and trafficking, and more aggressive repatriation policies.
The foreign labor force grown in almost all the OECD countries and spread to more sectors, including the services, although foreigners continue to be more vulnerable to unemployment than nationals particularly in Europe. For many OECD countries the need to import labor from the global South is likely to accelerate as domestic fertility rates continue to fall and ageing of the native population and dependency ratios rise. On the whole, while there has been an increase in the relative importance of highly-skilled and low-skilled temporary workers in the total flows, and a decrease in the number of asylum claims, immigration for family reunion continues to predominate in many OECD countries, ranging from more than 60% for the United States, Sweden, Norway, and France in 2004, to more than 40% for Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
Mapping Africa's Contemporary Global Migrations
How do African patterns of contemporary global migrations compare to the other world regions? As elsewhere Africa's migrant population increased, nearly doubling from 9.1 million in 1960 to 17.1 million in 2005, but like other regions in the global South-Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean and Oceania-Africa's share of the world's migrant stock declined from 12.1% to 9%. There was also a decline in the share of migrants in the African population, from 3.2% to 1.9%. Also similar to other world regions has been the growing feminization of African migrants as more women migrate independently through legal and occasionally irregular channels to seek better lives for themselves and their families. The growth in the share of female migrants in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 40.6% in 1960 to 47.2% in 2000, while for North Africa it declined from 49.5% in 1960 to 42.8% in 2000 to become the second lowest in the world after Southern Asia.
Clearly, there are many similarities between migration trends in Africa and other world regions. But there are also differences of magnitude. Three features of Africa's international migration are worth noting. First, the vast majority of the continent's migrants go to other African countries. Second, an unusually large percentage of the migrants are made up of refugees. Third, the numbers of African migrants flocking to the global North remain relatively small, although they are growing rapidly, and Africa claims the dubious distinction of sending the largest share of its skilled workers compared to any other region.
Africa's international migrants within the continent are unevenly spread. In 2000, 42 per cent were living in West Africa, 28 per cent in East Africa, 12 per cent in northern Africa, and 9 per cent in central and southern Africa. Many of these cross-border migrants include labor migrants seeking improved living standards in neighboring countries, communities in border regions that engage in perpetual cycles of traditional and livelihood migrations between countries, and refugees fleeing from political conflicts and environmental crises. Intra-regional migration flows within Africa have tended to be concentrated in a handful of countries, although the composition of these countries has shifted over time, such as Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa before the end of the economic miracle and onset of civil war, Libya in North Africa, Kenya in East Africa, and South Africa following the demise of apartheid; South Africans are prone to exaggerate the immigrants waves allegedly swamping their country. In 2004 immigrants constituted an estimated 3-5% of South Africa's population, or 1.3 to 2.2 million people.
One unusual characteristic of African migrants is the relatively high percentage of refugees. While the world average of refugees among migrants in 2005 was 7.1% for Africa it was 17.7%, although by then in absolute numbers Asia had the biggest refugee population-7.8 million compared to Africa's 3 million. The percentage of refugees in the African migrant population was even higher in 1980 (25.4%) and 1990 (32.7%). As might be expected the composition of refugee sending and refugee-receiving countries has changed over the last four and half decades as the theatres of political conflict, human rights abuses, economic stagnation and environmental disasters, the principal causes of refugee generation, have shifted.
Notwithstanding the persistence and predominance of migrations within the continent, there is no doubt that Africa's international migrations have been growing rapidly. As is true of international migration in general accurate numbers are difficult to come by, but the available estimates point to an incontrovertible trend. Three observations can be made about Africa's migrations to other world regions in terms of their spatial concentration and social composition.
First, Africa's transcontinental migrants largely flock to the global North rather than to regions in the global South. There are of course some notable exceptions: large numbers of migrants from parts of northeastern Africa have migrated to the Gulf States. Second, African migrants to the global North enjoy high levels of education. Africa's stock of people with tertiary education is a mere 4%, yet this group accounts for 30.9% of all immigrants from the continent, the highest mismatch of any region. According to the U.S. 2000 Census, 49.3% of the African born residents aged 25 and above had a bachelor's degree or more as compared to 25.6% for the native-born population and 25.8% for the foreign-born population as a whole. Finally, as restrictive immigration policies have been adopted and selectivity preferences increased in Europe and North America, irregular or illegal migrations have been on the rise for unskilled workers. The horrific stories of West Africans desperately trying to get into Spain through the Mediterranean or Atlantic in rickety boats are a recent manifestation of this trend.
African migration flows to Europe and North America vary in their scale and composition. Europe claims the lion's share of Africa's international migrants. In 2005 eight out of the twelve leading OECD countries receiving African immigrants were European, which collectively accounted for 78.3% of the African immigrants in the OECD led by France whose African migrant population was more than one and half times the combined African immigrant populations of the U.S., Canada, Israel, and Australia. In total volume, Saudi Arabia is second only to France in the numbers of African migrants it hosted in 2005 (1.5 million), followed by the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom and Italy.
In regional terms, Northern Africa boasts the largest number of Africa's international migrants, followed by Eastern Africa, then Western Africa, Centra Africa, and finally Southern Africa. The three largest recipient countries for each of these regions are France, Saudi Arabia and Spain for Northern Africa; the UK, U.S., and France for Eastern Africa; the U.S., France, and the UK for Western Africa; Portugal, France, and Germany for Central Africa; and the UK, Australia, and the U.S. for Southern Africa.
African immigration to Europe has generally tended to follow the historical and linguistic trails of colonialism, so that Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal were the preferred destinations of migrants from their former colonies. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that noticeable numbers of Africans began migrating to other European countries with which they had no colonial ties. Among the most popular were Germany and the Netherlands. The leading African source of immigrants to these two countries was Morocco. By 1995 Moroccans had become the leading immigrant group in Italy and Spain. Another African country to feature among the leading sources of immigrants into the Netherlands in the early 1990s was Somalia. Somalia also featured among the leading sources of immigrants for Denmark, and Finland. For its part, Sweden became an important destination for Ethiopians, Ireland for Nigerians, and Greece for Egyptians.
Clearly, African immigration to Europe was marked by increasing diversification both in the number of countries sending and receiving the immigrants. Particularly remarkable was the emergence of the southern European countries, principally Italy, Portugal and Spain, themselves longstanding emigration countries, as immigration countries. This was as much a product of the improving economic fortunes in these countries and their integration into the prosperity and political sphere of Western Europe as it was of mounting immigration pressures on their borders to the east and the south. The Europeanization of these countries and the rebordering of the Mediterranean that it implied required the separation and stigmatization of immigrants from the global South.
Equally rapid has been the growth of African migration to North America. Needless to say, prior to the 20th, African migrations to the Americas were largely involuntary but crucial to the demographic restructuring of the region; indeed as Sheila Walker has reminded us before the mid-19th century more Africans arrived in the Americas than Europeans. After the staggered abolitions of the slave trade and slavery, only small numbers of Africans left the continent to settle in the Americas at the same time that massive migrations from Europe accelerated as the newly independent countries desperately sought to whiten themselves. While the bulk of enslaved Africans went to what George Reid Andrews calls Afro-Latin America-Portuguese and Spanish America-most contemporary African migrants flock to North America.
The number of African born migrants, as distinct from enslaved Africans, in the U.S. population rose from 551 in 1850 to 2,538 in 1900, climbing to 18,326 in 1930, 35,355 in 1960, 363,819 in 1990, 881,300 in 2000, and 1.25 million in 2005. Thus, the African born population has increased by more than six times since 1980 and almost three and half times since 1990. As rapid as this may seem, Africans accounted for a small proportion of immigrants-1.9% in 1990, 2.8% in 2000, and 3.5% in 2005. In regional terms, by 2000 Western Africa had overtaken Northern Africa as the source of African immigrants, accounting for 37% and 22%, respectively; Eastern Africa claimed second place (24%), while Southern Africa (7%) and Central Africa (3%) lagged further behind. Canada has also become an increasingly attractive destination for African immigrants. Their numbers increased from 23,830 in 1961-1970 to 54,655 in 1971-1980, to 59,715 in 1981-1990 and 139,770 in 1991-2001, representing a rise in Africa's share of the total from 0.5% before 1961 to 7.6% in 2001. The largest numbers of the African migrants in the 1991 to 2001 period came from Somalia, Algeria, and South Africa.
Accounting for Africa's Global Migrations
What accounts for the patterns of contemporary African global migrations, and how do these migrations affect the processes of diasporization? Clearly, understanding changes in both Africa and the host regions and the world at large is critical for any meaningful analysis. As you all know, the subject of international migration has generated massive empirical and theoretical literatures, which would be impossible to summarize in a presentation such as this. At the risk of oversimplification, the theories could be distinguished in terms of what aspect of the migration process they seek to explain or in terms of their disciplinary inflections. To begin with, there are theories that try to elucidate the factors first, that initiate international migration, and second, perpetuate it, and third, that attempt to assess and predict its effects; in other words, there are different theories on the causes, courses, and consequences of international migration. Alternatively, some scholars emphasize economic, political, or sociological perspectives and propositions. International migration is such a complex process that it cannot but be the result of equally complex, and often mutually reinforcing, economic, political, social and cultural forces operating at various levels in space and time.
In the economic literature, some offer micro-level decision models and others structural and global perspectives. In the neoclassical economic model, international migration is seen, at a macro level, as the result of wage differentials and employment conditions between countries which, at a micro level, propels individuals as rational actors making cost-benefit calculations to migrate in pursuit of income maximization. In contrast, the "new economics of migration" attributes migration decisions primarily to households seeking both to maximize income and to minimize risks associated with a variety of economic failures, so that the existence or elimination of wage differentials across national boundaries need not induce or end it.
Other scholars prefer to stress broad structural forces operating in the world economy as keys to understanding migration flows, their size, direction and persistence. Proponents of the dual labor market theory argue that international migration is caused not by push factors in the sending countries but by pull factors in the receiving countries, by the structural requirements of the modern industrial economies for low wage and low status jobs in labor markets that are segmented and where the traditional sources of entry-level workers-women and teenagers-have progressively shrunk. For their part, world system theorists see international immigration, not as the result of recent processes of market segmentation in particular industrial economies, let alone wage rate or employment differentials between countries, but as the natural outcome of capitalist economic expansion, which creates in the peripheral capitalist societies disruptions and dislocations that produce mobile and migratory populations.
There can be little question that economic motivations and conditions in both Africa and the global North have played a key role in generating Africa's postcolonial global migrations. We could distinguish two phases. During the postwar boom, which lasted until the early 1970s and coincided with Africa's decolonization, there was high demand for migrant labor in Western Europe, which imported up to thirty million people, many of them nonwhite and from the postcolonies including Africa and the Caribbean. This was followed by a period of slower economic growth and neo-liberalism, which for much of Africa translated into the two "lost decades" of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that threatened to abort the developmental gains and hopes of independence. If the demand for migrant labor diminished in the global North, the supply from Africa increased precisely because of SAPs that weakened the capacities of African states to provide employment to their rapidly growing and better educated labor forces-thanks to the massive postcolonial investments in education and improved living standards that led to Africa's demographic recovery from the ravages of the slave trade and colonialism.
The rise in Africa's postcolonial migrations was also facilitated by political factors and transformations, once again, both in Africa and the global North. Politics influences migration in that it often engenders the pressures for exit and sets conditions for entry through the actions and controls of states. Wars, conflicts, and political repression and persecution caused or condoned by states often provoke waves of migration. In short, international migration is called such because it involves crossing national boundaries, political jurisdictions. Notwithstanding the sensational claims of the hyperglobalists that the state is withering away or the rise in illegal migration, states retain enormous power to control migration processes. As Gary Freeman poignantly reminds us, "Anyone who thinks differently should try landing at Sydney airport without an entry visa or go to France to apply for a job without a work permit." The policing and militarization of borders has in fact never been greater since September 11, 2001.
Politically, the growth of African global migrations from the 1960s can be accounted for by, first, decolonization which turned dependent colonies into independent states and Africans from colonial subjects into national citizens with new transnational possibilities of engagement and mobility. Second, waves of migration were generated by the challenges of postcolonial governance as manifested in growing authoritarianism and inter- and intra-state conflicts, which increased as the state lost its capacity to deliver the triple dreams of uhuru-development, democracy, and self-determination-with the ascendancy of neo-liberal globalization. Third, struggles for full citizenship and civil rights in the global North among marginalized racial and ethnic communities, many of them African diasporas, contributed to changes in immigration laws that facilitated African migration.
This is clearly evident in contemporary African migrations to the United States. It is instructive to note that in 1960 most African migrants came from Egypt and South Africa, which accounted for 24% and 15%, respectively, of the continent's 35,355 immigrants. Both countries had been sovereign for many years and their migrants were, in the case of South Africa, largely white, or in the case of Egypt considered as white under US immigration law. Today, migrants from Western Africa, predominate. The Congressional Black Caucus has played a pivotal role in broadening immigration law to accommodate immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Quite literary, then, many Africans who have migrated to the U.S. since the 1960s owe their fortunes to the doors opened by African American struggles; they are in the trails of the historic diaspora.
Whatever might initiate migration, the factors and forces that perpetuate it can be quite different. Several theories have been developed to account for the rise of new conditions that emerge in the course of international migration that sustain it and function as independent causes for further migration. According to network theory, the networks arising in the course of migration and which link migrants, former migrants, and nonimmigrants in sending and receiving countries through kinship, friendship, and community ties constitute an expanding pool of social and cultural capital that lower the costs and risks and raise the benefits of movement, and therefore increase the likelihood of further international migration.
Institutional theory maintains that as migration expands profit-seeking and humanitarian institutions, organizations, and entrepreneurs develop to service both legal and illegal migrants, especially as restrictive immigration policies are adopted by the receiving countries, which serve to institutionalize and promote international migration irrespective of the causes that originally started it. Finally, the theory of cumulative causation argues that migration brings about changed social, economic, and cultural contexts, which affect subsequent migrations. In other words, each migration decision is influenced by previous migrations, which alter the regional distribution of income, land, and human capital, the organization of productive activities, and the culture and social meanings of migration and work. In the sending countries migration can become an esteemed rite of passage, while in the receiving countries occupations dominated by immigrants can become culturally labeled "immigrant jobs," and therefore shunned by native workers, thereby reinforcing the structural demand for immigrants.
Once again, there is little that is intrinsically incompatible among these theories. Each explains an important dynamic and dimension of the migration process. It stands to reason that migration involves both social networks and enabling institutions and is a cumulative process. The interplay between these factors obviously varies in specific contexts. There can be little doubt that African migration patterns to Europe, and their national variations, over the last half century have been determined by networks and traditions spawned by the histories of colonialism and neo-colonialism, while African migrations to North America have been facilitated by the enabling conditions created by the historic African diasporas and enhanced by each wave of the new diasporas.
This would suggest that international migration is also a cultural phenomenon, spawned or sustained by the imaginaries of modernity or affinity. The seductions of western modernity are constantly reinforced by mass communication and advertising campaigns, which foster alluring consumerist images of the global North that stoke the circuits of international migration from the global South. Also, globalization fosters the growth of imagined transnational communities anchored on invented and primodialized identities of ethnicity, race, or religion alongside the imagined communities of nation-states. Migration, from this perspective is a product of, and produces, globalization as a constellation of cultural flows that create a transnational world configured around postnational networks of diasporas.
Thus, beneath the structural economic, political, and social forces that engender the proverbial migratory searches for greener pastures lie, especially for the elites in the global South, the charms of the hegemonic modernities of the global North, the desire to escape from postcolonial provincialism; they seek modernist class and cultural fulfillment in the cosmopolitan cities of the global North. The historic diasporas provide critical mediations in so far as their very presence simultaneously denies the Eurogenesis of western modernity and provides new immigrants the possibilities of entry and appropriation. For African migrants, then, through the historic diaspora the seductions of western modernity and the solidarities of transnational racial kinship are consummated.
Certainly during the colonial era the trans-Atlantic circulation of African American expressive cultures, from music to dress to language, were powerful signifiers of Black cosmopolitanism, and in highly racialized colonial societies they were adopted by African elites as performative tools that disconnected modernity from whiteness by subverting, mocking, and reversing the ‘racial time' of white-colonial modernity that locked Africans into static ‘uncivilized native' categories. In postcolonial times, the diaspora's mediation is embedded in the opportunity structures opened by civil rights struggles as embodied, for example, in affirmative action through which African migrants are able to access jobs and services previously denied to African Americans.
The Dynamics of Overlapping Diasporas
African global migrations are obviously part of a much older story. In the Atlantic world, which I have been focusing in this presentation, they go back to the tragic days of the European slave trade when millions of shackled African men and women were shipped to the Americas, at once a painful moment and a poignant metaphor that established the subsequent tapestry of African-Euroamerican relations, and a cruel reminder that for the victims and combatants of western barbarity, globalization did not start yesterday with the Internet. Contemporary patterns of African overseas migration are woven in intricate and complex ways in the older processes, each successive wave creating new layers of memories and meanings, new braided histories of Africa and its diasporas.
A critical question raised by the literature on African migrants and diasporas is the connection between the two-immigration and diasporization: when do new immigrants become new diasporas? Many Africans who have come to the U.S. since 1960 have done so for temporary periods, as workers, expatriate professionals, business people, students (think of Obama's father), and tourists and often go back after the realization of their objectives. They are temporary migrants, not diasporans. But temporary migrants can, and many do, become permanent migrants and their offspring complete the transition from migration to diasporization. Using this schema, I would distinguish between African migrants, diasporized Africans, and African diasporas. In this context, long-term African born residents of the United States would be considered diasporized Africans, while their offspring turn into new African diasporas, more fully socialized into the experiences and identities of the historic diaspora
African migrations across the Atlantic-within the Americas, and from the Americas back to Africa-have been going on continuously since the 15th century. Thus, the Atlantic world constituted an integrated African world-not simply Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic where Africa is excised as a primordial presence-in which people moved back and forth, intermingling and exchanging ideas, values, practices, and material culture and maintaining ties. In the Americas, for example, there are the migrations triggered by the Haitian Revolution, the importation of massive Caribbean labor supplies into the expanding economies of Spanish America in the late 19th century, and waves of Caribbean and Afro-Latin migrations to North America and Europe throughout the 20th century. As for the reverse sails from the Americas to Africa, the best well-known in the 18th and 19th centuries are those from the United States, Canada, and Britain to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Recent research is beginning to fill in the broad contours of population movements from South America to West Africa, especially from Brazil to the Gulf or Bight of Benin (present-day Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria), and since the 20th century there have assorted diasporic back to Africa movements and migrations of various magnitude and temporality.
Thus, we might want to extend the spatial scale of Earl Lewis' perceptive notion of "overlapping diasporas" and argue that the entire Atlantic world, not just the United States, is constituted by "overlapping diasporas," in which you find diasporas formed out of multiple geographies, histories, and voyages. The scale and dynamics of overlapping diaspora formations of course vary depending on historic and contemporary patterns of migrations. Based on research I have been conducting over the last few years on a global history of African dispersals and diasporas, I am inclined, at the moment, to broadly distinguish, for the Atlantic world, between Afro-Europe, Afro-North America, and Afro-Latin America in terms of the current configurations of their overlapping diaspora formations. If Afro-Europe is largely constituted by 20th century migrants from the Americas and continental Africa, Afro-Latin America remains the preserve of slave migrations from Africa and post-emancipation migrations from the Caribbean, while Afro-North America embodies the migrant traditions and trajectories of both.
Today, there are an estimated 20 million Afro-Europeans; accurate figures are hard to come by not least because the country with the largest African migrant and diaspora population, France, does not keep racial statistics (there are reckoned to be 6 million North Africans and 2.5 million sub-Saharan Africans). Most of these are either descendants of 20th century migrants or first generation migrants. The relative newness of the Afro-European diaspora population belies the much older history of the African diaspora in Europe, which antedates the African diaspora in the Americas and go back at least two thousand years from ancient times to the medieval period to the era of the Atlantic slave trade, to the colonial era to the post-colonial era. The patterns and scale of African migrations varied during each era, but the demographic legacies of the first three periods do not compare with the scale of migrations during the last two.
As might be expected, there are both similarities and differences in the composition of the African diasporas among the various European countries. Let me briefly illustrate this by looking at Britain, France, and Germany where I did research this past summer. One commonality among the three countries is that many of their African diasporas are from their former colonies, in the case of Britain and France both in the Caribbean and Africa, and in the case of Germany the African colonies it lost after World War I. The migrants from the colonies and ex-colonies include both the indigenous peoples of Africa and populations that are themselves diasporic-the French and British colonial settlers and Asian settlers who resettled in Britain after decolonization.
Thus, in each of these countries African diasporas comprise different groups in terms of geographic origins and periodization. First, there are Afro-European communities formed before the 20th century, whose numbers are relatively small. Second, the migrant communities from the diaspora, principally the Caribbean in the case of Britain and France; for Germany, there are the offspring of African American servicemen who tend to use the social capital of American hegemony to negotiate higher status than their fellow African diasporans. Third, there are the migrants from continental Africa, who are often divided, thanks to the racial and cultural codings of colonial cartography, into two separate groups, North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans.
Relations among these groups and between them and the wider society vary and have changed in fascinating ways, which time does not allow me to fully discuss. Suffice it to say, the changes can be attributed to shifts in the social composition of the African migrants themselves, changing relations among the various African diasporas, and the transformations in the political and cultural economies of their countries of residence. Let me make five brief observations. First, rapid growth has led to notable transformations in the class, gender, and generational composition of the African migrant population as the proportions of working class, female, and young migrants have increased. Second, as the migrants turn into diasporas, struggles for both cultural difference and national citizenship have intensified as evident in the periodic riots that have rocked Britain and France over the last forty years and the growing discourses on race and blackness and in the case of Britain the decomposition of black identity that previously included Asians.
Third, migrants from Africa now outnumber those from the Caribbean, so that the latter will most likely determine the definition of Afro-European identity once dominated by the constructions of the historic diasporas. Fourth, the European Union project is creating new conditions that simultaneously restrict the entry of fresh immigrants into Europe and facilitate the mobility of migrants within Europe, as can be seen in the growth of migrants from Francophone Africa in Britain and Germany. Finally, as national identities fracture due to this project and the forces of globalization more generally, the construction of national black identities become increasingly problematic and transnational black identities become more attractive.
The transnationalization of African diaspora identities in Europe reflects the different conditions of contemporary global migrations. In days gone by, migration often entailed permanent relocation or long separation and infrequent encounters with one's native home through mail and the occasional visit. Africa's enslaved populations in the Americas were of course denied the right to maintain connections freely with their homelands. Unlike these forced migrants whose communities of identity, either as imagined by themselves or imposed by others, were either ethnic, racial or religious, the new African migrants have to contend with the added imperative of the modern nation-state, which often frames the political and cultural itineraries of their travel and transnational networks.
The contemporary revolution in telecommunications and travel has compressed the spatial and temporal distances between home and abroad, thus offering the new migrants and diasporas, unlike the historic migrants and diasporas, unprecedented opportunities to be transnational, to be people of two worlds, perpetually translocated, physically and culturally, between several countries or several continents. They are able to maintain and revitalize old cultural and community networks, to pursue transnational ethnic, racial and national lives, identities, interests, and interventions. Barack Obama knows his father is not simply from Africa, but from a particular nation, Kenya, and ethnic group, Luo. Incidentally, if he is elected president tomorrow, he will fulfill the prediction by Kenya's most famous intellectual, Ali Mazrui, that the United States may have its first Luo President before Kenya itself!
This leads me to conclude by briefly charting the overlapping diasporas in the United States and how we might analyze their relationships and relations with the wider society. As in Europe, there are at least four waves of African diasporas: first, the historic communities of African Americans, themselves formed out of complex internal and external migrations over several hundred years; second, migrant communities from other diasporic locations, such as the Caribbean that have maintained or invoke, when necessary or convenient, national identities as Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Brazilians, and so on; third, the recent immigrants from the indigenous communities of Africa some of whom-the so-called sub-Saharan Africans-share racialized affinity with the two groups; and finally, African migrants who are themselves diasporas from Asia or Europe, such as the East African Asians or South African whites.
Each of these diasporas, broadly speaking, has its own connections and commitments to Africa, its own memories and imaginations of Africa, and its own conceptions of the diasporic condition and identity. Given the complexity and diversity of the African diasporas in the U.S., it stands to reason that relations between the various groups are exceedingly difficult to map out. I would like to suggest a possible analytical schema to better comprehend relations between these waves of migration and the complex overlapping layers of diasporization. Three elements seem to structure these relations, what I would call, first, the contexts of engagement, second, the constructs of engagement, and third, the character of the engagements. By context I refer to the social arenas in which the different diasporas interact; by constructs I mean the dynamics that mediate their interactions; and character entails the content and processes of interactions.
The contexts in which the historic and contemporary diasporas interact with each other are both private and public and the varied intersections between them. The private or privatized spheres include family and inter-personal relations. In the case of families we can think of inter-diasporan marriages and partnerships as well as intra-family generations of diasporization. Marriages and partnerships between African migrants and African Americans have been growing, although there are important differentiations of gender, class, religion and what can be called settlement geographies. The public contexts of intra-diasporan engagements are obviously even more multidimensional. They range from educational institutions, the labor market, business enterprises, religious institutions, to leisure activities, community life, and the political process. There can be little doubt that the encounters within each and across the various social domains are complex, contradictory, and always changing.
The connections and disconnections among the different diasporas are conditioned by four sets of factors, namely, institutional, ideological, identity, and individual dynamics. Different sectors and organizations have specific institutional cultures that set the broad parameters of intra-diasporan interactions as do the push and pull of ideological affiliations affect the tenor and possibilities of cooperation, accommodation, or conflict within specific or between different diaspora groups. The nature and formation of collective identity formations and individual subjectivity, which are constructed through the prevailing practices of socialization, spatialization, and representation also help structure these dynamics. In so far as all communities have multiple identities inter-group relations are partly affected by the intersections of some of these identities and interests. The social and historical geography of new immigrant and diasporic identities involve the fluid and sometimes competing claims constructed around ethnic, national, subregional, linguistic, Pan-African, and transnational identities. Some of these intersect with the identities of the historic diasporas, while others do not, which can provide the basis for cooperation or conflict.
How can we conceptualize the content and character of the intra-diasporan engagements? Five dimensions can be identified that may or may not denote cumulative phases of acculturation mediated by the length of stay in the U.S. for the new diasporas, their social and spatial locations, their respective connections to Africa and America, and the attitudes-hospitality or hostility-of the historic diasporas. The relations between the old and new diasporas can be characterized by antagonism, ambivalence, acceptance, adaptation, and assimilation. Antagonism is engendered by stereotypes and poor communication on both sides. These stereotypes are rooted in the sensational media representations of both groups, as well as selective experiences with each other both in the United States and in Africa.
However, antagonism is only one facet of the relationship. We need to investigate more systematically the other dimensions, the dynamics that tilt the relationship towards assimilation. Historically, this is what has happened as successive waves of new arrivals have been integrated, over time, into the African American community. Our challenge as researchers in the field of African diaspora studies and as Pan-Africanists is to map out these processes and promote mutual understanding through education and communication, to encourage strategic solidarity among our communities that comes from respect for each other's histories and struggles, from a clear understanding of the ties that bind us as we seek to recover from the ravages of the past and build new futures in our more globalized world. Indeed, the connections between Africa and its diasporas-both old and new-have been far deeper and more diverse and more beneficial for African peoples on both sides of the Atlantic than is generally acknowledged.
Conclusion: The Promise of Obama
Unlike Europe, the new African migrants in the U.S. are unlikely to fundamentally reshape the historic African diaspora identities, even if they might transnationalize them in new ways. Nevertheless, the postcolonial migrants are part of the changing face of the diaspora and the nation, which is becoming more diverse with new waves of migration especially from Asia and Latin America. This is contributing to changing constructions of blackness, in which the racial classifications are increasingly becoming Africanized and Latin Americanized in the sense that a three-tier or multiple racial system common in parts of Africa and Latin America is being increasingly adopted in place of the binary white-black racial system. Ironically, as the U.S. becomes more Latin Americanized in its racial discourse and dynamics, parts of Latin America seem to become more Americanized with the resurgence of black struggles for recognition beyond the myths of racial mixing or what used to be called in Brazil, "racial democracy".
The shifts in America's racial system, both symbolic and substantive, can be seen in the different ways Obama is perceived. There are many Obamas: the black man, the migrant son, a biracial, and a transnational American affiliated to several continents. Each Obama appeals to different constituencies at home and abroad: African Americans seeking redress even if he is not descended from enslaved ancestors, hence "not black enough"; biracials in search of recognition for an identity sanctified in the 2000 Census; whites looking for a postracial future and redemption for America's original sin of slavery; recent African migrants trying to belong and affirm their possibilities as a new diaspora; and the rest of the world desperate for respite from America's imperial arrogance and violence. Underlying the discourse about Senator Obama's racial identity, then, are the changing demographics and constructions of race in the wider society and of blackness itself. In this sense, the debate over "blackness" represents a struggle over historical memory and meaning and the future of the African American experience.
Driving the Obama phenomenon are other complicated dynamics: generational, gender, and class shifts in the ecology of American society and politics. Some of these forces are easily discernible, others barely perceptible, representing current and long-term trends including the possible collapse of the Republican coalition and supremacy over political and policy discourse in America's post-civil rights and post-Cold War realignments. The Bush presidency, a colossal failure by any standard, has severely devalued Republican currency as the superior custodians of national security, moral values, and economic management. Race is their last card. Structural forces cannot of course be the sole explanations. There is also the extraordinary organizational prowess of the Obama campaign combining old-fashioned grassroots community organizing, hardball politicking, digital mobilization, steely discipline, strategic astuteness, and the charismatic leadership and unflappable temperament of the candidate himself into an electoral juggernaut that vanquished the indomitable Clintons and has pulverized the ruthless Republican machine. Obama's victory-America's Mandela moment as Patricia Williams calls it-will mark a new milestone in the history of African diasporas even if he won't be the first diasporan African to reach the highest national political office in the Americas. That honor belongs to 19th century Afro-Latin America. Thank you!
