Paper short abstract:

To what extent can diaspora housing be used as a crucial site to explore transnational citizenship? This paper will attempt to answer this question by investigating the Eritrean case.

Paper long abstract:

To what extent can diaspora houses be used as a crucial site to explore transnational citizenship? This paper attempts to answer this question by investigating the Eritrean case. Based on recent ethnographic fieldwork on housing, home and migration in Eritrea and Europe (ERC HOMinG), this paper investigates, on the one hand, the shifting housing policies of the Eritrean government in the last thirty years. On the other hand, it describes migrants' aspirations to have a house back home and maps their different attitudes towards the government. Drawing from interviews with public officers in Eritrea, ethnographic fieldwork in diaspora neighbourhoods and informal conversation with migrants and their families back home, it will be argued that housing has been a key ingredient for the government to maintain a strong bond with its diaspora members, as well as for migrants to remain "Eritreans". However, given the complex political situation of the country in the last twenty years, the possibility to carry out housing projects has been limited by authorities. These limitations have had different implications on migrants and their families. In particular, the paper describes how housing policies have had different impact on the homeland connections of those who fled the country before 2000s and those who left afterwards, usually through irregular ways. By exploring the issue of housing, diaspora and state projects in the Eritrean case, this paper shows the importance of looking at diaspora housing as a key aspect of the contemporary articulation of transnational citizenship.