Paper short abstract:

Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Northern Somalia/Somaliland, this paper explores how some previously temporary, kinship-based initiatives have dramatically scaled up their assistance by shifting into permanent, formal legal-bureaucratic entities.

Paper long abstract:

Recent work has begun to explore alternative and non-Western formulations of humanitarianism, including community-based and diasporic aid. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in areas of contested political order in Northern Somalia and Somaliland, I suggest that recent attempts at international humanitarian reform through localisation and resilience have brought diasporic, community and international humanitarian actors into a closer orbit. It is not only that multiple humanitarianisms (co)exist in the Somali territories. It is also that they collide on the ground, with blurred boundaries and birthing new practices and forms that emerge ‘betwixt and between’. Most notably this is evident in how some previously temporary and trust-based kinship initiatives have shifted into more permanent, formal legal-bureaucratic entities. I give the example of a small segmentary kinship group that instituted itself as an NGO in order to better manage diaspora funded development at the village level. This provoked proximate genealogical groups to follow suit, creating their own NGOs. Over time, these smaller NGOs were assimilated into a larger, transnational entity that scaled up kin-based assistance to a large genealogical unit that spread across western Somaliland, Djibouti and eastern Ethiopia. This particular NGO has since become a powerful developmental actor by inscribing the structures and norms of Somali genealogical kinship within the organisational structures and material practices of international humanitarianism. I conclude that the apparent decline of liberal humanitarianism may signal the emergence of increasingly hybrid forms of humanitarianism that assimilate some liberal humanitarian structures, values and institutional forms whilst discarding others.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers a particular diasporic community in the UK over time, with an emphasis on the entanglement between assistance imaginaries and immigration trajectories such as refugee resettlement. In particular, it considers education as a particular form of diasporic future-making.

Paper long abstract:

Humanitarian aid in the African diaspora is not a new phenomenon, though elements of scope, speed and capacity of responses have shifted. In this paper, I aim to explore the humanitarian engagement of a particular diasporic group – in this case Somalis in Bolton, UK – over time, from coordinated family reunification in the early 1990s to education and aid provision in the 2020s. During this period the Somali community grew from a handful of individual families to a vibrant group with several community organizations – growth facilitated in part by third country resettlement from Dadaab. I suggest that, in the case of this Somali community, the changing shapes of aid responds not only to condensed distances and circulating imaginaries of global connectivity, but also to experiences of refugeedom, humanitarian infrastructure, and resettlement. Diasporic aid to Somalia or Dadaab is therefore intertwined with transnational imaginaries of resettlement alongside local asylum aid in Bolton and narratives of ‘home’. As an example I explore education aid as a particular form of diasporic future-making, which connects supplementary school projects in the UK with education projects and aid projects in Somalia and Kenya. Through engagement with the Somali diaspora in Bolton, I aim to explore the imaginaries and potential futures - for the diasporic community, for individuals, for Somalia - circulating in education aid.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the relationship between human security and diaspora humanitarianism in Somalia. The paper shows how diasporas are already new and frontline humanitarian actors in Somalia and how their different activities contribute to human security in Somalia.

Paper long abstract:

Migrant remittances—money and other valuable goods that migrants send to their loved ones —have been at the core of many global and scholarly debates. Remittances are important external financial inflows to Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Last year alone, SSA received $ 49 billion in remittances (Ratha et al., 2022). Remittances have crucial for realizing human security in SSA and the Horn of Africa. A unique case is a Somali diaspora. Somali diaspora is well-connected to their country and has the potential to contribute to their country’s human security.

Human security as a conceptual framework can expand our understanding of security to include economic, health, food, personal, political community, and environmental security (Gómez & Gasper, 2013). To achieve human security, different scholars and policymakers have proposed different ways. However, what is always overlooked is the role of diaspora humanitarianism and how it contributes to human security in post-conflict societies like Somalia. This paper is an effort to contribute to this limited scholarship. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Somalia over 18 months in 2020 and 2021, the paper shows how Danwadaag as a global Somali diaspora humanitarian network is contributing to human security in their country of origin.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the Covid-19 pandemic as a shared – if uneven – context, and the implications for Somali diaspora humanitarianism. Based on collective, multi-sited fieldwork, we examine caregiving relations and emergency relief as well as conceptualizations and relativisation of crises.

Paper long abstract:

During times of crisis, Somali diaspora groups have become a crucial lifeline for their kin in the Horn of Africa, as they respond more quickly and access places considered too dangerous or remote by the formal humanitarian system. In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, such emergency relief was challenged as diaspora groups living in Europe and North America recorded high rates of fatalities and experienced significant loss of employment and income, while Covid-19’s impact within the Somali territories was less disastrous than initially feared.

In this paper, we explore what happens when a particular crisis becomes a shared – if uneven – context, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Does this disrupt pre-existing caregiving relations between diaspora and homeland? And what are the implications for conceptualizations of global crises and the future of diaspora humanitarianism? Based on collective multi-sited fieldwork across multiple localities in the Horn of Africa, Europe and elsewhere in the world, we show that within the global Somali community, the nature, scale and impact of Covid-19 has been contested in a manner that calls into question the concept of the pandemic as singular, shared crisis. We show that responses display both elements of continuity and change with previous crises, but in general have been less organized and more individualized. We argue that these responses are explained by the contested conceptualization of Covid-19 as a crisis, and the ways in which Covid-19 is at times both compounded and relativized by previous historical crises faced by Somali communities.

Paper short abstract:

Social media platforms have the potential to transform social interaction and networking for humanitarianism. These platforms have enabled diverse networks in Somalia and the diaspora to mobilise resources during a crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Social media has reshaped the humanitarian assistance scene by providing discursive platforms for community mobilisation and fundraising. The Somali diaspora utilizes platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp to mobilise to fundraise during drought in Somalia. In this study, I use data from ethnographic fieldwork in Eastleigh to investigate how socio-technical systems shape the mobilisation and distribution of diaspora remittances to drought-affected populations in Somalia. More specifically, it analyses the role of Facebook and WhatsApp in mobilising and distributing drought-related diaspora remittances from Eastleigh to Somalia. Leveraging data from WhatsApp and Facebook-based mobilisations, I demonstrate the heterogeneity of platforms used among the different Somali diaspora actors during drought. Most WhatsApp groups are based on regions or kinships whereas Facebook mobilisation is handled by influential people with large following such as sheikhs are open to the public. WhatsApp has pervaded borders, some sort of convergence, and geographical borders are no longer relevant.

Paper short abstract:

Humanitarian efforts in Niger have increased their use of biosurveillance technologies to intercept migrants. Such “humanitarian technologies” reflect the expansion of technological solutionism via border management logics, and tether African futures to tech and security-based economic outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

Identified by the EU as a country of transit and a corridor of return, Niger has become critical to Europe’s migration control schemes and aspirations in the West Africa and North Africa regions. The EU has invested billions of euros into upgrading Niger’s border management capabilities with new technologies that track and intercept African migrants with more precision. Relatedly, humanitarian efforts in Niger have also increased their use of technologies to similarly surveil and intercept migrants. These “humanitarian technologies” reflect the expansion of technological solutionism via the carceral and capitalist logics of border management. Such technologies include drones, biometric sensors, and database software for tracking individuals. IOM deploys these carceral and military technologies to intercept and provision care for migrants as part of regional migration control. In resource-starved places across Africa, like Niger, the presence of all these expensive technologies for acquiring and managing migrants’ data exists alongside populations of peoples who have very little economic and political resources. It is unclear how those data collected from all these Africans are analyzed and what pictures they produce. What is clear however, is that those data produce economic possibilities and tech-based futures for tech corporations, defense contractors, and the booming migration management industry. As long as the humanitarian technologies remain successful and fully incorporated in migration management schemes, they represent incredible economic growth opportunities for their corporate stakeholders. Such profit possibilities under the guise of technological opportunism may orient African futures in specific directions, towards certain horizons.