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Paper short abstract:

The Amiche, Eritreans who were born or brought up in Ethiopia before Eritrean independence, have repeatedly been going through periods of protracted displacement situations. Their enduring liminality has, at the same time, stabilised their status as a distinct social group.

Paper long abstract:

The paper suggests to extend the model of liminal zones (Elwert 1989) that focuses on the stabilisation of subsystems through institutionalisation of isolated zones for testing and introducing adaptation. Zones of inclusion and exclusion – characterized as tidal movement – establish a band in between subsystems. Our case, the Amiche, in analogy, are a geographically stable groups moved by shifting boundaries.

The Amiche (nicknamed after an old Italian company that used to assemble vehicles in Addis Ababa), were Eritreans born or brought up in Ethiopia before Eritrean independence. Their families had been displaced and migrated from Eritrea during the thirty years Eritrean war of independence (1960 to 1991). Many Eritreans had sought asylum in different neighbouring countries during this war, and many of them migrated to different parts of Ethiopia, by then internally. There they lived waiting for the day they could return to Eritrea.

This moment finally came in 1991. Yet the division between both countries became increasingly rigid and when the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrean war broke out, many Amiche were deported to Eritrea. . In the latest phase, a number of them have become (Eritrean) refugees in the country (Ethiopia) they had left a few years back voluntarily or as deportees.

The Amiche symbolize prototypically the longstanding and vicious circle of displacement, deportation and living in limbo. Picking up and extending the tidal movement idea, we argue that this enduring liminality had the effect of stabilising them as a group of its own.