Paper short abstract:

With examples from my research projects on the African diaspora in different countries, my presentation explores how boundaries of belonging are negotiated and essentialist ideas of communities and cultures are contested in exhibitions focusing on African diaspora communities and cultures.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation examines how multiple identities and belonging are articulated in museums and exhibitions in which people have participated in knowledge production of their overlapping identifications and their activities as transnational diaspora subjects. My empirical examples are from two research projects focusing on African diaspora formations.

The purpose of the action phase of my research project on African diaspora in Finland (2011-2015), The African presence in Finland exhibition (The Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, 2015), was to represent African diaspora subjects in Finland as a part of the Finnish society, culture and history. Collaborative methodologies emphasizing the agency of people as racialized diaspora subjects and as Finnish citizens enabled an exploration of the complex processes of (non)belonging and individuals' negotiations of their multiple identities. The project also made visible transformations in Finnish society and Finnishness due to the rapid demographic changes caused by migration.

I have continued studying African diaspora(s) in Europe and the U.S. in my on-going project Rethinking diasporas, redefining nations. Representations of African diaspora formations in museums and exhibitions (2015-2020). Fieldwork in different countries allows an examination of diaspora communities and cultures in and between different locations. My presentation will focus on how many exhibitions contest what Brubaker (2002, 164) calls 'groupism', 'the tendency to take groups for granted in the study of ethnicity, race and nationhood'.