Abdile Mahdi - Diasporas, Development and Peacemaking in the Horn of Africa

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About the editors

Liisa Laakso is professor and dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Previously she held the UNESCO Chair in Development and International Cooperation at the University of Jyvskyl. She is a co-editor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding .

Petri Hautaniemi is a former senior researcher in development studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. His dissertation in social anthropology was on Somali child migration and young men, and he has published a number of articles on related themes. He has also scrutinized the concepts of Somali transnational families and kinship among state authorities in Finland, and the role of second-generation youth in global Somali kinship networks. He currently works as a senior adviser in the Department of Development Policy at the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Diasporas, development and
peacemaking in the Horn of Africa

edited by Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi

Diasporas, Development and Peacemaking in the Horn of Africa was first published in 2014 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK

This ebook edition was first published in 2014

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Editorial copyright Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi 2014
Copyright in this collection Zed Books 2014

The rights of Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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Contents

PETRI HAUTANIEMI AND LIISA LAAKSO

LIISA LAAKSO

GUENTHER SCHLEE

MARKUS VIRGIL HOEHNE AND MOHAMED HASSAN IBRAHIM

MAHDI ABDILE

DEREJE FEYISSA

BAHRU ZEWDE, GEBRE YNTISO AND KASSAHUN BERHANU

PETRA MEZZETTI, VALERIA SAGGIOMO AND PIVI PIRKKALAINEN

GIULIA SINATTI

Norwegian collaboration with diasporas

ROJAN EZZATI AND CINDY HORST

PETRI HAUTANIEMI, LIISA LAAKSO AND MARIKO SATO

Acknowledgements

This collection would not have been possible without the work done within the research project DIASPEACE Diasporas for Peace: Patterns, trends and potential of long-distance diaspora involvement in conflict settings, case studies from the Horn of Africa (200812). The project was funded by the 7th Framework Research Programme of the European Commission and backed by dedicated staff in eight partner organizations in seven countries. Special gratitude goes to Julia Ojanen, who coordinated the compilation of the research proposal at the University of Jyvskyl, and Angela Liberatore from the European Commission Directorate General for Research. We want to thank the members of the Advisory Board Mohamed Basweyne, Fantu Cheru, Nina Glick Schiller, Meeri-Maria Jaarva, Yohannes Kidane, Jeremy Lester, Amina H. Mohamoud Warsame and Mario Raffaelli for their support throughout the project. Another research project behind this collection is Security, governance and identities in flux (200811), which was supported by the Academy of Finland and benefited greatly from Riitta Launonens advice.

The authors want to thank Karin Fatimath Afeef, Silvia Aprile, Peter Croll, Volker Franke, Matteo Guglielmo, Nauja Kleist, Bettina Mann, Awil Mohamoud, Antony Otieno, Ferruccio Pastore, Juan Reyes, Marja Tiilikainen, Pekka Virtanen and Andrea Warnecke for research cooperation, valuable comments and assistance. Nely Keinnen provided competent language editing and Mariko Sato and Frateline Kashaga helped in the editorial work. For publication we are grateful to Ken Barlow at Zed Books and Birgitta Hellmark Lindgren and Sonja Johansson at the Nordic Africa Institute. The academic discussions in this book complement an earlier handbook for practitioners and policy-makers: Participation of Diasporas in Peacebuilding and Development (PRIO Report 2-2010), which was a vital forerunner to this collection.

Finally we are most grateful to the many representatives of diaspora groups, international organizations and governmental agencies who have shared their experiences and offered their precious time for the research work. Only some of them are referred to and appear in the lists of interviews.

Introduction: Diasporas for peace and development

Petri Hautaniemi and Liisa Laakso

It is not novel to claim that not only are displaced people affected by the circumstances of instability in their home countries but that they also affect the ways in which these conflicts develop, are prolonged or are settled. The role of diasporas in the development of their home countries is also a valid point of interest. However, while some evidence on the various roles played by diasporas in their host societies is available, their precise impacts in transnational contexts, and particularly with regard to development and conflicts at home, have often remained unclear. There is little systematic social scientific research on migrant political transnationalism in conflict settings, particularly within the African continent. Consequently, debates in this field have been largely speculative, relying on anecdotal evidence rather than hard facts.