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- Convenors:
-
Tricia Redeker-Hepner
(University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Bettina Conrad (University of Hamburg)
- Stream:
- Environment, development and human rights
- Location:
- G50
- Start time:
- 12 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
none
Long Abstract:
During Eritrea's long war with Ethiopia (1961-1991) over one million people fled the country. Most of them retained transnational links with the Eritrean liberation fronts through which they contributed political and economic support. Today, however, political repression and rights abuses have precipitated new outflows of migrants despite the government's efforts to repatriate refugees from earlier decades. Many of the new migrants are young people fleeing the exigencies of militarism and the disillusionment of political, economic, and social repression. They now join with earlier exiles to create transnational movements that advocate for human rights and political change in Eritrea. The papers in this panel examine the dialectics between developments in Eritrea and its global diaspora. In particular, these studies focus on the impact of returnees, refugees, and renegades on homeland society, politics, and economy as they navigate their states of settlement and the global environment. Both Eritrea and states of settlement construct "counter-exile_? policies and discourses. In states of settlement, asylum policies and socio-cultural attitudes mitigate against permanent settlement, even as they force Eritreans to articulate legal justification for their departure from Eritrea. Similarly, the Eritrean state rejects the exiles' socio-political interventions, but relies on their economic participation. It also attempts to resettle reluctant returnees from Sudan while limiting the ability of others to leave. The result of these dynamics is a restive exile population that is neither here nor there, and a growing number at home who pine for exile whatever the cost.
No space for further papers
Accepted papers:
Session 1Hartmut Quehl
Paper long abstract:
Examining the dissolution of the Eritrean Liberation Army (ELA), the military wing of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), after its retreat from the battlefield in 1981, this paper looks at an hitherto under-researched topic of Eritrean history. The first part of the paper endeavours to uncover the main reasons for the organisational breakdown and to trace the whereabouts of the "remnant groups" of the ELF-Tagadelti. The second part then explores how the ELA's disintegration and the exodus experience of ELA members influenced Eritrean exile politics and organizational structures abroad. Assessing this "cold" demobilisation and reintegration process of a sizable army from a global and comparative perspective, the author also seeks to move beyond the isolationist and exceptionalist tendencies that characterises much of the earlier literature on the Eritrean independence war.
Gaim Kibreab (London South Bank University)
Paper long abstract:
The aim of the paper is to discuss critically the extent to which the open-ended national service and its concomitant the Warsai-Yikaalo Campaign constitute forced labour and to evaluate their social and economic impact. It also examines in how far they can be seen as direct or indirect causes of the recent refugee flows from Eritrea.
Assefaw Bariagaber (Seton Hall University)
Paper long abstract:
During the 30-year long war of independence in Eritrea, close to a million (out of an estimted 3.5 million) Eritreans left the country in search for refuge in many parts of the world. After the war ended in 1991, many expected Eritrean refugees, especially those in neighbouring countries, to return in droves immediately. This, however, did not occur as well as many had hoped. Instead large numbers remained in exile. And more surprizingly, new groupos of refugees left during and after the 2000 border war with Ethiopia.
Although there are many factors that account for this, including conscription in the armed forces and economic slowdown that followed the border war, such possible factors as refugee immitative behavour and 'familiarity with refugeehood' have largely remained unexplored. This paper interrogates these factors to determine if they contributed to the post-independence Eritrean refugee movements, and explores whether or not the threshhold of resisitance to become a refugee has lowered over the last few years. In short, the paper seeks to answer the question: has the decision to flee to exile become less agonizing because of refugee immitative behaviour and 'familiarity with refugeehood'?
Tricia Redeker-Hepner (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Paper long abstract:
(Co-author: Bettina Conrad)
The Eritrean transnational social field, comprised of the Eritrean state and its institutions, numerous diaspora-based organizations, and vibrant networks of individuals and kin groups, has historically been an important source of political-economic support for the former EPLF and current PFDJ government, as well as its strongest opposition. This transnational social field continues to diversify as new refugees leave Eritrea in response to intensifying repression and militarization in recent years. One notable feature is the emergence of newly-formed rights-based initiatives. From Germany and the United States to South Africa and Australia, Eritrean exiles of different backgrounds have begun articulating an agenda for socio-political change in Eritrea. Drawing on the discourse and strategies of human rights in particular, these groups both resist state power within the diaspora and seek to build linkages with one another and with non-Eritrean organizations. This paper draws on ethnographic data collected among Eritrean activists in Germany, the US, and South Africa, including interviews, primary documents, third-party reports, and current anthropological literature on human rights and transnationalism. We contextualize the growth of rights-based initiatives within historic transnational relations between the EPLF, the ELF, and exiles worldwide. We then explore how the deployment of human rights discourse and strategy become vernacularized and indigenized, as well as co-opted into specific political agendas. Linking rights-based initiatives to Eritrea's experience of both nationalism and transnationalism, we document a shift in state-exile relations that reflects differing ideas of the national future and Eritrea's place in the global order.