Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity

by Cawo M. Abdi

As a Somali working since high school in the United Arab Emirates, Osman considers himself “blessed” to be in a Muslim country, though citizenship, with the security it offers, remains elusive. For Ardo, smuggled out of Somalia to join her husband in South Africa, insecurities are of a more immediate, physical kind, and her economic prospects and legal status are more uncertain. Adam, in the United States—a destination often imagined as an earthly Eden, or jannah , by so many of his compatriots—now sees heaven in a return to Somalia. The stories of these three people are among the many that emerge from mass migration triggered by the political turmoil and civil war plaguing Somalia since 1988. And they are among the diverse collection presented in eloquent detail in Elusive Jannah , a remarkable portrait of the very different experiences of Somali migrants in the UAE, South Africa, and the United States. Somalis in the UAE, a relatively closed Muslim nation, are a minority within a large South Asian population of labor migrants. In South Africa, they are part of a highly racialized and segregated postapartheid society. In the United States they find themselves in a welfare state with its own racial, socioeconomic, and political tensions. A comparison of Somali settlements in these three locations clearly reveals the importance of immigration policies in the migrant experience. Cawo M. Abdi’s nuanced analysis demonstrates that a full understanding of successful migration and integration must go beyond legal, economic, and physical security to encompass a sense of religious, cultural, and social belonging. Her timely book underscores the sociopolitical forces shaping the Somali diaspora, as well as the roles of the nation-state, the war on terror, and globalization in both constraining and enabling their search for citizenship and security.

296 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2015

Reviews

[Veena Gokhale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an academic book with a difference -- it is not theory-heavy, but rather an easy read which sheds light on the lives and fates of the Somali Diaspora in three very diverse settings -- UAE, South Africa and the USA. Dr. Abdi sets the theoretical context in her introduction, while her first chapter goes into the relevant political history of Somalia that explains the reasons for the mass migration from that country.

A comparative study of this proportion has not been done on the Somali Diaspora, and indeed, must be rather unique in the annals of migration research. The book illustrates how the socio-political and policy context of a country, in a complex interplay with the socio-cultural norms and behaviours of the Somali communities who have moved or gained refugee status there, results in very different experiences and outcomes.

In UAE, for example, the Somalis feel most at ease culturally as they are Muslims themselves and living in a Muslim country. But paradoxically, they are in the most unstable situation here because UAE does not accept them on any other terms but as temporary migrant workers.

The book comprises of many stories and "characters"-- the courageous "negotiators" of these various circumstances who freely confided in Professor Abdi, a Somali immigrant (to Canada) herself. The very real and touching human dilemmas of the migrants, highlighted against analytical, context-setting explanations, make for compelling reading.

The book will greatly enhance the understanding of migration, as a whole, for anyone, and as we know, this is a topic of great importance in the 21st century. Elusive Jannah deserves a much larger readership than just students, professors, researchers and policy-makers.

[CTEP]

Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity by Cawo M. Abdi (Minneapolis, 2015), an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and a research associate in sociology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, has a poignant title. The Arabic word Jannah is used in the Quran to evoke Firdaws, paradise. In her ethnography of Somali migrants in the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and the United States, Abdi paints a portrait of a countries where Jannah has been promised but not fulfilled.

Abdi’s theses on Somalian people in the UAE and in South Africa are relatively straightforward, issuing from the social and political contexts of those countries along with the origins of Somali migration. In the UAE, Abdi charges, Somalian people suffer from a restricted legal status. Though they have had, by and large, good economic opportunities (especially in Dubai), Somalis “endure a perpetual, costly, and at times uncertain visa renewal process” which often fails and leaves them without papers or a way home. Oil-rich gulf countries like the UAE nevertheless held the Somali imagination as Jannah for two decades. Further destinations superseded the UAE after the early 1980s as places where internally displaced Somalis could find opportunity and belonging. Post-Apartheid South Africa, for example, saw an uptick in Somali immigration in the late 1980s. Still, the Somali population in South Africa faces (and has faced) a precarious legal situation, and tends to suffer from higher rates of poverty and violence than their counterparts in the UAE.

The final part of the book, a plurality of its content, analyzes Somali migrant life in the United States. According to Abdi, the US is played up throughout the diaspora as a “paradise”; what Somali Americans actually feel after arriving is a lack of respect in an environment that overwhelms Somali cultural, religious, and social practices. (The word “respect” is used by Abdi’s interview subject a disproportionate amount of times). Interestingly, Abdi illustrates the way that US public assistance laws prioritize women with children, which “challenge[s] the Somali dominant gender ideology.” One Somali playwright from the twin cities wrote a play about this phenomenon in 1998, where in one remarkable scene a series of social workers ignore Somali males and speak only to their wives.

Several things stand out for the CTEP member who reads Elusive Jannah. The first is, as mentioned above, the universal feeling among Somalis that American society affords Somalian people little or no respect. Even at a site like the Hubbs center, where the teachers and staff work every day with immigrants by choice and by training, we can still let infantilization creep into our dealings with students. Several times I have walked past classrooms in which the teacher is talking in something close to a baby voice; inevitably I become self conscious about my own treatment of people here. In the breakroom there is often an implicit divide in teacher’s conversations between the “us” who know things and the “them” who don’t (despite “them” often knowing 3+ languages). It will pay to continue to self-scrutinize and avoid the small but meaningful instances of disrespect that can infect the immigrant-student teacher relationship.

A second discussion point brought up by Abdi that might be useful to an interested CTEP member is her discussion of the struggle that Somalis have had with public housing. The history of housing policy in the US in the last 70 years is an enormous topic, but America’s shortcomings in its duties to its most vulnerable include the way that Minnesota and other Somali-dense areas have failed to provide decent and dignified living. I will remember Abdi’s chapter the next time I help one of my students fill out an application for housing assistance--and when I show them the resources that Gus gave to us in his corps day lecture.

Finally, Abdi’s discussion of American capitalism and American small-L liberalism and the way they threaten to dissolve network of Somali life are instructive in an important if more theoretical sense. It does not take much imagination to come up with myriad ways that rabid atomistic individualism and capitalist relations might threaten family life and cultural practices for any group. Somali religious and cultural practices need their space in order for Somali life to have dignity. One of the many reasons I am glad to work at the Hubbs center is the time and resources we provide in the form of prayer rooms; I as a teacher can continue to work to be accomodating for my students and all of their lifestyles and practices.