DESHAZTE DE LAS PERSONAS DOLOROSAS

Although diaspora is a contested conceptual tool (see for instance Shnapper 1999), both in general terms and in terms of those of its application to an all-encompassing African identity from abroad, I found it to be the only one that describes the development of a collective Eritrean identity abroad to include its practices and discourses. Diaspora has often been referred to people involved in a strong emotional tie to a shared past which often victimises its subjects. The term diaspora is more introspective than that of transnationalism, it “looks in” (Grillo 1998) towards the perceptions of the collective self creating a continuous ever lasting liaison. It is thus a concept used to strengthen the politics of identity emphasising on (forced) dispersal, whether it corcern Armenians, Jews, Africans in the USA or Eritreans in the world. It is a claim for recognition. Koser in his introduction to the book he edited on

“New African Diasporas” argues that:

Diaspora is becoming a “buzzword” rather like globalisation, and for some communities appears to have connotations with which they are keen to be associated … for at least some communities, there is a sense that their experiences in some way compare with those of the original diasporas - that they too are victims, just as were dispersed Jews and African slaves.

(2003: 4)

The term diaspora reflects on an emic necessity of recognition not on an analytic tool; the emic discourses on the self were thus taken into consideration to show “how” people live their identity rather than de-construct it.

Recently the discourse on diasporas has expanded to include practically every type of migration (Cohen 1997, Koser 2003) which forms either historical collectivists (as Schnapper 1999 called the ethnic affiliation), or religious affiliations, or both together. Inside these

analyses there is an attempt to differentiate diasporas into different types, as Cohen (1997) did. Apart from that already included into the concept of victims (like the Jews and the Armenians), he acknowledged the existence of economic (or trade) diasporas. I regard the switch from research focused on transnationalism to an interest in diasporas as mostly connected to a focus on migration with outcomes that are not always as “fluid” as argued in transnational studies, such as Gupta and Ferguson 1997, Bash et al 1994, etc. The use of the term diaspora is nevertheless overworked, as the term refers to a strong emotional link, and it is to be used carefully in order to avoid falling into a void of meanings. I would argue that diaspora is an emic concept often used to call upon rights of a “minority” group in the country of stay, but it is also a concept that stresses a past which led that minority to be dispersed. In this research the focus on collective discourses of the self through time and space has led to the analysis of the shifts that have been taking place. They have bee seen as producing different Eritrean identities through time, both regarding a perception of the general meaning of “being Eritrean”, noticed in their different tokens among the Eritreans in Milan, and regarding the perception of “being Eritrean in the world”. This latter focus brought about issues about diaspora and transnationalism.

In these concluding remarks I argue that the two concepts of transnationalism and diaspora cannot be intertwined as if they were two faces of the same coin. First of all I argue that not all transnational communities develop a diasporic discourse and, vice versa, not all diasporas practise forms of transnational movement. The intent to do research on movement through the concept of transnationalism and movement of people, goods, ideas and so on, across nations and to study communities abroad as diasporas is justified by this latter statement.

The two trends, the transnational one more focused on being “on the move”, the other diasporic one “building communities”, narratives and stability abroad, can be identified in the same national or religious group in different moments or in different factions. Tölölian (1996) analysed the Armenian collective community in the world as sometimes moving

towards a transnational organisation and other times organising as a diasporic network; the recent changes among the Eritrean community in Milan are analysed in a similar way.

Although words such as diaspora have not been adopted by Eritreans in Milan, the latter are however struggling for the recognition of their specific history and identity. In actual fact, the Eritrean community portrays its members as refugees and victims of emergency situations linked to a very complex history first of Italian colonialism, then of British rule and finally of Ethiopian imperialism. They have strong narratives supporting their past exile identity. The dominant discourse of Eritreans in Milan, which is reproduced mostly by the first generation of arrival, stresses an identity based on past activities and past histories. This has been thus passed on to the second-generation youth who is also developing a wider notion of the self in regards to a global Eritrean identity. Throughout the thesis, it is this type of identity that I often call diasporic, since it entails the set of discourses produced by the first generation of arrival; but it also includes the more independent ones, which I found on Internet sites from elsewhere in the world. The young people have been building up a diasporic identity through their collective experiences in contact with other groups of Eritreans from other parts of the world, which started during the past events of the festival of Bologna and continues now with holidaymaking in Eritrea and the world. Since the collective experiences of the youth are close to their parents’, the diasporic turn is being embodied even by the first generation, who have added on to the previous one this global notion based on stable communities abroad and on transnational networks with family and friends. So the Eritrean exile identity in Milan is building towards a transnational diasporic one.

During the research on Eritreans in Milan, recent concepts around migration puzzled me with questions on classification. Is the Eritrean community in Milan part of the Eritrean diaspora? Is it a transnational community? Or could it just be seen as exiled national group?

Time and space have both made me think that one cannot define this community as one or the other in simple terms. Changes have occurred from the first flow of arrivals to the last

one. The situation might be more easily seen as divided into different sets and stages of the Eritrean identity in Milan, where part of the more politically loyal diaspora is in actual fact

“transnationalist”, with the “ist” underlining the political motivations in identity building;

while others are “transnational” in regards to movement across nations and of living

“betwixt and between”; and yet others keep the diasporic identity and “stay” in an exiled stage, building ideas of stability and origins of “community” in the country of arrival. The three identities are not fixed; nor are they to be seen as phases in development where one is more advanced than others. The Eritreans studied in this research reflect on their histories of movement and create descriptions of who one is and who one may become, following the various routes, movement or the lack of it. So we can analyse how the differences perceived among Eritreans, both at home and abroad are built and reproduced in a set of narratives, which relate to collective discourses on the past and on the future, differentiating the various experiences into categories of Eritreans.

One could see some kind of “collective stages” in which identity develops. There seemed to be a perception of a sort of pattern through which one becomes a proper Eritrean in Milan and practices allowing the individual to continue to be perceived as such. The first stage is connected to the success of the journey and the outcome of integration in the community’s narratives as has been noticed in chapter two. The second stage is shifting the individual from being part of an exiled group to being transnationalist, as noticed in chapters three and four. In a further stage, the narratives constructed by the community and individuals through time, become journeys inside a diasporic space. This phase, as noticed in chapters five and six, leads individuals to move from Milan to other significant places of which Eritrea is the most important, but not the only one. This route is in simple terms what is perceived as the right way of building an Eritrean identity abroad and inside these defining perceptions one may negotiate, resist or play by the rules. This perception of the self in relation to movement and to the attachment to the motherland shapes the self in relation to categories of transnationalism and diaspora. The application of the concepts thus does not depend on

the levels of movement but on the discourses about ideal types of migration and practices of belonging.

Eritreans abroad had a network that developed especially abroad, linked to the fact that one could not easily go back to Eritrea, because the war had penetrated every level of Eritrean society. Thus discourses developed around perceptions of being exiles. The festival in Bologna played a huge role in creating bonds outside the home country, but in relation to the collective activism towards its liberation from the Ethiopian regime. Now that people can freely move to Eritrea, it is no longer the festival which unites the diaspora but the going home, and this becomes the factor that linked the second and first generations of Eritreans in Milan in a collective diasporic transnational identity. They now meet the rest of the diaspora in Eritrea and identify with another way of being Eritrean. Their way of perceiving themselves is detached from a dream of going back to live and is marked by a clear desire to differentiate themselves from those back home. In 1991 the main festival was moved to Eritrea and smaller festivals are in each Eritrean diasporic country strengthening the link to the host country. When people meet in Eritrea during the holidays they define themselves more and more according to where they live; moreover the second generation identifies with the language they speak better and the place where they were brought up and where most have citizenship and residence. This discourse on movement and identity is tied to an idea of progress, well explained by the words of the young people (chapter 6) who emphasise degreses of civilisation, and openness and closure of mentality, similarly to the Futurists. Those who stayed are thus intrinsically backward in the perceptions of the Eritreans in Milan.