Dominic Pasura

Competing Meanings of the Diaspora: The Case of Zimbabweans in Britain

The diaspora literature has tended to narrow itself to the marking out and placing of boundaries at the conceptual level. While still contributing to the elaboration of the concept of diaspora, this article seeks to answer two questions. What meanings do Zimbabweans in Britain give to their diasporic condition and experience? How do such meanings influence and shape attitudes towards return to the homeland or feelings of belonging to the hostland? The article is based on multi-sited ethnography, comprising 33 in-depth interviews and participant observation in four research sites, and draws upon concepts of diaspora and transnationalism as theoretical frameworks. It examines the process by which Zimbabweans in Britain negotiate boundaries, assert meanings, interpret their own pasts, and define themselves in relation to others in the hostland. The findings suggest that, whereas the concept of diaspora typically emphasises group cohesion, Zimbabweans in Britain describe their experience in complex ways. Some depict the diaspora as reverse colonisation; some see it in terms of Babylon and Egypt metaphors; and others talk of the diaspora as wenela, an acronym referring to a labour recruitment system.

Religious transnationalism : the case of Zimbabwean catholics in Britain

This article examines the ways in which mainstream churches engender migrants’ maintenance of transnational ties and improve their integration into British society. It uses the Zimbabwean Catholic congregation in Birmingham as a case study. The central thrust of this article is that African diaspora congregations have emerged as public spaces to construct transnational identities and provide alternative forms of belonging, and have reinvented themselves as agents of re-evangelization to the host society. In contrast to other transnational ties such as remittances and hometown associations whose activities are orientated toward the homeland, reverse evangelization embodies the giving out of something to the host society. It is the awareness and ability to influence and shape the face of Christianity in Britain that gives African Christian migrants the agency to participate in other aspects of British society, providing an alternative path to integration. As the article argues, religious identities among Zimbabwean migrants should be seen not just as a religious phenomenon but also as markers of cultural difference from the host society, which constructs them as ‘other’.

Diasporic Repositioning and the Politics of Re-engagement: Developmentalising Zimbabwe's Diaspora?

Abstract The power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe has ushered in a period of engagement between the diaspora and homeland government, marking a distinct change from the hostility that characterised relations over previous years. This article discusses the politics of this repositioning and the character of the new diasporic organisations formed in the wake of the Global Political Agreement to take forward agendas of development and reconstruction at home. It argues that these new diasporic organisations have tried to create non-partisan platforms for engagement, have an elite social base, and connect responsibilities for development at home with the desire for formal political rights. Despite an apparent convergence of interest around development and reconstruction on the part of an array of diaspora groups, as well as the Zimbabwean and British governments, there are, nonetheless, tensions among these actors that this article seeks to reveal. It argues that a key issue shaping conversations over engagement is the divergence of interest within the diaspora between those with and without security in their states of residence. This divide is likely to become more salient in the context of a large-scale return programme, especially if there is ongoing uncertainty in Zimbabwe and if repatriation is conceived as a final one-way movement rather than as part of an ongoing circulation in which people may choose to maintain transnational lives. This discussion of the Zimbabwean case thus contributes to broader debates over the tensions that characterise policies of ‘diaspora engagement’.

Competing Meanings of Childhood and the Social Construction of Child Sexual Abuse in the Caribbean.

This article examines the dynamic interplay between competing meanings of childhood and the social construction of sexual abuse in the Caribbean. Drawing on qualitative data from a study undertaken in six Caribbean countries, the article suggests that Caribbean childhoods are neither wholly global nor local but hybrid creations of the region’s complex historical, social and cultural specificities, real or imagined. As childhood is a concept that lies at the intersection of multiple frames of reference, context-specific definitions of childhood – what it means to be a child – have a direct impact on the way in which the issue of child sexual abuse is constructed and understood.

Introduction: Frameworks for analysing conflict diasporas and the case of Zimbabwe

This article examines debates over conflict diasporas’ relationships to the African crises that initially produced them. It investigates the difference that crisis makes to frameworks for thinking about diasporic entanglements with political, economic and cultural change in sending countries. We argue that the existing literature and dominant approaches are partial, ahistorical, and constrained in other ways. The special issue contributes to new strands of scholarship that aim to rectify these inadequacies, seeking historical depth, spatial complexity and attention to moral- alongside political-economies. To achieve these aims, the special issue focuses on one country – Zimbabwe. This introductory article provides an overview of the themes and arguments of the special issue, revealing the multitude of ways in which diasporic communities are imbricated with political-economic, developmental, familial, and religious change in the homeland.

Negotiating and Contesting Gendered and Sexual Identities in the Zimbabwean Diaspora

The transnational and global flows of people, ideas and capital across borders inescapably shape and develop peoples gendered and sexual meanings, processes and identities. Drawing on our extended fieldwork, including interviews and participant observation in different social spaces, we seek to examine the negotiation and contestation of gendered and sexual identities among Zimbabwean migrants in Britain. Within transnational diaspora communities, womens bodies and their sexualities are not only symbols of homeland traditions, and cultural markers that distinguish migrants from the indigenous population, they are also sites of ideological and material struggles between different social actors. As Zimbabwean patriarchal traditions compete with liberal and egalitarian values in Britain, the diaspora becomes a site of cultural conflict. Empirical evidence suggests that, within the diaspora, sexuality has been decoupled from traditional marriage and is often expressed in non-normative sexual relationships. We illustrate how the boundaries of gendered practices and sexual behaviours deemed ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ also seem to be shifting.

Transnational Parenting and the Emergence of ‘Diaspora Orphans’ in Zimbabwe

This article explores the emergence of ‘diaspora orphans’ over the course of Zimbabwe’s crisis. The debates over this phenomenon reflect a range of real emotional and practical problems encountered by children and youth with parents abroad. But they also highlight the ambiguity of moral judgments of emigration and emigres, and the crisis of expectation that assumptions of diaspora wealth have fostered within families and among those remaining behind. The negative stereotyping of ‘diaspora orphans’ reflects the moral discourse circulating within families, schools and society more broadly, which is revealing for the light it sheds on unfolding debates over changing parenting, gender, and extended family obligations as these have been challenged by crisis and mass exodus. The article furthers understanding of transnational parenting, particularly the perspectives of those who fulfil substitute parental caring roles for children left behind, and of the moral dimensions of debates over the role of money and material goods in intimate relationships of care for children. It adds a new strand to debates over African youths by focusing not on the problems created through entrapment by poverty, but on the emotional consequences of parents’ spatial mobility in middle class families where material resources may be ample. The article is based on interviews with adults looking after children and youths left behind (maids, siblings, grandparents and single parents), and the reflections of teachers and ‘diaspora orphans’ themselves.

IMPACT: Interventions and Mitigations to Prevent the Abuse of Children – it’s Time. A Public Health Oriented Systems Model for Change

There are few issues more relevant to today’s society, both in the Caribbean and elsewhere, than those relating to child sexual victimisation and its effect on individuals, families and communities. In response to this major public health and social problem, the last three decades have witnessed the proliferation of programmes to prevent child sexual abuse (CSA). Yet questions have been raised about the scope, focus and effectiveness of these programmes in preventing CSA. While still contributing to this debate and informed by Smallbone’s et al. (2008) integrated theory and the public health model as theoretical frameworks, this chapter discusses the proposals for a model of child protection (IMPACT) which aims to translate findings from research commissioned by UNICEF into CSA in the Eastern Caribbean (Jones and Trotman Jemmott, 2009) into interventions to address the problem and to provide robust evidence of what works best in this context. Current approaches to CSA in Caribbean countries as elsewhere in the world are primarily reactive, responding only after individuals have already committed the offences. The model proposed shifts the focus from the back-end approach (identifying and punishing offenders) to an evidence-based, public health oriented prevention-centred approach (preventing CSA before it would otherwise occur, and preventing reoccurrence — secondary prevention) that mobilises families, communities, professionals and agencies in the protection of children.

Toward a Multisited Ethnography of the Zimbabwean Diaspora in Britain

Classical diaspora scholars have constructed diasporic identities in essentialistic and unitary fashion, with phrases like the “Jewish identity,” “Palestinian identity,” and “Irish identity” denoting migrants as homogeneous ethnic communities. Using the authors multisited ethnographic research among Zimbabweans in Britain, the article explores the diverse ways in which diasporic identities are performed, expressed, and contested in Britain. On the basis of data from a pub, a gochi-gochi (barbecue) and the Zimbabwe Vigil, this article argues that the concept of diaspora, by emphasizing a static and singular conception of group identity, removes the particular ways in which diasporic life is experienced. The ethnographic “sites” were chosen to highlight different geographic settings to show the contrast between multicultural global cities and how different spaces of association attracted distinctive diasporic communities of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and legal status. The article identifies a pattern of diasporic identity development that largely uses the homeland as a frame of reference, and this is contrasted with alternative, hyphenated identities that challenge the fixation of identities to a specific place. It can be suggested that these diasporic identities are bottom-up forms of resistance to the institutionally ascribed refugee identity, perceptions of blocked social mobility, racism, and discrimination in the hostland.

Theorizing black (African) transnational masculinities

Just as masculinity is crucial in the construction of nationhood, masculinity is also significant in the making and unmaking of transnational communities. This article focuses on how black African men negotiate and perform respectable masculinity in transnational settings, such as the workplace, community, and family. Moving away from conceptualizations of black transnational forms of masculinities as in perpetual crisis and drawing on qualitative data collected from the members of the new African diaspora in London, the article explores the diverse ways notions of masculinity and gender identities are being challenged, reaffirmed, and reconfigured. The article argues that men experience a loss of status as breadwinners and a rupture of their sense of masculine identity in the reconstruction of life in the diaspora. Conditions in the hostland, in particular, women’s breadwinner status and the changing gender relations, threaten men’s “hegemonic masculinity” and consequently force men to negotiate respectable forms of masculinity.