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Using the example of European Somalis moving to Kenya, this article argues that although these middle class return migrants share many similarities, they also differ in significant ways. Focusing o...

While at the moment the world seems to be divided along racial lines and ‘race’ appears to be a central axe of social inclusion and exclusion, in this article we ask whether it is thinkable to go ‘beyond race’. We want to explore the idea of going ‘beyond race’ in four different ways: (1) ‘Beyond race’ as a demographic reality when people of mixed origin form the majority of population; (2) ‘Beyond race’ in regard to policies that aim at combatting inequalities also along color lines, yet are no longer dependent on a notion of race. (3) ‘Beyond race’ in terms of political mobilizations, e.g. the possibility or desirability of anti-racist movements not grounded in identity politics and (4) ‘Beyond race’ as a conceptualization of race that is decoupling biology and culture, or even to stop thinking in racial categories altogether, yet without de-politicizing any marginalised group’s, history and experience. We are aware that this questioning of race, and by implication of ethnicity, may be a typical hang-up of two authors based in Europe. We have invited authors from different parts of the world, and with different academic backgrounds to reflect in a commentary on the issues we raise and to explain their position.

This paper deals with the way a “politics of belonging” has been enacted in recent years in Kenya, and what this means for the Somali population of the country. Even though Kenyan Somalis have been...

This chapter probably differs from other contributions in this edited volume in so far as it has neither a clear European nor a clear African perspective – instead it draws on both backgrounds. My European perspective is influenced by my spending the first years of my life in Eastern Germany, which had its own history and experience of (out)migration. My research about migration so far has focused entirely on Africa, at first on refugee camps in Tanzania and now in a post-doc project dealing with Somali migrants in Kenyan cities.

In this introductory chapter, the editors dissect the growing interest in the rise of middle classes in Africa. The apparently healthier rates of economic growth that are associated with these (reputed) classes seem to be an omen of a brighter economic and political future in Africa. For the editors of this volume, the middle class in Africa is an ‘overloaded’ class, overloaded with inflated expectations and unexamined assumptions. The editors question these assumptions in three dimensions: the political, the economic, and the dimension of lifestyle, the latter focusing on urbanization, education, and demographic change. They argue that in the continent today there is not one single ‘African middle class’ but rather a plurality of ‘middle classes’. The four sections of this volume (‘Rethinking Concepts of Middle Classes in Africa’, ‘the Recurring Rise and Return of Middle Classes in Africa’, ‘The Political Consequences of the Middle Classes’, and ‘the Formation of Interconnections and Interdependencies’) are introduced, and their contributions to an improved understanding of Africa’s diverse middle classes are outlined.

Class has not been a permanent feature of all African societies, nor a permanently central question in Africanist anthropology. Beginning with a consideration of how anthropologists have described pre-colonial forms of socio-economic stratification and inequality, this chapter follows the different historical phases of class development in Africa, and their impact on anthropological work on the continent. It provides a review of anthropological literature informed by both the changes of the geopolitical situation in Africa and anthropology’s theoretical development. The authors conclude that there is no general anthropological theory of class in Africa, but that there are certain recurring questions about class in the continent—including the question of whether or not it is possible to speak of class at all in the African context. O’Kane and Scharrer argue that class has consistently reappeared as a key question in Africanist anthropology, especially at those moments when class issues have become politically pressing in modern African history. There is still, however, no consistent anthropological usage of the term ‘middle class’ in either the older or the more recent literature. And even though class has become a feature of social structure, it coexists with other social categories and institutions of differentiation.