Search

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 editorial makes the case for revisiting class in the context of forced migration. We argue that this is necessary to better grasp the inherent diversity of forced migrants. Forced-migration research has increasingly considered aspects of differentiation, such as race or gender. Yet, scholarly work on social class in this field remains scarce. We argue that forced migrants are wrongly homogenised as ‘poor’ or ‘class-less’, and show how class-related capitals and their transferability and convertibility remain important determinants of their spatial and social (im)mobility. We develop this angle by first giving an overview of the class concepts developed by Marx, Weber, and Bourdieu, and the ways the authors of this special issue employed these concepts. Building our arguments on the contributions to this special issue that engage in empirical analyses in diverse settings, we display how social class and the different forms of capital available to forced migrants influence their perception and capacity for spatial mobility. Moreover, we discuss how class at a given moment shapes forced migrants’ future social mobility in new settings. We conclude by highlighting the considerable variation in socio-economic backgrounds of forced migrants and discussing the effects of the categorisation as ‘refugee’.

Drawing on ethnographic research with Syrians in Egypt and with Somalis in Kenya, we argue that forced migrants who are able to choose their migration trajectory might opt for places of refuge in vicinity. We show that in these contexts it is easier for some forced migrants to preserve their socio-economic status. We introduce the term proximate places of refuge to highlight that not only geographical aspects matter for these considerations, but also similarities in lifestyle and living conditions. We explore how people negotiate their class position in proximate places of refuge by looking at how they relate their current situation to the setting they lived in before and to other possible destinations. Furthermore, we show that three aspects of class-making are of specific importance in such a setting: an emic demarcation from the category of the ‘refugee’, a focus on entrepreneurialism and the valuation of high work ethics, and the ability to transfer different sorts of capital from one place to another. We conclude that moving to proximate places of refuge eases the process of transferring class positions without rupture for some forced migrants.

We discuss the balancing acts of inclusion and exclusion by analysing how Somali migrants in Germany attempt to manoeuvre between various norms, individual interests and various social networks. Building on Glick Schiller and Caglar (2016), whose work on urban sociabilities emphasizes social relations in which people act as equals, we argue that ethnic (self-)identification is important as it serves as a basis for boundary-making and for bonding within and bridging and linking between groups. Thus, a focus on sociability and ethnic identification (as a category of praxis) can, in some cases, go hand in hand. Moreover, we argue that inclusion into local Somali communities, which is often discussed in public discourse as leading to exclusion from German society, helps to establish connections. Simultaneously, exclusion through racism can lead to (self-)isolation of Somalis, but also places pressure on younger Somalis in particular to forge alliances with non-Somali Germans to stabilize their situation. Balancing social inclusion and exclusion among Somali migrants in Germany therefore can have ambiguous and at times paradoxical outcomes.

Following publication of the original article (Saharso ) Scharrer, 2022), the authors would like to correct a reference and a typo in the article text. . “Meissner, F., ) Steven, V. (2015)”, should be “Meissner F. ) Vertovec, S. (2015)”; . In pag. 10 the word tran-sracial should be “transracial”. The original article (Saharso ) Scharrer, 2022) has been corrected.

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.

The author argues from a political science perspective that middle classes in Africa are an ‘elusive reality’, one that results largely from a debate conducted by international organizations and African political actors. The socioeconomic criteria applied in this debate make it doubtful that these middle classes exist outside of theoretical constructions. The author argues that the notion of the African middle class is attractive for a wide range of actors in politics and development organizations because this branding process transforms persons living on the positive side of the poverty line into a promising ‘middle class’ with the potential to lead economic and political development. However, even if an African middle class does not exist as a social fact, the debate surrounding its ‘rise’ does draw attention to deep structural transformations in twenty-first century African societies. This chapter follows the genesis of the debate about new African middle classes, identifies the actors involved in the debate, and presents a novel categorization of the middle classes in Africa, which goes beyond a purely quantitative description.