Identity Formation Among Eritrean Communities in the Transnational Space: Caught Between State Imposed Nationalism and Sub-National Fragmentation

This paper investigates the role of religious and ethnic identities in the lives of diaspora communities and among Eritrean refugees. These identities are grounded in the social and political crises which have shaped the history of their homeland. Today Eritrea is one of the most diasporic nations with more than half of the population living abroad. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled their home in the past two decades to escape from an open-ended national service imposed by the government. Nevertheless, they are under surveillance of the transnational Eritrean institutions that strive to indoctrinate them with long-distance nationalism to control them politically and to exploit them financially. However, cleavages along ethnic, religious and regional lines have marked Eritrea’s history and have persisted in the self-perception of the diverse Eritrean diaspora communities, who have increasingly reverted to primordial patterns of identification in current years to resist the nationalist demands of the government. Many refugees have inconsistent feelings towards their Eritrean ‘national identity’ (Eritrawi or Eri): while they usually stress the social cohesion of the Eritrean people in conversations with non-Eritrean people in their respective host countries, their daily lives are shaped by their identification with a certain ethnic community. This paper explores the following questions: why do members of the Eritrean diaspora and refugees rely on their ethnic and regional affiliations as markers of identity instead of their national identity as Eritreans? Do these sub-national identities contribute to the increasing fragmentation of Eritreans in exile in opposition to the government? How do they relate to Eritrean nationalism and the Eritrean nation building project in a transnational political space? The paper analyzes the formation and development of ethno-lingual, cultural and regional voluntary networks and associations that have been expanding among the Eritrean transnational migrants in Europe since the last decade. It also discusses the impact of primordial identities on the political opposition and on civic society organizations in the diaspora who are struggling for political change at home. It examines the attitudes of civic society associations and their leadership concerning towards the Eritrean government’s transnational policies and towards Eritrean political opposition and other civic society organizations in their respective host countries. We find that most of the sub-national associations lack a political vision beyond their daily cultural and charity activities, and efforts to establish umbrella organizations that could challenge the government have so far failed. The study is based on long-term participant observation by the authors and on hundred semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with Eritreans in Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK and with key informants in 2018 and 2019. The participants were selected through snowball sampling and mirror the ethnic diversity of the Eritrean people. They were interviewed in six different languages to include minorities that lack language proficiency in international languages.