African home associations in Britain: between political belonging and moral

conviviality

Claire Mercer, Department of Geography and Environment, LSE, Houghton Street,

London, WC2A 2AE (c.c.mercer@lse.ac.uk)

Ben Page, Department of Geography, UCL, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP.

(bpage@ucl.ac.uk)

Published in: Mercer, C. and B. Page (2010) African Diaspora , 3, 1, pp111-131

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Abstract

This paper argues that significant analytical and political possibilities for thinking

about the African diaspora in Britain are opened up by shifting the analytical lens

from ethnicity to place. Drawing on recent research with Cameroonian and Tanzanian

home associations in Britain we suggest that the concept of a ‘progressive politics of

place’, which distinguishes between ‘political belonging’ and ‘moral conviviality’,

can help us to explore the morality of convivial relations in the African diaspora. We

highlight the ways in which home associations provide space for debate about what is

an intrinsically good way to live together in the diaspora. However, if moral

conviviality is about debating the right and wrong ways of living together in a place,

then we need to think explicitly about the places inhabited by the diaspora. The paper

addresses the ways in which home associations provide a space not only for debate

among members, but also a forum for debating how to live in Britain.

Keywords

Diaspora, home associations, Tanzania, Cameroon, progressive politics of place

Résumé: Cette étude soutient que les outils analytiques et politiques signifiants pour étudier la

Diaspora africaine en Grande-Bretagne se sont élargis en déplaçant le point de vue

analytique de l’ethnicité vers le lieu. En nous basant sur une récente étude sur des

associations du logement Camerounaises et Tanzaniennes en Grande-Bretagne, nous

suggérons que le concept d’une « politique progressive du lieu», qui fait la distinction

entre l’ « appartenance politique « et la « convivialité morale », peut aider à explorer

les mœurs en vigueur dans les relations conviviales au sein de la Diaspora Africaine.

Nous mettons en lumière les manières par lesquelles les associations du logement

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offrent un espace de débat à propos de ce qu’est intrinsèquement la bonne manière de

vivre ensemble dans la diaspora. Cependant, si la convivialité morale consiste à

débattre sur les bonnes et les mauvaises manières de vivre ensemble dans un même

lieu, alors nous devons réfléchir explicitement aux lieux habités par la diaspora.

L’étude expose les manières par lesquelles les associations du logement offrent non

seulement un espace de débat entre les membres, mais aussi un forum pour débattre

sur la manière de vivre en Angleterre.

Mots-clés: Diaspora, Associations du logement, Tanzanie, Cameroun, politique progressive de l’espace

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Introduction

African diaspora groups have become the subject of increased attention in Britain in

recent years. In the policy realm, this attention has been channelled into two central

preoccupations: one with development in Africa and the other with integration in

Britain. The first is concerned with the capacity of African diaspora groups to deliver

developmental benefits in Africa. Long-established organisations such as home

associations, which sometimes send collective remittances for earmarked

development projects at home, have now attracted attention from those looking for

better ways to channel development assistance (Mercer et al. 2008; Somerville et al.

2008). The second is concerned with diaspora groups’ ongoing orientation to an

African homeland and the consequences for their integration in Britain (Commission

for Integration and Cohesion 2007). In particular, it is argued that diaspora groups

foster ‘bonding capital’ amongst members, thereby discouraging the development of

‘bridging capital’ with wider society (Commission for Integration and Cohesion 2007;

Putnam 2000).

Underlying these policy debates is a set of British anxieties about identity which

stem from assumed inherent differences between ‘Britons’ and ‘Africans’. African

diaspora politics in Britain have tended to be understood through the lens of ethnicity.

Consider, for example, the first report by the Commission for Integration and

Cohesion (CIC) on Our shared future, which concluded that “funding to community

groups should be rebalanced towards those that promote integration and cohesion…

‘single group funding’ should be the exception rather than the rule for government

and external funders” (CIC Prologue to Annex D 2007: 160), where a ‘single group’

refers to any association organised on an ethnic, religious, national or cultural basis.

Justifying this proposal the Commission argues that the:

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disadvantages of single group funding [include] its potential to increase

insularity and a sense of separation... There was a sense in which a ‘comfort

zone’ could be developed if communities were not encouraged to be

outward-facing, and therefore only mixed with others in their group (161).

As a result African diaspora associations are characterised as ‘ethnic

associations’ oriented to an ethnic homeland, and have therefore been rendered

inimical to ‘social cohesion’ in Britain. There are a number of immediate problems

with this view, not least the reliance on a static and essentialist view of ethnicity,

which assumes that diaspora associations are generally mono-ethnic groups attached

to an ethnically homogeneous ‘homeland’. In this paper we propose an alternative

approach by exploring the analytical possibilities opened up by thinking about

African diaspora politics through the lens of place rather than ethnicity. In our view,

diaspora associations in all their diversity are better characterised by an attachment to

place rather than an attachment to ethnic group. In so doing we do not deny that there

is a relationship between ethnicity and diaspora associations. Ethnicity and diaspora

associations both change over time and the means by which they change are closely

related. Nevertheless, we propose that shifting the focus from ethnicity to place is

useful for two reasons. First, it more accurately reflects the attachments to home

places often expressed by African diaspora groups. Among the diaspora associations

we have encountered in our research, all claim a common affiliation to a shared home

place, none of which could be described as an ethnically homogenous territory.

Second, it opens up new ways of thinking about diaspora politics and associational

life. Here we take our cue from those in geography who have attempted to map out a

‘progressive politics of place’, by which they mean to indicate an idea of place as

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inclusive, porous, open and always in the process of being made by multiple actors

(Massey 2005). A progressive politics of place eschews the assumption that politics is

a zero-sum game between groups of people who are corralled into rigidly demarcated

places. Instead, it provides an opportunity to tease out the ways in which the place-

based politics of African diaspora associations need not always be reactionary.

In suggesting a shift from ethnicity to place we do not suppose that place is an

intrinsically more democratic framework than ethnicity. It is possible that thinking

about the relationship between identity and place can lead us down similar analytical

cul-de-sacs as can thinking about the relationship between identity and ethnicity, not

least because the standard narratives on place in the context of globalisation gloss it as

static and bounded in contrast to the abstract yet dynamic spaces of globalisation

(Massey 2005). Just as identities can be imagined as primordially ethnic, so too can

they be imagined as rooted in place. In contrast to space, place is often romanticised

as a familiar locality to which we can retreat from the tumult of globalisation. In this

standard narrative the central problem with an increased loyalty to place is that it is a

symptom of introversion. The uncertainties of globalisation encourage us to look

inwards, to defend our places and maintain their imagined tranquil character. Not only

does this discourage what Doreen Massey calls ‘outwardlookingness’ (2006) or the

building of solidarities with other people and places, but it can also encourage an

inwardly-divisive dissection of the multiplicitous nature of places themselves (Amin

2002). The ‘retreat to the local’, then, is often characterised as politically reactionary.

According to this view, African diaspora associations are problematic because they

are inward-looking and concerned with the exclusive maintenance of their home

place.

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However, we suggest that debates about place have, quite literally, been subject

to less colonisation than debates about ethnicity. ‘Place’ as a framework can open up

possibilities for thinking differently about questions of identity and social relations in

global times. In particular, we find useful Doreen Massey’s assertion that it is possible

to articulate a ‘progressive politics of place’ (1993, 1994, 2006), one which

foregrounds an understanding of places as unbounded and constituted relationally:

…an alternative interpretation of place can give a place its specificity not out of

some long internalized history but the fact that it is constructed out of a

particular constellation of relations, articulated together at a particular locus.

(Massey 1993: 66)

Her refusal to accept that place-based politics are inherently reactionary has

something structural in common with work in African Studies by John Lonsdale and

Richard Werbner who have both written extensively on ethnicity and African politics.

In his analyses of Gikuyu and national politics in Kenya, Lonsdale (1992)

distinguished between ‘political tribalism’, which referred to the mobilisation of tribe

in high politics, and ‘moral ethnicity’, which referred instead to the negotiation of

shared mores among the Gikuyu in their everyday lives. The crucial contribution was

to suggest a way of thinking about social life in Africa which untethered ethnicity

from political strife. In other words it contested the view that ethnic politics were

inherently reactionary. As Lonsdale later elaborated, ‘moral ethnicity’ could be

described as a negotiated process of ‘ourselves-ing’ in which “the chief stimulus to

creative debate was the need to establish anew how people should behave among ‘us,

ourselves’” (2004: 76) in rapidly changing socio-economic and political

circumstances. Richard Werbner (2004) has subsequently argued in the context of

present-day Botswana that the negotiation of shared mores and values does not only

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take place within communities, as the notion of ‘ourselves-ing’ suggests, but also

between different communities. He insists on the possibility of a more convivial

register in which relations between different groups are conducted.

The distinction between political tribalism and moral ethnicity is a useful one

for thinking through Massey’s ideas about place-based politics. Adapting Lonsdale,

we suggest that a progressive politics of place distinguishes between ‘political

belonging’ and ‘moral conviviality’. Political belonging describes a process of

exploiting affinity to place for political ends. Moral conviviality expresses local ideas

about the right and wrong ways for diverse groups of people to live together in a place

(Shack 1979). While we recognise that others have argued for a darker reading of

conviviality in the African context (Mbembe 2001), our aim here is closer to

Fontein’s (2006: 179) articulation of ‘moral conviviality’ in the context of southern

Zimbabwe. We are interested in the morality of convivial relations – the ways in

which home associations provide space for debate about what is an intrinsically good

way to live together in the diaspora.

In this paper, we draw on recent research with Cameroonian and Tanzanian

home associations in Britain in order to tease out the mundane ways in which African

diaspora politics can be read as the practice of moral conviviality. These diasporas are

small in Britain – according to the 2001 census, the Tanzanian-born UK population

was 32,056, while the Cameroonian-born population was just 3,612 (for comparison,

the census also counted 127,322 people born in Kenya, 86,958 born in Nigeria and

55,537 born in Ghana; GLA, 2005).i However anecdotal evidence suggests that these

two diaspora communities have grown since the 1980s, particularly in more recent

years, diversifying what were quite small, elite groups into far more differentiated

diasporas. Moreover, associational life among Cameroonians and Tanzanians in

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Britain is thriving. Our research focused on a range of home associations from these

two countries in an attempt to capture the diversity of diaspora groups and activities,

from the larger national umbrella associations to the smaller, informal groups of

friends and extended kin. However, all groups professed an attachment to a shared

home place (at various scales) and this is our starting point for exploring the ways in

which home associations practice moral conviviality. Indeed, the variation in the

places that constituted ‘home’ for these associations explains our preference for the

term ‘home association’ as opposed to the more common ‘hometown association’ in

the African Studies literature and beyond. Following Lonsdale’s explication of moral

ethnicity as a process of ‘ourselves-ing’, our analysis focuses on home associations as

spaces where a collective sense of community is fostered and where members can

debate the right and wrong ways to live in a community.

In what follows we draw on research with Tanzanian and Cameroonian

associations in the UK undertaken between 2005 and 2007. The UK associations were

identified while carrying out research in four ‘home places’ in Cameroon (Bali and

Manyu) and Tanzania (Newala and Rungwe) in 2005. From the original contacts we

were given in Africa we ‘snowballed’ in the UK to include a whole range of diaspora

associations, which were linked to the four home places in different ways. Most of the

associations are based in the southeast of England and in the Midlands, and we do not

claim our sample to have been exhaustive. We also attended national diaspora events

for the Cameroon and Tanzanian communities in the UK as part of this research. The

paper proceeds in two parts. First, we explore what Lonsdale’s notion of ‘ourselves-

ing’ (2004: 76) might mean in the context of African diaspora associations in the UK.

We focus on the ways in which home associations are organised and why this in itself

is not to be taken for granted, but rather is suggestive of a moral conviviality among

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those in the diaspora. However, if moral conviviality is about debating the right and

wrong ways of living together in a place, then it seems to us that we need to think

explicitly about the places where the diaspora live. Therefore, the second part of the

paper focuses on the ways in which home associations provide a space not only for

debate among members, but also a forum for debating how to live in Britain.

‘Ourselves-ing’: home associations as spaces of moral conviviality

The first element of ‘ourselves-ing’ is to be organised around a common home place.

The African diaspora in the UK is incredibly diverse and this is reflected in

associational life, with groups organised around a place of origin, place of settlement,

religious communities and professions (Uduku 2002; Henry and Mohan 2003; Mohan

2006; Lampert 2009; McGregor 2009). Home associations are one particularly

enduring form of associational life (Mercer et al. 2008), although different groups

prefer to organise themselves in different ways. The common attachment within any

group could be to a village, town, region, linguistic area or nation. There is a clear

distinction between the Cameroonian and Tanzanian diasporas in the UK, with

Cameroonian home associations more commonly organised around a smaller

geographical home (such as village, sub-division or province), and Tanzanian home

associations claiming a common affinity to the nation or region (the mainland or the

Zanzibar islands). This reflects the weakness of postcolonial nation building in

Cameroon and its strength in Tanzania. Although it might seem counter-intuitive to

argue that diaspora groups based on the nation can be thought of as ‘home

associations’, the Tanzanian diaspora groups we encountered in the UK all claimed a

national membership. Groups tended to bring together Tanzanians living in a

particular town or city in the UK, but to our knowledge Tanzanians have tended not to

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establish diaspora groups in the UK which are organised around a particular region of

the country, with the exception of the Zanzibar islands. This reflects the troubled

political union between Zanzibar and Tanganyika, itself a symptom of historical

cultural, religious and racial differences between the mainland and the islands (see

Dosi et al. 2007 for a similar pattern among Tanzanian associations in Wichita,

Kansas, USA).

The Tanzanian associations in particular are engaged in constructing a sense of

coherence and community for themselves in the context of being in Britain. There is,

in other words, a sense in which it is important to engage in ‘ourselves-ing’, to claim

recognition for the Tanzanian diaspora in Britain. In a context where a few African

diasporas have become prominent in the UK (notably the Nigerian, Ghanaian,

Somalian and Sierra Leonean diasporas) there is a sense among smaller African

diaspora communities of having to struggle for ‘recognition’ - both recognition by

other Africans and by British society. Both Cameroonians and Tanzanians, as

relatively small diasporas, felt that being organised helped to quash a sense of

inferiority compared to the larger African diasporas. In this context, the re-branding of

the Tanzania Association UK (TA) in 2006 was partly born out of a frustration that

Tanzanians in Britain appeared to be ‘invisible’ while other African groups were

forging ahead, setting the agenda and becoming the voice of ‘the African diaspora’ in

Britain. The concern was both to seek recognition and respectability as other diaspora

groups had done, but also to learn from those larger and more established diasporas.

The TA, together with the Tanzania Women’s Association (TAWA) and the

Zanzibar Welfare Association (ZAWA) are thus important barometers of the

Tanzanian diaspora’s visibility and status in Britain. Moreover the TA, which is

connected to the Tanzania High Commission in London, has made a distinct effort to

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promote its own brand of Tanzanian nationalism. This is a nationalism which clearly

resonates with ideas propagated by the government at home in Tanzania. So for

example, in the recent leadership elections for the association, presidential candidates

and their running mates had to represent both the mainland and the Zanzibar islands,

as is the practice during presidential elections in Tanzania. The TA also rehearses a

familiar Tanzanian political rhetoric about peace, unity and the nation. Yet it would

be too easy to dismiss the TA as an instrument of the Tanzanian government, despite

President Kikwete’s interest in engaging the diaspora since his election in 2005. There

is also a popular discourse of inclusion and equality for all Tanzanians in Britain to

which many subscribe. In the context of the troubled union between the mainland and

the Zanzibar islands, it is not insignificant that the TA should attempt to create a

united Tanzanian community in the diaspora. So although the ideals of national peace

and unity remain elusive at home (in the case of the Zanzibar islands), nevertheless

Tanzanians in the UK feel proud of the country’s relative stability within Africa and

appreciate the binding work done by Swahili, the country’s adopted national language

after independence. Furthermore the leadership of the TA has made a concerted effort

to give the community a focus and to open up the association to a broader

membership. For example, they have appealed to a younger cohort of Tanzanians in

the UK by putting on new kinds of events such as the Miss Tanzania UK pageant

(inspired by a highly popular annual event in Tanzania), and a diaspora investment

and skills forum to encourage investment at home. The TA’s activities have generally

been greeted with approval by many Tanzanians who are proud to see their

community become organised. When the newly elected President Kikwete came to

London in January 2006 to ‘meet the diaspora’, an 800-seat hall had to be rented in

the heart of Bloomsbury to accommodate the huge interest amongst the Tanzanian

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community. Clearly such occasions are partly an exercise in winning over the

diaspora and encouraging diaspora investment at home (see Mohan 2008), but many

people just wanted to go along to witness the spectacle and to enjoy the new

experience of feeling part of a Tanzanian community in Britain.

Conviviality towards an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) of Tanzanians

in Britain is also expressed on a much smaller scale and in more mundane ways.

Examples include the welcome extended to newcomers at groups and gatherings, and

the support which is shared in times of need. It is common, for example, to gather

contributions for the bereaved to enable them to travel to Tanzania at short notice in

order to attend a burial. While those closest to the bereaved usually contribute most,

donations are frequently forthcoming from the wider Tanzanian community and

beyond who may not have known the bereaved or the deceased. In Milton Keynes, for

example, Tanzanians and Kenyans living in the town frequently contribute to burial

collections for each other’s community. Contributions regularly raise between £1,000

and £5,000 at very short notice. Wedding planning committees are equally open to the

‘imagined community’. These informal committees, which help to raise money

towards the cost of a marriage either in Britain or in Tanzania, are essentially social

events held at someone’s house. Friends, acquaintances and well-wishers are invited

to deliberate and celebrate with food and drink, and to agree a strategy for raising

money amongst themselves to support the bride or groom’s nuptials. Importantly,

while the majority of invitees are Tanzanians, they do not always know each other

beforehand and so the planning event becomes a way to make new friends and

connections within the Tanzanian diaspora.

As well as bringing people together to create a sense of community, the

Tanzanian and Cameroonian associations included in this research provide a space in

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which ideas about how best to proceed within the diaspora community can be debated.

Meetings are often dominated by discussions about how best to organise the key

function of home associations, which is to ensure mutual responsibility for, and

welfare of, members. Most associations do this through providing some level of social

and financial support during the key life stages of members, including during events

such as births and weddings, and in the event of hardship such as illness, death and

bereavement, relying on a written constitution as guidance. However constitutions

themselves, and the communal and individual responsibilities enshrined therein, are

often scrutinised by members, making meetings lively and sometimes lengthy affairs

during which all those present are entitled to have their say. The point is that current

practice is always open for negotiation. The Bali Cultural and Development

Association UK (BCDA UK), a home association for those claiming a common

affinity to Bali sub-division in the Northwest Province of Cameroon, provides a good

example here. At one of the association’s bi-monthly meetings in the home of a

member in London, a long discussion began following a question about the most

appropriate way for the association to console bereaved members. According to the

association’s constitution, deaths are classified as ‘first’ or ‘second’ class (first class

for a nuclear family member, second class for extended family). The association dips

into the pot created by annual membership contributions (£100) in order to contribute

something towards burial costs (£500 for a first class death, £100 for a second class

death). But this was now up for debate since the President of the association felt it

was proving too great a drain on the association’s finances. His suggestion was to

reduce the association’s contribution in the case of a second class death to £75; in

discussions, others suggested replacing the association’s donation in favour of

individualised contributions. The matter was not settled that night, however, because

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the rather sensitive matter of individual contributions prompted fresh rounds of

discussion. One thread of the argument was concerned with limiting the definition of

a ‘second class’ death, and in particular, whether it could be defined in terms of those

kin born from the same womb. Another thread was more concerned with the creeping

individualised nature of contributions, which one member argued, penalised working

women such as herself. She complained that the constitution provided for male

members to contribute drinks at wake-keeping while women had to provide food.

This, she argued, was unfair, because food preparation was more time-consuming;

other women noted that food was more expensive to buy, and that some members

shirked their responsibilities by always bringing dishes which were cheap and easy to

make. She suggested that women be allowed to buy drinks instead of preparing food.

This caused consternation, mostly from the other women present, who argued that it

couldn’t be done because it wasn’t ‘our culture’. ‘This is a cultural House’ [i.e.

association,] one said, ‘have you ever heard of women buying drinks in Bali?’ to

which others responded by arguing, ‘culture evolves, culture changes’. Eventually the

meeting agreed that women could buy drinks, while the original question of the

appropriate contribution to make in the event of a second class death was held over, to

be returned to at the next meeting.

This episode from a fairly typical BCDA UK meeting demonstrates that home

associations provide a forum in which the responsibilities of those in the diaspora

towards each other are negotiated and agreed upon. There is a constant appraisal of

the most appropriate way for members to support one another. In some cases,

however, this support is extended to a wider community. Part of the remit of a home

association’s activities is to show solidarity with one’s neighbours from home. A

common way in which this is demonstrated is through attendance at the wakes of

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other communities’ deceased. For example, one of the Manyu home associations

(connected to Southwest Province in Cameroon) sends delegations to represent it at

wakes throughout the Anglophone Cameroonian community in London.

Broader solidarities among national or regional groups are also expressed

through other kinds of events in the diaspora, such as the annual cultural gala. BCDA

UK held their very first cultural gala in Hackney in September 2007, to which were

invited members and their families, as well as other guests and well-wishers from the

Cameroonian community. The evening was an opportunity for the Bali home

association to unveil the group’s new uniform, and to entertain guests with dances and

costumes showcasing Bali ‘tradition’. As well as being a celebration of Bali culture in

London, it was also an opportunity to celebrate coming together as a Cameroonian

community. Other home associations from the Northwest of Cameroon were invited

to the event, some of which performed their own traditional dances. Significantly,

members of the different associations took part in each other’s performances in a

celebration of ‘culture’ which could be shared rather than staked out as a particular

group’s territory. Spouses and other guests with no family ties to Bali were invited to

wear the uniform of the BCDA UK at the event; younger members of the Bali

community who rarely attended the bi-monthly meetings stayed at the gala dancing to

ndomboloii until the small hours. As one speech-maker remarked, ‘this is about our

future…when you plant a seed you cannot see the tree’; while another exclaimed ‘it is

a cultural revolution’. Speakers praised the Bali group for bringing people together in

a celebration of culture and for inviting other Cameroonian groups. The cultural gala

may have been an exercise in ‘bonding capital’ for members of the Bali home

association, but it also served a wider purpose of expressing solidarity among

Cameroonians in London.

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We have argued that African diaspora associations are important spaces where

moral conviviality, understood as a process of ‘ourselves-ing’, can be practised in the

diaspora context. As demonstrated above, this process is not by definition ethnically

exclusive. Rather, it is about the expression of solidarities among those who share a

common affinity to a place that is claimed as ‘home’. Single events can encompass

multiple homes, as in the case of the Bali cultural gala, which simultaneously

celebrated identities associated with at least four distinct ‘homes’: Bali, the Cameroon

Grassfields, Anglophone Cameroon and the Cameroonian nation. Yet it is also

important to stress that ‘ourselves-ing’ is not the only function of home associations.

To do so would highlight their ‘bonding capital’ at the expense of their other

activities, and it would unwittingly dovetail with those contemporary policy

assumptions about the parochial nature of diaspora associations which we are trying

to complicate and challenge. With this in mind, we now turn to examine the ways in

which African diaspora associations also practise moral conviviality as extraversion

through various strategies of ‘reaching out’ to British society.

Moral conviviality in Britain

We have suggested a focus on moral conviviality as an alternative perspective on

African diaspora politics in Britain: one which recognises that the process of

‘ourselves-ing’ need not be absolutely exclusionary, and which is sympathetic to the

felt need for recognition, community building and mutual support among relatively

small and recently formed diasporas. However, if moral conviviality is to explicate a

progressive politics of place we need also to consider the ways in which the

Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations discussed here orient themselves to

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the place of diaspora as well as the place that is home. What role do home

associations play in the context of living in Britain?

First we should clarify the relative role of home associations within the broader

social milieu of their members. In general, members of the associations discussed here

are relatively well established in Britain. Some were born here, others were educated

here and still others arrived as youngsters with parents who came to study. Others are

more recent arrivals. The majority of association members are legally resident in

Britain with professional or skilled employment or self-employment. In this context,

home associations provide a rare opportunity for members to socialise with the

broader diaspora community associated with ‘home’. But they are clearly only one

aspect of everyday social and cultural life. The majority of members of home

associations ‘integrate’ – or rather live – within their local communities on a daily

basis, be those communities based around home, work, sport or religious observance.

Many of the home associations included in this research consider ‘integration’

into British society to be one of their central aims. For some this means helping

members to acquire a set of practical skills such as learning how to buy a house, open

a bank account, drive a car or buy insurance. For others, it means inviting

professionals (members and non-members) to talk to the association on their areas of

expertise, such as diet (obesity, the risk of diabetes), financial markets, wills, probate

and the problems of dying intestate in Britain. In other instances integration into

British life is evident from the way in which associations are legally constituted and

registered, particularly among those which seek funding for their activities. A small

number of the home associations included in this research have received small

amounts of funding from local governments, the National Lottery and charities.

Through all of these mundane activities, home associations and their members ‘learn’

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about Britain, share their knowledge about Britain and become familiar with the more

formalised aspects of living in Britain.

The negotiation of the British legal system, particularly in relation to asylum,

immigration and citizenship, is clearly the first priority for some new members of the

diaspora and some home associations take an active role in helping their members to

navigate these hurdles. But the issue of ‘integration’ goes beyond acquiring practical

knowledge of how to live in Britain because it raises questions of identity and

belonging. For many in the diaspora, what is at stake is how to hold on to a

Cameroonian or Tanzanian identity while living in Britain. Indeed for some,

particularly younger members of the diaspora, there is a constant negotiation of

different facets of an individual’s identity, and home associations provide one means

by which that negotiation can be managed. And while diaspora groups are often eyed

with suspicion in policy circles because their assumed inwardlookingness deters

integration, in fact many members consider home associations to be central to their

capacity to live in Britain. People argued that a confidence in their Cameroonian or

Tanzanian identity enabled them to associate and integrate with others.iii Such a view

dovetails with those who have argued for an anti-essentialist reading of identity

(Gilroy 1993, 2004; Hall 1990, 2008) as well as with those who have suggested that a

cosmopolitan sensibility arises from membership in multiple and overlapping

communities (Appiah 2005; Clifford 1997). That diasporas challenge the assumption

that identity is rooted to territory is now partially recognised in national policy debate

in Britain, in which ‘national cohesion’ now refers to an ‘inclusive sense of

Britishness’ (Home Office 2005 in Grillo 2007: 990). Yet this only goes so far, with

‘Britishness’ still imagined as separate from ‘other cultural identities’: ‘[p]eople

should not need to choose between their British identity and other cultural identities.

19

They can be proud of both’ (Home Office 2005 in Grillo 2007: 990). Tanzanians and

Cameroonians are however making a slightly different claim - that their ‘Britishness’

and their ‘other cultural identities’ are in fact inseparable. In their reformulation,

integration and acceptance in Britain is achieved through, indeed because of, a sense

of security derived from a Cameroonian or a Tanzanian identity. Home association

members thus articulate an alternative vision of diasporic identity, one which affirms

an ‘African’ identity but which also expands what it means to be ‘British’.

In this context home associations play a dual role. First, as has been discussed

above, they are part of a strategy for maintaining one’s Cameroonian or Tanzanian

identity. And second, they offer a window through which engagement with British

society, culture, language and history can take place. So for example the Afro Culture

Association in Leicester, which brings together Swahili-speakers from across East and

Central Africa, organised a day trip for members’ children to Stonehenge ‘to show

them the culture here’. While the central concern of the association is to preserve the

Swahili language among members and their children, the association also takes an

active role in educating the children about their British home. Some members of

diaspora groups argued that the associations are well placed to deal with integration

because they know best how to communicate ideas to their own community in a

manner that is familiar and supportive. So for example a member of the Zanzibar

Welfare Association (ZAWA) in London explained that:

ZAWA is promoting the integration of Zanzibaris into British society

because…if they don’t integrate they will lose a lot. So one of the things

[ZAWA does] is to empower the community to know what are their rights. And

that is something that is done in a culturally appropriate manner. Because people

when they come here they’ve got a lot of fears. And unless they meet a person

20

whom they trust they may not be able to open up and say ‘I’ve got this and that

problem’, not knowing what would be the response. There is a language

problem sometimes. And so organisations like ours are the first contact for

people when they come to the country, so that they can know where to go, how

to access services. This is one important role. But also, I think integrating into

society is a transitional process. People have to go through the process of

knowing where they come from, start to integrate slowly and in the course of

that they have to take a bit of what they are from where they come from, live

with that, and then start to learn skills, start to learn new roles, start to learn the

ins and outs of the new life in the UK. And that’s the role that an organisation

like ZAWA fulfils. If a person can’t get that support, I think they can easily end

up getting into a crisis because they don’t know where to start. So this is the role

of ZAWA: to support people to integrate in a manner that is more appropriate,

so that they don’t end up getting intimidated, or get frustrated, or into fears

because they don’t know where to start or where to go or whom to face. (East

Ham, September 2007)

Yet, the same member went on to argue that exactly how ZAWA could deliver

on the goal of moving from supporting new arrivals to taking a longer-term approach

to integration was not straightforward. The crucial point however, in his view, was

that ZAWA provided a space in which the members could think about and debate how

they were going to live in British society, and decide on their own priorities as

individuals and as a group for the association.

The question of integration is not an easy one for associations to negotiate since

they are often trying to balance the twin aims of bringing together those in the

diaspora in order to celebrate a shared identity, while also finding a way of living in

21

Britain. While individuals felt that the former enabled the latter, among the

associations there were examples where the balance was more difficult to strike. The

question of which language to use during meetings is a case in point. For example,

when TAWA launched their association at a large meeting in an outer London hotel,

English was adopted as the language of the meeting because several guest speakers

either did not speak Swahili (such as a representative from a Caribbean business

venture) or they did not use Swahili in their professional capacities in Britain (one as

a lawyer, one as a librarian), and for whom translation would have been time-

consuming. However, another speaker who came from the BBC Swahili service did

speak in Swahili, much to the appreciation of the audience. Reflecting on the

feedback after the meeting, the TAWA leaders (‘U’ and ‘M’ below) debated how to

respond to the criticism that the association’s use of English at the meeting was

‘elitist’ and ‘exclusionary’. Their response was to try and think strategically, not least

because they were aware that they needed to ‘speak’ both to Tanzanian women and

also to a broader British audience including potential donors:

U: If this organisation is to improve or preserve the culture of the people,

and bring Swahili up, especially for the children, we should be able to meet

halfway [i.e. use English and Swahili]…one of the requirements in this country

to get citizenship is to pass an English exam. Hey, you can’t be living in a

nutshell all the time with your Swahili. You’ve got to improve and learn and

reach a level where you can be understood.

M: They will feel more confident if they learn [English], because here

Tanzanians are held back because they cannot speak the language, they are

drawn back in their little cocoon, their little shell, because they can’t go out

there and speak with confidence.

22

U: [It’s important] to be able to converse in public…or in hospitals…most

of them cannot converse fluently, and because they meet each other, Tanzanians

and other Africans who don’t speak as well as the locals, they think ‘I’m OK,

this Nigerian or this Ghanaian I met, and we get on fine’, but that’s not the issue.

We need to be out there and be understood, and stand up in the world and be

accepted. (Leytonstone, July 2006)

In arguing that the association should use both Swahili and English, TAWA

shows an awareness of the importance of home associations as places where language

and culture can be practised, which is closely related to anxieties about losing

competence in a language and the alienation of children from the language and culture

of their parents, who are often first generation migrants. At the same time, however,

the use of language in the diaspora is also crucial as part of a strategy for claiming

recognition and inclusion in contemporary Britain. What is at stake is being accepted

in Britain.

The role of language in maintaining a sense of belonging to Africa was a theme

to which many parents whose children lived with them in Britain returned in

conversation (see also McGregor, 2008). For these parents it was important that their

children ‘knew where they had come from’, and they saw home associations as one

way to transfer (and continue) knowledge about language and culture. Moreover,

many parents were anxious about more fundamental questions of their children’s

sense of identity and belonging in the diaspora, which could sometimes be a hostile

and insecure environment. As one Tanzanian mother explained:

You should not lose [your national identity] simply because you are here. When

you’re together [i.e. in organised associational life], your children will find some

kind of identity. But when you’re not together children just grow up in a

23

community that is so diverse, they have nothing to identify with. They do not

identify with Tanzania, they cannot identify with the UK, where do they

belong... when you meet a Tanzanian child here who…doesn’t even speak

Kiswahili, then you get worried…it looks like that child doesn’t know anything

about Tanzania. That child is completely gone. [CM: Why does that worry

you?] It worries me in the sense that, that child will never come back to

Tanzania and look like a Tanzanian. That child belongs to here, to UK, but that

child in UK is not British. That will never happen. (London, March 2007)

So part of the anxiety about the second generation arises from a feeling of

double alienation from British society and from Africa. Again in this context, a young

Cameroonian woman explained why her Cameroon identity was important to her:

I always want to have that sense of belonging, my own identity. My ethnic

background is not going to change. It helps build your self-esteem and self-

confidence when you’re meeting people from other parts of the world – the

fact that you know where you’re from and identify with it. (Cambridge, June

2006)

People argued that home associations are important because they help members to

maintain confidence in their background, and that, in turn, helped them to associate

and integrate with others. Yet, as the comments of the Tanzanian mother remind us,

these feelings cannot be understood in isolation from the broader experience of living

in Britain, and in particular, an awareness of not being accepted as British. The young

British woman born in Cameroon who told us that she felt ‘third class here’ provides

a stark reminder of the experience of being ‘in an expanded West but not completely

of it’ (Gilroy 1993: 58).

‘Because we are English’: concluding comments

In this paper we have sought to challenge the assumption that African diaspora

associations, so often glossed as ‘ethnic associations’, are symptoms of so-called

‘bonding capital’ which encourages an inward-looking attachment to an African

24

homeland and is correspondingly damaging to the development of the ‘bridging

capital’ which is thought necessary to enable people to live with difference. Rather,

we have brought together work in Geography and African Studies to argue that

African home associations can be better understood through the lens of a ‘progressive

politics of place’ which distinguishes between political belonging and moral

conviviality. Our aim has been to explore the ways in which African home

associations practise moral conviviality both within the associations and through their

extraversion towards British society. The associations themselves are morally

convivial because they help to create a sense of community and belonging in Britain;

they provide mutual support for a known and imagined community, and they provide

a space for debate about the right and good way to live together as a diaspora

community. They are also morally convivial in that they address British society. The

majority of associations consider ‘integration’ to be one of their key aims and they are

constantly negotiating the tensions that emerge from their dual orientation which

emerges from a double alienation.

We also want to suggest, however, that there is scope to take the debate about

the politics of place and African diasporas further than is possible in this paper. While

we think that it is both analytically and politically important to show how African

diaspora groups such as home associations can foster a progressive politics of place in

Africa, it seems to us that a focus on place can also challenge us to think more broadly

about African diaspora politics in Britain. Here we draw inspiration from those

writing about migration and diaspora from a postcolonial standpoint who have turned

the spotlight back on British society. Gilroy (2004) for example, in his unflinching

critique of racism in contemporary Britain, characterises British society as stuck in

‘postcolonial melancholia’, a collective inability to come to terms with the loss of

25

empire, which is partly manifested in hostility towards those whose migration to

Britain is bound up with empire and neo-colonial relations. Yet he is also insistent

that ‘conviviality’ is thriving (see also Hall 2008), often in unannounced places, and

that an even more convivial culture can be rehabilitated if Britain confronts and

accepts the horrors of its imperial past. Also relevant here is the recent work by the

geographers Clare Madge Pat Noxolo and Parvati Raghuram who have been pushing

Doreen Massey’s arguments about place and identity in a postcolonial direction. Their

work has challenged the notion that a progressive politics of place requires what

Massey refers to as a strategy of ‘outwardlookingness’ to other people and places, and

a recognition of our responsibilities to ‘strangers without’ (2004: 17). This argument

is problematic, they suggest, because it immediately sets up an imagined centre from

which it is possible look and reach outwards (Madge, personal communication). Such

a position disavows the ‘postcolonial within’ (Noxolo et al. 2008), which we take to

mean two inter-related things in the context of this paper. First, it forces us to

recognise that there are other centres from which stories might be told - that there are

multiple histories of belonging in Britain which are inextricably bound up with

Empire, migration and diaspora. Second, it challenges the neatness of apparently

clearly defined categories such as ‘us’ and ‘them’ (or ‘strangers without’). Rather, a

postcolonial starting point insists that ‘us’ and ‘them’ are not separate, nor even

mutually constituted; they are in fact already inextricably intertwined through past

and present relations of power (Raghuram et al. 2009). Instead Raghuram et al. (ibid.)

urge us to explore ways in which binary categorisations about here/there, us/them,

inside/outside can be destabilised and broken down in order to challenge assumptions

about agency and responsibility in global times. For us, what these writers foreground

is the necessity of recognising the ‘postcolonial within’ Britain. The work of

26

conviviality, or of a progressive politics of place, must then be shared by all who live

in a given place. The point is that it is unreasonable and unjust to demand an

integrative politics of African diaspora groups and to set up financial incentives to

develop ‘bridging capital’ when the inhospitality of British society itself remains

unchallenged.

This is an avenue for further research, but it seems to us that the debate about

‘integration’ in Britain, as conducted by the Commission on Integration and

Cohesion, worries too much about the alleged insularity of migrant and diaspora

communities and not enough about the hostility they encounter in Britain (Herbert et

al. 2008). Diaspora communities are entreated to adapt and be ‘convivial’, while

everyday racism and xenophobia, the hallmarks of Gilroy’s ‘postcolonial

melancholia’, go unremarked.

African home associations and their members are challenging exclusion in a

number of ways. At the heart of these challenges lies an appreciation of Britain’s

historical relations with African countries from the perspective of Africa. One is the

quiet making of claims to be accepted in Britain through foregrounding postcolonial

relationships. So, many of the Cameroonians and Tanzanians with whom we have

spoken have personal or family connections with Britain. Many were born here,

others were brought here at an early age because their parents were professionals who

trained here and whose skills were then employed here. Both Tanzania and

Anglophone Cameroon were part of the British Empire and thus their educated elite

often came to Britain for further or professional training. This historical fact is often

conveniently forgotten when it comes to questions of demarcating the boundaries

between those who have the ‘right’ to reside in Britain and those who do not.

Moreover, it is well recognised that the relationship between coloniser and colonised

27

go beyond political ties, and that the cultural connections between Britain and its

former colonies run deep for many people. As one Cameroonian woman in Luton

pointed out, she came to Britain ‘because we are English. That’s all we knew: our

doctors, nurses and plantation managers, were all British’. The African diaspora

condition in Britain is captured in the contradiction between this claim to a

relationship and the simultaneous feeling of not really belonging, as she continued:

I live here, I’m naturalised here, but I belong to Africa. Because with all fairness

I can’t be accepted here as British. If I commit a crime, I could be deported

back. I have a naturalised British passport. I have that sense of belonging that I

am here, working here, I have a life here, I’m safe here and supported by the

British government. I contribute to wellbeing here, through the council tax

…But I’m Cameroonian. I can’t be buried here. I have to go back to where I

come from. That’s where I belong – that’s my natural home. This is a second

home. (Luton, November 2006)

Her claim that she is here ‘because we are English’ is an important one that

raises more than simply the historical relationship between Britain and its colonies.

As James Ferguson (2006) has argued, in a contemporary African context the

claiming of a connection to ‘the West’ can be a powerfully unsettling political

strategy because it demands a response, it is a claim to be in an ongoing relationship.

This is despite the fact that for some in Britain it is assumed that the end of Empire

was the end of that relationship. The fact that many Tanzanians and Cameroonians

came to Britain during the 1980s and 1990s, in part because of the political and

economic situation in those countries, cannot be understood outside the context of the

ravages of the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and IMF on the

continent, and in which Britain as a Member State is implicated. The British

28

government’s recent shift to a policy of ‘managed migration’, which will make it very

difficult for low or unskilled labour from beyond the EU to enter Britain legally and

to have access to the same benefits as British citizens (Wills et al. 2008) is just one

indication of the British state’s understanding of its very limited responsibilities to

others (see Raghuram et al. 2009). In refusing to recognise the kinds of relationships

and connections which Cameroonians and Tanzanians claim to Britain, there is a

disavowal of Britain’s role as a colonial and postcolonial power, and a convenient

absolution of responsibility for a more hospitable and convivial response to Britain’s

African diaspora.

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Acknowledgements

Dr. Martin Evans worked on this project with us and carried out some of the

fieldwork on which this paper draws. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at

the ‘Beyond plurality in the Africa diaspora: ethnicity, congregation, networking and

citizenship’, Keele University, 25-27 September 2008, the ASA-USA in Chicago

November 2008, and the Human Geography Research Seminar in the Department of

Geography, University of Leicester, October 2008. We are grateful to all those

participants who offered constructive comments, and to Clare Madge and Pnina

Werbner in particular.

i These numbers are useful only as a general guide. Among those reporting Kenya and Tanzania as their birthplace will be many East African Asians. Werbner (forthcoming) uses Census DMag update (2006/9) data to estimate that, of a total of

33

16,584 Tanzanians resident in Britain, only 1,824 are black Africans. Additionally, the census data used here is unlikely to definitively capture all those of a particular national group, not least since individuals may choose to report a different place of origin for reasons connected to the vagaries of the British immigration system. ii A popular musical style associated with Soukous. iii This is recognised in Our shared future (CIC 2007); yet the document nevertheless maintains that multiple interest groups which foster bridging capital are more desirable than single interest groups, such as diaspora associations, which do not.