Refugees and citizens:
Understanding Eritrean
refugees’ ambivalence towards
homeland politics, a 2019 article by Milena Belloni, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Abstract
This article revisits ambivalence as a protracted state which does not simply develop as a result of the
migration experience but stems from overlapping levels of normative inconsistency. Drawing from my
ethnography of Eritreans’ everyday life in the homeland and abroad, I analyse their attitudes of patriotism
and disenchantment through an ambivalence lens. Their ambiguous attitudes are arising from national and
transnational Eritrean state policies and are further complicated by their role as “political refugees” in host
countries. My informants’ ambivalence stems from them embodying more than one role (i.e. patriots, family
breadwinners, refugees from and citizens of their homeland), from contradictory expectations pertaining to
the same role (i.e. young citizens in Eritrea) and from clashing implications of being members of two different
social systems (i.e. the destination country and the country of origin). Thus, Eritreans’ political loyalties and
actions are characterized by a state of ambivalence throughout their migration process. Despite its peculiar
characteristics, this case study sheds light on the complexity of ambivalence, as more than a temporary
condition, for migrants and refugees in particular. In the current scenario of emigrant states’ transnational
governance, protracted ambivalence is likely to mark the attitudes of an increasing number of people on the
move as both refugees from and citizens of their country of origin.
You can access the full text at the link:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0020715218760382
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