Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 

About: Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Somali & Refugee. It has an ISSN identifier of 1528-6258. Over the lifetime, 104 publications have been published receiving 963 citations.

In limbo: Dependency, insecurity, and identity amongst Somali refugees in Dadaab camps

Abstract: The Somali civil war of 1991 left thousands of refugees scattered in neighbouring countries. This article examines the situation of the 130,000 Somalis in their second decade in Dadaab camps in Kenya, with a particular focus on the role and responsibilities of the refugee regime and the host state. It is argued that these camps are characterized by deprivations of both material and physical security. Research found that refugees’ dependency on inadequate aid is due to lack of alternative livelihoods rather than “dependency syndrome.” However, participants expressed diminished “self-esteem” resulting from their prolonged encampment. Finally, the paper presents a critique of the failure to explore solutions for protracted refugee situations on the part of the international refugee regime.

Obliged to give: remittances and the maintenance of transnational networks between Somalis at home and abroad

Abstract: One day, while drinking tea with Suad and her children in their small apartment in Lewiston, Maine, I asked her whether she felt pressure from her relatives in Somalia to send money. She chuckled sadly and said, “People say that there is a pill called ga’alqois, which means [literally] that which distances one from their relatives and close friends. Before you leave, you promise your friends and relatives that you will not take the pill and will not forget to send them money. Then when you arrive in the United States you see how hard life is here and you don’t send any money. People say that you must have taken the ga’alqois pill.” The “Catch-22” position that Suad describes here—of feeling pressure to send money to her family in Somalia and her feeling that they do not understand how difficult her life is in the United States or how little she can afford to send this money—is a recurrent topic of conversation, source of anxiety, and motivating force in many migrant communities throughout North America and Europe. Yet in the literature on remittances, the perspective of the sender has not received much attention. The lion’s share of the burgeoning literature on remittances focuses on the size of remittance flows and its impact on recipient household, community, national, and regional economies.1 In this study, I consider the pressure that is placed upon Somali refugees and immigrants living in Lewiston, Maine, to support relatives living in Somalia as well as in other parts of the world. I argue that

State and Politics in Ethiopia's Somali Region since 1991

Abstract: When asked by an interviewer whether he felt more Somali or more Ethiopian, Sultan Korfa Garane Ahmed, a federal member of parliament representing part of Ethiopia’s Somali Region, diplomatically responded: “I am an Ethiopian-Somali.”2 The MP’s self-description as an Ethiopian-Somali highlights two crucial implications for the analysis of contemporary politics in what was formerly known as the Ogaden and is today referred to as the Somali Regional State or simply Region 5. For the first time in the history of the Ethiopian empire-state or, more precisely, since the forced incorporation of the Somali inhabited Ogaden into Ethiopia at the end of the 19th century, the Somalis are officially recognized as one of the country’s “nations, nationalities and peoples.” Since the accession to power of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in May 1991, attempts to forge a distinct “Ethiopian-Somali” or “Somali-Ethiopian” identity have superseded the former regimes’ patronizing attitudes toward the country’s “subject nationalities.”3 Throughout history Abyssinia and Somalia were perceived as two diametrically opposed collectives, identities, and principles.4 In stereotypical yet politically instrumental terms, Ethiopians and Somalis identified themselves as opposites in linguistic (Semitic vs. Cushitic), religious (Christian vs. Muslim), economic (settled cultivators vs. transhumant pastoralists), and political (hierarchical feudalism vs. egalitarian segmentary kinship) respects. From Ahmed Ibrahim