The Moral Economy of the African Diaspora: Citizenship, Networking and Permeable Ethnicity

Abstract

Scholarship on the African diaspora has documented the legal hurdles African migrants face in acquiring residence and begun to record the religious efflorescence of African Independent churches. Missing, however, is attention to the complex moral assumptions informing African diasporic sociality and claims to citizenship, whether through churches or voluntary associations. The present volume fills this hiatus by theorising the moral economy of citizenship claims and transnational giving. Its contributors explore the underlying ethical assumptions, ideas and practices of African migrants implied by their calls for recognition and the right to work and live in the diaspora, whether or not they possess the required legal documents, and despite being different racially and culturally. We interrogate both the tendency of migrants to encapsulate themselves in religious or home town associations with compatriots or coreligionists, and their expansive horizons and moves towards ‘permeable’ ethnicity, ‘cosmopolitan’ networking and multiculturalism, as they create, imagine and construct the ‘African diaspora’.

Super-diverse migrants—similar trajectories? Ghanaian entrepreneurship in the Netherlands seen from a Mixed Embeddedness perspective

“…He used his 'Asantemankuo' (Ashanti) ethnic association network and within a few weeks, he was able to employ an assistant from that ethnic group. Churches and associated organisations are of great importance in the Ghanaian diaspora (Mazzucato 2006(Mazzucato , 2008Fumanti and Werbner 2010). They do not just provide spiritual leadership, but also assist their members in getting jobs, housing and in, some instances, to start a business and become self-employed.…”

‘The complexity of an enduring relationship’: gender, generation, and the moral economy of the Gambian Mandinka household

“…Yet, apart from equating it with collectivity and harmony within the domestic unit, and highlighting its demise within a neoliberal market economy, the concept is not examined in any detail. Indeed, the moral economy has been informed by ‘a consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations’ (Fumanti & Werbner , citing Thompson : 79).…”

Co-Parenting Relationship Experiences of Black Adolescent Mothers in Active Romantic Partnerships With the Fathers of Their Children

“…Moral economy, as operationalized among the couples, challenges the popular notion that low-income and low-educational attainment absolutely undermines co-parenting possibilities for Black youth. Thus, although moral economy is a new concept in the family literature, we hope that it will find more use to facilitate research that accommodates the complex support and resource provision arrangements that adolescent parents make based on their own moral codes, loyalties, and obligations (Fumanti & Werbner, 2010), in lieu of submitting to government bureaucracies and conforming to rules and regulations that constrain rather than support their creativity and undermine their self-determination.…”