A tale of four cities: the boundaries of blackness for Ethiopian immigrants in Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Rome, and Melbourne

ABSTRACT

Scholars increasingly view urban areas as fragmented spaces where migrants are policed in ways that promote differential access to mobility, but the glocal meanings of race are often undertheorized. This paper explores the mobility experiences of Ethiopian migrants in four cities: Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Rome, and Melbourne. Using a textual analysis of newspaper coverage in each city, the analysis finds that media and police often act as agents who racialize Ethiopian migrants relative to native minorities and other migrants. The paper concludes that the experiences Ethiopian immigrants faced in urban areas were informed by glocal meanings of race (blackness); they were shaped in relation to not only other migrants and native minorities, but also a globalized discourse on immigration.

KEYWORDS:

• Glocal city
• mobility regimes
• race/ethnicity
• racialization
• Ethiopian immigrants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Source: Migration Policy Institute (2015).

2 The 2010 Census lists 30,000 Ethiopian immigrants in DC, but unofficial estimates from the Ethiopian Embassy range to 200,000 people of Ethiopian descent.

3 Emphasis mine.

4 Recent immigrants are understood to be Falas Mura (Christian converts). In 1948, Ethiopians were prohibited from living in Israel because they were not recognized as ‘true’ Jews (Chehata, 2012, p. 69).

5 Citizenship is defined by descent (jus sanguinis) and the ‘law of return’ (a citizenship law that was passed by the Israeli parliament in 1950, a few years after the Holocaust and following the establishment of the State of Israel) (Flum & Cinamon, 2011).

6 Anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 people took part in the demonstration (i24news, 2015).

7 Ethiopia is a major refugee-hosting country and accepted over half a million refugees in 2015. In contrast, Italy accepted less than 10,000 (Anderson, 2014).