Living across worlds and oceans – an introduction

‘I have no future in Ethiopia, … I've seen Europe on TV, and it's better.’*

The movement of people across national frontiers both voluntary and involuntary is reshaping societies and politics across the world and has emerged to be one of the most contentious and challenging issues in the contemporary world. Given the different projections of the number of international migrants, no one for sure knows how many international migrants are there. The United Nations Population Division estimated that for mid-year 2005, the number of international migrants stood at 191 million. By 2007, the figure approached 200 million or approximately 3 percent of the world's population of 6.5 billion people. The number of migrants who live outside their country of birth is projected to reach 230 million by 2050 (United Nations 2006, 9). In addition, there are hundreds of million more people who been displaced within their countries of origin. According to the estimates by the United Nations, the total number of international migrants in Africa rose from 9 million in 1960 to 16 million in 2000. The largest increase occurred between 1960 and 1980, when the number of international migrants in Africa rose from 9 million to 14 million (United Nations 2003a, 2003b).

Today, migration of people across borders and demographic mobility lie at the core of the ongoing process of globalization. Globalization has come to describe the trends and initiatives aimed to restructure the global economy and the free flow of capital, information and technology but not labor. Given the vast literature on the topic of globalization, one approach is to characterize the process as ‘the widening, deepening and speeding up of the worldwide interconnectedness in all aspect of contemporary life’ (Held, McGrew, and Perraton 1999, 2). A fundamental component of the process of globalization is a rapid increase in cross-border flows of all sort, starting with finance and trade, but also democracy, good governance, cultural and media product, environmental pollution and – most importantly – people (Castles and Miller 2009, 5). A multitude of factors are involved that push people to move temporarily or permanently, nationally and transnationally, individually or in groups, return to their countries of origin, or migrate to another country, or move cyclically between two or more countries. Furthermore, migration is no longer limited to particular clearly identifiable human groups as in the past: the range of the types of persons who involved in those migration affects the social reproduction of their families and the development of their communities of origin is increasingly broad, and in their places of final destination, they establish links with diverse social groups, build temporary and complex networks of contacts which stretch across transnational borders, and use different social, political and economic strategies and means for their movements, enhancing the ability of migrants and diaspora groups to live simultaneously both ‘here’ and ‘there'.

The causes of these population movements across national frontiers or within regions and between countries are driven by a complex set of factors, including the impact of globalization, civil war, poverty, and environmental degradation affecting more countries in the global South which has dramatically increased the number of people migrating in search of new opportunities and a better life, which takes many different forms: people migrating as manual workers, highly qualified specialists, entrepreneurs, refugees or as family members of previous migrants (Castles and Miller 2009, 4). The migration patterns of these individuals and groups are far more complex and it is no longer possible to draw a simple trajectory between points of departure and arrival of migrants or to classify countries as desired destinations.

In the last three decades, the Horn of Africa has been transformed into the epicenter for Cold War rivalry, prolonged civil war, poverty, environmental degradation, and political, economic and food crises, compounded by repressive governments resulting in migration of people on an unprecedented scale across national borders. Writing for Foreign Affairs, Prendergast and Thomas-Jensen (2007) noted that the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, Eritrea, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Uganda) has emerged to be ‘the hottest conflict zone in the world … [where] … violent wars of the last half century have ripped the region apart’ generating a massive displacement of people both nationally and internationally. As of March 2013, there were over 9 million refugees and internally displaced persons in the region (IMO 2014). Apart from the migration and refugee population originating in each of these countries, some of the countries have also been host to large refugee populations from other neighboring states.

The migration of Ethiopians across international borders is a recent phenomenon because of the limited integration of the country and society to the global economy. Unlike other colonized countries, Ethiopia was never colonized (except for a brief Italian occupation during1936–1941) and its economy and society were not directly impacted by ebb and flows of the global economy to generate international migration. Much of the population movement in Ethiopia was due to a complex set of factors beginning in the nineteenth century. However, the gradual incorporation of the country into the global economy particularly since the postwar when Emperor Haile Selassie began a modernization program aimed at opening the economy and society through the introduction of Western education and the flow of foreign capital in the incipient industrial, commercial, and agricultural sectors. The period also saw the gradual restructuring of the Ethiopian state to facilitate the activities of foreign capital and for managing and streamlining the activities of the bureaucracy. This particular process rested on two pillars; Zewde (1984) argued that two factors were critical in the formation of the modern Ethiopian state during the postwar period: first, the decisive role of Western imperialism which facilitated the rise of the Ethiopian ‘modern state’ and second, the coercive capacity of the state to carry out repression against the local population. Both these factors facilitated Ethiopia's integration into the orbit of global economy.

The intensification of commodity production and exchange and the growth in communication within the country as a whole began to undermine the traditional system of power relations in rural areas leading to the concentration of power in the emerging urban-based oligarchy whose economic and political interest coincided with the new political economy of the country (Hiwet 1975).

During this long period (1940–1970), no measurable international migration of Ethiopians took place until the early 1970s. For example, the late Sociologist, Levine (1965) has estimated that only 35 Ethiopians migrated to the Europe and North America between 1876 and 1922. Although the figure appears to be low for the period, there is no national or international data available to indicate the extent of Ethiopian migration across international borders. To streamline the staffing of the emerging new state, the Emperor took active interest in sending Ethiopian students, primarily drawn from the landed aristocracy and nobility to study in American and European Universities. These individuals were carefully selected from loyal members of the aristocracy and upon their return; they occupied key positions within the new state. Similarly, young members of the Ethiopian armed forces and police were also sent to American and European elite military institutions for further training as part of the institutionalization of the new state. Levine (1965, 45) notes that between 1941 and 1974 an estimated 20,000 Ethiopian left the country to pursue high education abroad who were mostly men and the number of Ethiopian seeking political asylum abroad during the period was very limited. Between 1951 and 1960, US immigration statistics indicated that only 61 Ethiopians were granted asylum status and for the next decade, 1961–1970, only two Ethiopian were granted asylum (Terrazas 2007). For the most part, the number of Ethiopian international migration or seeking asylum abroad was very limited until the demise of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.

Ethiopia is one of the countries with a large number of diaspora in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. The UN 2008 Revised Population Database shows that 546,000 Ethiopian migrants live in different parts of the world. This estimate is very small compared to the official estimation given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia which put the number of Ethiopian migrants to be about 1 million (Teferi and Bruk 2009) (Table 1).

Table 1. Ethiopia's migrant stock from 1970 to 2010 (in thousands).

Indicator	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010
Estimated number of international migrants at mid-year	395	392	404	584	1,155	795	662	554	548
Estimated number of refugees at mid-year	21	9	11	180	42	371	228	108	91
Population at mid-year	30	34	37	43	48	57	66	75	85
Estimated number of female migrants at mid-year	171	175	184	268	548	376	312	261	258
Estimated number of male migrants at mid-year	223	217	220	315	607	419	351	293	290
International migrants as a percentage of the population	1.3	1.1	1.1	1.3	2.4	1.4	1	0.7	0.6
Female migrants as percentage of all international migrants	43.4	44.7	45.5	46	47.4	47.3	47.1	47.1	47.1
Refugees as a percentage of international migrants	5.2	2.2	2.7	30.9	64.2	46.7	34.4	19.6	16.6

Source: Cited in Assaminew et al. (2010), p. 5.

Internal migration

The first large-scale population movement within and out of Ethiopian began in the aftermath of the 1974 military overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie and the famine of 1973–1974 which created a unique circumstance in the country's history for mass displacement. Although famine is not new to the country's long history, periodic famine generated by lack of rain, antiquated land-use system, deforestation, overgrazing, and the inability of subsistence agriculture to generate sufficient surplus often led people to migrate to other parts of the country (Pankhurst 1985). The confluence of these factors in 1973–1974 produced the worst famine in the county's history killing an estimated 300,000 people in the northern part of the country, particularly in Wallo, Tigray, Northern Shoa, Eritrea, Harerghe, and Begemindir, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

The massive displacement of Ethiopians, internally by famine, war, and rural poverty was followed by a campaign of political repression by the military government popularly known as the Derge which launched the ‘Red Terror’ program in response to a series of political assignations carried out by one of the main opposition parties – the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) – to its rule. Human rights abuses, arbitrary arrests, torture, and murder on a scale unknown were carried out both in the main cities most notably in Addis Ababa and rural areas. It was one of the most systematic uses of state power to eliminate political opposition to the military rule. The exact number of people who perished in the Red Terror campaign as well in the assignations carried out by the EPRP remains unknown. Although the number is in thousands, those killed by the government were far greater than those killed by the EPRP. Subsequent developments in the country further led to dislocation of people in the Eastern and Central Ethiopia because of the war between Ethiopia and Somalia, which erupted in 1977. The secessionist war in Northern Ethiopia also accelerated the cross-border movement of people to neighboring countries, especially Sudan and Yemen. Hundreds of thousands of people fled war-torn areas (Tiruneh 1993).

The military government's ill-conceived and poorly planned villaglization and resettlement programs of rural peasants beginning in 1985 compounded the dislocation of the local population in the Northern and Eastern part because of the civil war. Estimate varies as to the actual number of rural peasants who were forced into the villagization and resettlement programs. The objectives of these programs were to group scattered farming communities throughout the country into small village clusters in order to promote rational land use; conserve resources; provide access to clean water and to health and education services; and strengthen security. Critics of the military regime suggested that these policy measures were primarily designed as a counterinsurgency measure program to deprive the various ethnic-based insurgency in northern and eastern Ethiopia for their operations. As the African Watch Report (1991, 4) noted,

The Ethiopian case stands out as particularly destructive because of the extraordinarily prolonged level of sustained violence and the frequent lack of any compensatory assistance to the relocated and restricted population. Because of the fragile rural economy and the dependence of rural people on mobility and a range of economic activities, this was particularly damaging, and a major contributor to famine (de Waal 1991).

Due to international criticism, deteriorating security conditions, and lack of resources doomed the program to failure. On the eve of the military government's demise, the regime announced that it is abandoning villagization and would now adopt new economic policies of free-market reforms and a relaxation of centralized planning.

A number of problems complicated the resettlement program of the military government. Rahmato (2004) sums up the challenge faced by the regime in the following way.

During the period 1984–1986, the Derge resettled some 600,000 people mostly in the lowlands of western Ethiopia. In this same period, some 33,000 settlers lost their lives due to disease, hunger, and exhaustion, and thousands of the families were broken up.

In 2010, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which replaced the military government commenced an ambitious villagization program to settle 1.5 million individuals, who primarily subsist on (agro-) pastoralism and shifting cultivation. This program is taking place in the four ‘emerging’ regional states: Afar, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, and Somali. The current villagization scheme is unfolding at a time of considerable interest in the intensification of large-scale commercial agriculture. Local and international opponents of the scheme argue that what is taking place is a ‘forced relocation’ of indigenous people from their ancestral land in Gambella, South Omo, and other lowlands of the country (especially in Afar, Benishangul-Gumuz, and Somali). Despite the local and international resistance against the villagization scheme by human rights organizations, the government has accelerated the implementation of the program and by mid-2013; it was reported that the villagization targets were met in Gambella, with more than 90 percent of the 45,000 households relocated into new villages (Erda 2014).

Mass displacement and emergence of Ethiopian diaspora

As indicated above, the internal political, economic, and social crisis within Ethiopia largely accounts for the cross borer flow of Ethiopian migrants, refugees, and the formation of the diaspora. The dichotomy between migrants and refugees has become increasingly blurred, as it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between people to migrate to escape poverty, and those who are fleeing because they fear for their life due to war or ethnic conflict. At a time of increased economic growth, massive infusion of international capital, and the desire of the EPRDF to achieve a middle-income country status, more people are fleeing the country to neighboring countries, including South Africa, Middle East, Gulf States, Europe, and North America. As Magill Dyess Martini argued,

the Ethiopian government has maintained a claim of double digit growth for the last decade while the number of young migrants has increased year after year. In any real-world situation when a country experiences exponential growth gainful employment and income must also increase. If this were truly the case then one would expect to see the numbers of undocumented migrants decrease. It is difficult to eliminate migration all together, but it would have to decrease if economic opportunity were to increase. The truth is that there must be something wrong with how this growth has translated for the working youth.

The migration of young despite the ‘double digit growth’ rate in Ethiopia originates as Magill Dyess Martini from the fundamental contradiction of what she calls the ‘impact of the glitz economy'. While the economy was booming, opportunities for the country's young people are very limited especially for those who are not members of the ruling party.

Young people unfairly see new recreation centers, new homes and new hotels but they can't afford them. They see luxurious cars but they cannot even afford taxis or buses and the like. This dilemma can damage the psychology of the new generation and as a result, they may wish to escape to a world where opportunities are accessible. So again, this type of growth might be a reason for young people to make the dangerous journey abroad. (Martini 2015)

Table 2 provides some indication of the number of Ethiopian refugees who receive assistance from the UNHCR.

Table 2. Ethiopian refugees – January 2009 by host countries.

Country	Total number of refugees in a country	Assisted by UNHCR
Kenya	23,500	23,500
Somalia	5,600	5,600
Sudan	16,523	10,050
Yemen	800	800
Other countries	37,160
Asylum seekers	1,667
Total	85,250

Source: UNHCR (2009). Cited in Fransen and Kuschminder (2009).

Apart from the consequence of high unemployment, especially among the youth (Mains 2012) that is plaguing the country, demographic mobility and human displacement have been provoked by other factors including authoritarian rule and the accompanying political repression. Critics of the government point out that human right violation, lack of freedom of expression, monopoly of power, and control of businesses by entities affiliated with the ruling party, often create a climate of hopelessness, and encourage people to migrate seeking better opportunities elsewhere. Indeed, international migration from Ethiopia is a particular coping strategy for family members to generate resources to support the family and enable them to make investments in education, health, and housing reducing vulnerability. In addition, migration could also be considered as improving the social status of families (ICMPD 2008, 14).

Ethiopian diaspora

One major consequence of mass migration in the era of globalization is the emergence of the Ethiopian diaspora located primarily in Europe, North America but also in Australia and other parts of the world. While a significant percentage of Ethiopians in this category who have fled from political persecution could aptly be described as ‘refugees’, and others would more appropriately be classified as ‘economic migrants’. Even those who have applied for political asylum in Western countries following their escape could hardly classify themselves as ‘refugees’ – a clear indication of the complexities of human displacement in the age of globalization.

The Ethiopian diaspora constitutes a distinctive community dispersed and living across worlds and oceans bound by a common feeling of collectivity and shared history of homeland. The majority of the Ethiopian diaspora are concentrated in North America, Europe, Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. Members of the Ethiopian diaspora could also be found in such places as Ghana, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Serbia and Montenegro, and South Africa.

International trafficking of domestic workers

In the last two decades, the migration (both legal and clandestine) of Ethiopian female domestic workers to globalizing cities of the Middle East and Gulf States particularly, to Dubai, Beirut, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Sana'a, and Cairo has increased dramatically because of the promise of globalization and neoliberal economic policies which ushered in increased free trade, deregulation, and privatization. Pushed by poverty and destitution, Ethiopian female domestic workers face hardship, violence, and abuse by their employers (Anbesse et al. 2009, 560). One graphic illustration of the plight is the number of female bodies returning to Addis Ababa because of suicide from such cities as Jeddah, Dubai, and Beirut.

The exact number of Ethiopian domestic workers in the Middle East and Gulf States is not known. However, an estimated 20,000–25,000 Ethiopian domestic workers live and work in Lebanon, a significant number of whom are trafficked. Women trafficked to the Gulf for domestic labor go via legal or illegal employment agencies. With illegal agencies, often women are introduced to agents via family or friends, they usually pay some of the agent's fee in advance, and the rest is deducted from their pay once they begin work (GTZ 2003).

Table 3 illustrates the source of Ethiopian domestic workers and the number of female domestic workers has increased dramatically over the years with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait absorbing the highest number of labor migrants, respectively. Compared to other regional states, the city of Addis Ababa shows a relatively lower increasing rate in the number of migrating domestic workers. Given the dire economic circumstance in the rural areas as well as sharp increase in poverty among rural households, the majority of migrant domestic workers now come from regional states other than the capital.

Table 3. Regional distribution of domestic workers 2008–2013.

Region	September 2008–August 2009	September 2009–August 2010	September 2010–August 2011	September 2011–June 2012	July 2012–February 2013
Tigray	949	573	1,582	8,592	4,966
Amhara	3,551	1,952	10,769	62,836	33,831
Oromia	3,600	2,757	10,430	64,431	39,185
Southern Nations,	1,981	1,300	4,547	23,392	13,813
Nationalities and Peoples
Addis Ababa	7,251	6,860	11,813	26,774	11,472
Total	17,332	13,442	39,141	186,025	103,267

Source: Woldemichael (2013).

The collection in this special issue of African and Black Diaspora: An International (ABD) grew out of discussions with colleagues in the USA, France, and Ethiopia regarding the need to bring scholars from different fields together for a critical reflection about Ethiopian migrants and diaspora in different parts of the world at a time when globalization is creating new complexities of human displacement. What has emerged from these scholarly works in recognition that Ethiopian migrants and diaspora although separated by oceans and worlds and their lives crisscrossed by politics, ethnicity, class, gender, and age are carving out a social and material world born out of their particular circumstances both ‘here’ and ‘there’.

A separate issue of this journal on Ethiopian female domestic works in the Middle East and Gulf States is in progress.

Acknowledgements

I would to extend my special thanks and appreciation to Kim C. Damian and the Production Staff of ABD at Taylor and Francis who ensured that all the indispensable flow of communications and copy editing with all the authors for this special issue were attended judiciously.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

*. Abdirizak Mohamed Mohamoud. Accessed January 21, 2016. http://www.irinnews.org/report/94279/ethiopia-cautionary-migration-tales-are-no-deterrent.