Asserting an Eritrean identity in the face of imposed racialisation: national identity claims of some Eritrean refugees in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Current literature on Eritrean national identity has been dominated by debates on its function as a unifying and homogenising civic identity in a context of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-clan national context. Little is known, however, about how an Eritrean national identity is mobilised among Eritreans living in racially organised host societies. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining how Eritrean refugees living in a racially classified South African host society self-identified. The focus of analysis for this paper was how an Eritrean national identity was mobilised by some participants in the face of experiencing racial classification. Some individuals defined themselves as ‘Eritrean’ to resist their classification as ‘Black’ in everyday life. I argue that beyond functioning as a homogenising and unifying civic identity, an Eritrean national identity functioned as a bulwark against ascribed racial classification in a race-conscious South African host society,

KEYWORDS:

• Black identity
• Eritrean refugees
• race
• racialisation
• self-identification
• South Africa

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on a doctoral study conducted at the University of Pretoria.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The terms ‘Black’,‘White’, ‘Coloured’ and ‘Asian/ Indian’, are understood as socio-political constructions and do not refer to biologically differentiated population groups.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.