The focus of this book is the factors—local and global, factual and fictional, political and historical—that shape Somali migration experiences in consequential ways. Comparing Somali settlement in the UAE, a relatively closed Muslim nation where citizens are a minority within a large South Asian population of labor migrants, with South Africa, a nation where apartheid’s racial hierarchies determined immigration policies until very recently, with the United States, a traditional nation of immigrants with its own racial, socio-economic and political distinctions, sheds light on the significance ... More

The focus of this book is the factors—local and global, factual and fictional, political and historical—that shape Somali migration experiences in consequential ways. Comparing Somali settlement in the UAE, a relatively closed Muslim nation where citizens are a minority within a large South Asian population of labor migrants, with South Africa, a nation where apartheid’s racial hierarchies determined immigration policies until very recently, with the United States, a traditional nation of immigrants with its own racial, socio-economic and political distinctions, sheds light on the significance of immigration policies in shaping migrant experiences. The analysis underscores the convergence of the local and global that prods so many people to move across borders in search for physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual wellbeing. It also shows how refugees and migrants develop distinct adaptive strategies in each social context, depending on economic opportunities and the religious, social, and political milieux they enter. Migrants’ religious, social, and political location within both their immediate environment and the broader society all remain key to the process of migrants' integration or exclusion, of whether they are able to realize their aspirations for an earthly Eden, jannah. The three studies show how Somalis’ search for flexible citizenship and physical and emotional security leads to unanticipated conditions that confound their expectations. Ultimately, finding the complexity of migrant and refugee lives, and how one’s understanding of successful migration and integration must go beyond legal, economic, and physical security to encompass a sense of religious, cultural, and social belonging.