Belonging in Exile,in Diaspora “at Home”: Findings From Eritrean Migrants in Addis Ababa

Abstract

French

Geographical place is key in the production and contestation of migrant belonging. Cities are welcoming or hostile, while migrants practice belonging in relation to place of origin, deepening or contesting their relationship to the real or imagined home-nation. In this article, I focus on migrants residing in a state that previously encompassed their homeland, before the latter became an independent state. Based on interviews with Eritreans in Addis Ababa, I use the lens of lived citizenship in the everyday to investigate belonging as experienced, created and contested. I demonstrate how spatial, intersubjective, and performed dimensions of lived citizenship are underpinned by its affective dimension. Further, I show how this affective dimension is deeply grounded in belonging to Eritrea as an imagined community. I argue that belonging is particularly complex for migrants with an intertwined history to their host-country, where political developments in that near-vicinity have concrete repercussions for everyday lives.

Keywords

Eritrea belonging transnationalism diaspora urban migration

Introduction

In the literature on migrant belonging, in particular for migrants with liminal legal status, the city has become a focal point to understand localised forms of belonging (Müller, 2025; Rottmann et al., 2020; Van Liempt, 2023). At the same time, emotional attachment to the home nation-state, or rather imagined dimensions of it, remains important for migrant belonging (Brubaker, 2010). Ambiguity is therefore a key element when trying to understand migrant belonging in relation to place of residence, place of origin, and the transnational social field (Belloni, 2019; Müller, 2015; Müller and Belloni, 2021; Ní Mhurchú, 2015). Migrant belonging is a subjective concept, generally defined as emotional attachments and feelings of inclusion, connectedness and safety in relation to specific contexts (Yuval-Davis, 2006).

In this article, I use the concept of lived citizenship to investigate how migrants with strong emotional attachments to the imagined community of their home nation-state experience, create and contest belonging in and to a host-city where their status is insecure. Lived citizenship has emerged as an important concept for analysing migrant lives, and more specifically been proposed as useful to understand gaps in understanding belonging (Kallio et al., 2015; Però and Zontini, 2025).¹ Citizenship here is conceived not as legal status, but as sets of relational practices that connect migrants to the geographical spaces where they reside or aspire to live. No clear definition of lived citizenship exists, as it essentially focuses on what it may mean “to live and be citizens” (Kallio et al., 2020: 3) for migrants who lack formal status. It therefore is strongly intertwined with specific geographical contexts and how migrants negotiate everyday life. Having recognised the fuzziness of this concept, four key dimensions have been proposed to provide deeper analytical clarity: spatial; intersubjective; performed; and affective (Kallio et al., 2020). These dimensions have been defined in Kallio et al.'s (2020: 5–6) framework as follows:

The spatial dimension links the national to the local in that it focuses on what to (not-)have citizenship means to being a (quasi) citizen, how citizenship is experienced in the everyday in the city or its neighbourhoods and across transnational spaces. The intersubjective dimension refers to how social relationships with others are constituted, and here not only inter-personal aspects but also past shared histories are important, and the way those determine everyday relationships. The performed dimension refers to those acts where non-status migrants act as citizens, in for example, laying claim to universal rights. This aspect has been developed most clearly in the literature with a focus on migrant activism (see, e.g. Isin and Nielsen, 2008; Kallio and Mitchell, 2016; McNevin, 2006). Lastly, the affective dimension focuses on the emotional sphere, the feelings generated in relation to everyday life as a (quasi-)citizen and how those intersect with emotional attachments to the imagined community of the home-nation.

I contend that these dimensions are not only interlinked, as the authors propose, but that the affective dimension is determining how lived citizenship is enacted in everyday encounters in the city. This affective-driven understanding of lived citizenship is a useful analytical tool to understand belonging as a process re-shaped in everyday citizenship practices.

This becomes particularly salient when migrants return as refugees to a country that they were formerly citizens of, after secession. The latter has been the case for different migrant movements from Eritrea (back) to Ethiopia, and from South Sudan (back) to Sudan. In both cases, migrants suddenly find themselves as de-facto refugees in their former home country, which challenges belonging. In relation to South Sudanese who returned to Sudan following disillusionment with and conflict in independent South Sudan, recent work has demonstrated how they re-create belonging through “community citizenship” in the everyday (Bakhit, 2022). Community citizenship in this understanding is a form of lived citizenship that helps South Sudanese who have returned to Sudan to navigate a partly hostile context and (re-)create affective identification with both, their South-Sudanese and Sudanese heritages (Bakhit and Kindersley, 2022).

I focus on the second example, Eritrean migrants in Addis Ababa. To be Eritrean in Addis Ababa (and Ethiopia as a whole) has undergone profound transformations in terms of status and the politics of belonging since de facto Eritrean independence in 1991 (Poole and Riggan, 2022). This makes it a pertinent example for analysing belonging at a particular moment in time.

The article is based on findings from in-depth interviews with 15 Eritrean migrants in Addis Ababa who came to the city after the 1998–2000 war between both countries. Respondents were interviewed between December 2020 and September 2021.

Based on a concrete example where status in the host country is insecure, and emotional attachments to the real or imagined home nation-state profound and exercised in multi-dimensional ways, as discussed in the burgeoning field of literature on Eritrean migration (see, e.g. Cole, 2019; Hirt and Abdulkader, 2018; Müller, 2015), I ask how belonging is experienced, created and contested in the geographical space of a long-term host city. I do so through investigating belonging as acted out in the lived citizenship of the everyday.

I make the following key theoretical and empirical contributions: Firstly, I contribute to a clearer categorisation of lived citizenship through demonstrating how spatial, intersubjective, and performed dimensions of lived citizenship are grounded in its affective dimension. Secondly, I show how this affective dimension is strongly connected to core parameters of what belonging to Eritrea means. Belonging is different from nationalism here as discussed in the literature on Eritrean national narratives (Bernal, 2017; Dorman, 2005). It centres on emotional attachments and positive value judgements towards Eritrea as an imagined community based on ideas of communal solidarity.

Thirdly, I argue that the expressions of belonging through the lived citizenship of the everyday in Addis Ababa sometimes contests, and sometimes re-enforces national narratives propagated by the Eritrean state, but are at the same time shaped by encounters at the level of the city and with local populations.

Taken together, I demonstrate how belonging of Eritrean migrants in Addis Ababa is enacted through complex, often contradictory, processes. Within those, government-propagated conceptions of what being Eritrean means sometimes underpin, and at other times are contested through acts of everyday citizenship. Ultimately, belonging as an Eritrean in Addis Ababa in all its facets is the key underlying dynamic that determines life in exile.

Migration and Belonging: Shifting Terrains, Strong Affective Allegiances

Belonging in its simplest sense is an affective concept, focusing on identifications with and attachments to a community. This community can be the nation-state, but equally encompasses, for example, ethnic or faith-based communities or a geographical location like a city, or a mixture of those (Rottmann et al., 2020; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Belonging can be contested by bureaucratic or legal categories, as in contexts where liminal legal status jeopardises belonging to places of residence (Dalberto and Banégas, 2021; Menjívar, 2006). This latter, status-based aspect of belonging is separate from belonging as an affective category: It has been called the politics of belonging, focusing on processes of socio-spatial inclusions and/or exclusions, combined with citizenship as a legal category, and ultimately divisions between “us” and “them,” or the “to have citizenship” or “to be a (de facto) citizen” (Antonsich, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 2006). In reality, both aspects of belonging are often intertwined in that formal categories of status relate to emotional attachments in complex ways. But belonging is analytically different from the politics of belonging, as has been most comprehensively analysed by Yuval-Davis (2006).

This becomes apparent for many migrants globally who live in a quasi-permanent state of liminal legality, while at the same time being part of the fabric of cities and communities.² This calls for an investigation of migrant belonging as separate from legal status. Doing so through an analysis of everyday lived citizenship practices adds important dimensions to understanding the shifting terrains of belonging; at the same time, it contributes to sharpen the concept of lived citizenship.

Such an investigation puts the focus on what Gilmartin (2008) calls scales of belonging, and how belonging is being constructed or, to stay in lived citizenship categories, performed, within networks of material and symbolic relationships. To put this differently, it focuses on belonging as “an identity manifested in actions” (Vorobeva and Jauhiainen, 2023: 3391). Belonging can therefore be regarded as a material and metaphysical category full of shifting meanings, in a similar way as Staeheli and Nagel (2006) speak about “Home”: it is place-related as well as deterritorialised, a concrete reality based on inclusions/exclusions as well as an imagined and affective dimension of being (Simonsen, 2016; Vorobeva and Jauhiainen, 2023).

Scales of belonging include belonging to one's home nation-state, but equally belonging that emerges from migrants being intimately and intricately involved in social, political, and economic networks that stretch across national boundaries.

To understand the shifting nature of belonging, I focus in this article on lived citizenship practices in the everyday, in the city but also across global networks, and the emotional attachments that underpin and are created by those (see also Conradson and McKay, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 2006). By examining the four dimensions of lived citizenship – spatial, intersubjective, performed, and affective (Kallio et al., 2020) – I show how affect shapes the spatial, social, and performative aspects of citizenship as it is lived. I further argue that those dimensions and their articulation are intertwined with conceptions of the real or imagined nation-state, or with what being Eritrean means for being a migrant in Addis Ababa. The nation-state itself can, following Brubaker (2010), be regarded as a category of analysis and a category of practice. As a category of analysis, it is a way to “make sense of the social world” (Brubaker, 2010: 62), whereas as a category of practice, it is “a constitutive part of the social world” (Brubaker, 2010: 62), deployed to make sense of the social world in everyday actions and encounters, or the expressions of everyday lived citizenship. This implies in a migration context that belonging is enacted in different ways, in correspondence to or in tension with stipulations of formal citizenship.

To advance that argument, and analyse the experience, creation and contestation of belonging through the lens of lived citizenship, I focus in this article on Eritrean migrants in Addis Ababa.

The remaining article proceeds as follows: The next section will give a background to the wider research project of which this specific article is a part-result, and explain the methods of data collection. This is followed by an analysis of how multiple forms of belonging are experienced, created and contested in the everyday life in the city.

Methods and Background

The article is based on data from the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded research project: Transnational lived citizenship: Practices of citizenship as political belonging among emerging diasporas in the Horn of Africa. The comparative study investigated practices of transnational lived citizenship as expressions of belonging among Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora in the three cities Nairobi, Khartoum, and Addis Ababa. In this article, I focus on the data from Addis Ababa to investigate belonging among Eritreans who are now urban migrants/refugees in what used to be the capital city of a unified state, when Eritrea was part of Ethiopia. This is a pertinent example to interrogate belonging in a context of migration, as (re-)produced in the lived citizenship of the everyday, for the following reasons:

Living as an Eritrean in Addis Ababa has undergone profound transformations, and the meaning of being Eritrean in the city is full of ambiguities.³ Eritreans have over time been citizens of Ethiopia, enemy aliens, and migrants/refugees. All three statuses are deeply connected to the politics of belonging: As Ethiopian citizens either embracing or rejecting the Eritrean struggle for independence (Iyob, 1999; Pool, 2001); as enemy aliens forced to identify with an Eritrea they might have few connections with (Abbink, 2003; Campbell, 2014; Mekonnen, 2020; Negash and Tronvoll, 2000; Riggan, 2011; Trivelli, 1998); and as Eritrean migrants/refugees governed by the insecurities of changing Ethiopian refugee regimes and internal politics (for an in-depth discussion of the latter see Riggan and Poole, 2024).

Setting out to investigate how status prescriptions as Eritreans in Addis Ababa translate into belonging at the level of the individual and within communities of residence, fieldwork was originally planned to commence in March 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face fieldwork was restructured as virtual interviews. Following a wider movement in migration research that questions face-to-face fieldwork as the gold standard (Greatrick et al., 2022; Gruber et al., 2021; Günel et al., 2020; Günel and Watanabe, 2024), we used proven types of remote, synchronous interviews – using WhatsApp, Zoom, or telephone calls (Kaufmann and Peil, 2020; King et al., 2018). The interviews in Addis Ababa were all conducted via WhatsApp between December 2020 and September 2021 by a postdoctoral researcher. Sampling of Eritrean respondents relied on gatekeepers recruited through this researcher's informal networks, who is a U.K. citizen of Eritrean origin, and other local contacts of the research team. Our adjusted sampling procedure resulted in similar respondents to those we had originally planned to target for face-to-face interviews. While we had in addition intended to complement interviews with participant observation, interviews focused on detailed dynamics in individual everyday lives are a respected methodological approach in the investigation of migrant practices of “makeshift” citizenship (Cochrane and Wolff, 2022; Nyers, 2013: 38; Pascucci, 2016).

Many interviews were conducted over multiple sessions and virtual interviews allowed more easily to follow-up on additional issues that arose during the research process, especially the internal conflict that erupted in Ethiopia between the central government and the northern region of Tigray from November 2020 onwards, that created further uncertainties in migrant communities with repercussions for belonging.

Fifteen in-depth interviews with Eritrean migrants in Addis Ababa were conducted. Participants were asked about all aspects of their lives in Addis Ababa as well as the networks they engaged with, in the city and beyond, locally, regionally, and globally. In addition, they were asked how the conflict between the central state and the regional states of Tigray, Oromo and Amhara that started in November 2020, during the time of the fieldwork, impacted on their daily lives in the city, and whether it changed their networks, allegiances and sense of belonging (on the multiple dimensions of these conflicts see Tronvoll, 2022).

All interviews were conducted in Tigrinya, the native language of the postdoctoral researcher. The interviews were subsequently transcribed and translated into English by the postdoctoral researcher and coded thematically with input from the project team, using the NVivo software package.⁴ I then cleaned the data and with support from a professional proofreader adjusted the English when needed.

Participants have been anonymized and any markers that could help identify them have been removed from the article. Per the ethical approval from the University of Manchester Committee on Research Ethics, all participants agreed to the usage of anonymized content and quotations from their interviews in publications.

Eritrean Migrants in Addis Ababa: Multiple Forms of Belonging in Exile Intertwined With the (Imagined) Nation-State

The Eritrean migrants in this study on one level regard Addis Ababa as a transit destination. They are either waiting for resettlement elsewhere, or for a change in the political situation in Eritrea that would allow them to return. In fact, many have been living in the city for many years, and few research participants had any prospect for leaving in the foreseeable future. This situation is not unusual for Eritrean migrants in Ethiopia, whose lives are determined by creating a safe place in the here and now (the spatial dimension of lived citizenship) while time-making and aspired futures are imagined elsewhere (on the latter see Riggan and Poole, 2024).

A strong sense of belonging to Eritrea was prevalent among all interviewees, even if what that meant concretely often remained vague. At the same time, as explained below, there was a common understanding of what being Eritrean should mean in everyday lived citizenship and in one's approach to life. Belonging was constantly expressed, created, enforced, or contested through everyday practices of lived citizenship.

This affirmation of belonging in everyday lives in Addis Ababa fell into three broad categories. The first category consists of belonging that expresses political attachments silently and often conveys indirectly an opposition to the current Eritrean government. The second category consists of how responses to political developments and intersubjective everyday experiences result in modified ideas and practices of belonging. Third, belonging is performed through concrete engagement on behalf of or in aid of the wider Eritrean polity/community, either locally or in global networks. Here, I discuss each of these forms of expressing belonging in turn.

Living as an Eritrea in Addis Ababa: Belonging Through Being Silently Political

While many Eritreans hold a strong sense of Eritrean identity, this belonging is tied to their vision of what an independent Eritrea should be, not the state that actually exists under the current government (see also Belloni, 2019). The interviewees have in their majority come to Addis Ababa because of the repressive policies of that government. They therefore shun involvement with the Eritrean embassy and avoid being drawn into any activities related to Eritrean officialdom. Respondent E5 sums this up in a way representative of all interviewees:

No, I do not participate in any activity organised by the Embassy. I consider the Embassy as not representing me. […] They use their activities for propaganda purposes. If they want to do something, they better make our country free for all Eritreans to live there, so I can go back. Otherwise, it will be unrealistic to be part of their activities and yet say I am a refugee. I left my country because of the government. If I take part in their activities or engage with the authorities, I am supporting their agenda. (Interview, 20 March 2021)

Not participating in embassy-advocated events is a form of protest, as Eritrean embassies globally make a big effort to present a united front with Eritrean diaspora communities (Arnone, 2014; Hirt and Abdulkader, 2018). But this form of silent protest or protest through absence was generally the only form of protest among respondents. Although the majority of respondents eagerly follows news and developments within Eritrea and would like to see regime change, they shy away from participating in organisations that advocate for such change. Respondent E9 says in that respect:

I do not take part in meetings of Eritreans, as I do not trust them. Sometimes there were meetings, before the Ethiopia-Eritrea rapprochement, organised by the Eritrean opposition. I did not take part because they call for foreign intervention to remove the government, instead of relying on Eritreans. I had nothing to do with them. Our country comes first, I do not want to betray our martyrs’ blood. (Interview, 13 May 2021)

Online, Eritreans in Addis follow social media discussions, but refrain from commenting or, if they do actively participate, use a pseudonym. Respondent E6 says:

My heart is back in Eritrea. It is obvious that I will follow news from Eritrea every day. Whether I like it or not is another issue, but I follow it. Using YouTube, Facebook, or websites, international TV channels, the Ethiopian media. […] Not supporting the government does not mean I am not interested in what happens to my country. Therefore, the least I can do is know what is going on. […] I do not see the point in giving comments […]. My opinion cannot change anything. (Interview, 24 March 2021)

Some participants refrain from making comments because most social media platforms are very divisive. Others fear the long arm of the Eritrean government and its Ethiopian allies in the state security apparatus, as expressed by respondent E7 who says:

I watch live Facebook broadcast discussions among Eritreans. I do not give my opinion. I have a lot I could say, but it is not worth making my thoughts public, while the eyes of Shabiya [Eritrea's ruling party] are next to me. The Embassy in Addis can do anything to one who criticises the [Eritrean] government. It is not safe to do it. (Interview, 24 March 2021)

Caution in relation to the Ethiopian authorities has increased in the aftermath of the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018, which was partially followed by the round-up of Eritrean refugees in Addis Ababa and their return to refugee camps in northern Ethiopia that are regarded as unsafe and infiltrated by the very Eritrean authorities the refugees have fled (Poole and Riggan, 2022). But, as respondent E8 says, Eritreans in the city have their own way to contest Ethiopian round-up policies:

We protest in our own way. [In Eritrea] when giffas [round ups] happen, we know how to avoid them. Here also we know how to do that, we do not participate in meetings, we live our own life without interacting with local political issues. (Interview, 26 March 2021)

This interviewee further reports that Eritrean migrants have created networks that warn of potential round ups and facilitate to hide those without formal urban refugee/residence papers. This suggests that engaging silently political and practical engagement (discussed in more detail below), can be closely linked.

The above examples of being silently political are related to spatial dimensions of lived citizenship, demonstrating how citizenship is exercised in exile beyond the territorial boundaries of the nation-state.

Eritreans living in Addis Ababa focus their attention when following (social) media on political developments in Eritrea. Them being in Addis Ababa makes sense only in relation to these politics and the existence of the Eritrean nation-state. In practice, that nation-state is feared in multiple ways, thus migrants do not voice political opinions. At the same time, they do not follow the demands of that state, to pay the so-called “diaspora-tax” of two per cent, or to engage with events organised by the Eritrean embassy in support of homeland development, as is an expectation of Eritrean citizens living abroad (Bozzini, 2015).

The interview data demonstrates how belonging is enacted as a form of silent protest to state politics, in contradiction to official, state-centred versions and definitions of Eritrean nationalism and what it means to be Eritrean. Being silently political is driven by emotional attachments to an imagined Eritrean community while living in the complex local environment of the city of Addis Ababa. It therefore shows how the spatial dimensions of lived citizenship are underpinned by affective dimensions.

The next section will focus on intersubjective dimensions of lived citizenship when core Eritrean beliefs are contested in encounters in the city.

Re-Defined Belonging as a Response to Political Dynamics in the City and Beyond

For a number of respondents, the way Eritreans are perceived in Addis Ababa, and their daily encounters at work or in other spaces of everyday life, make them more attuned to the state-propagated narrative of what it means to be Eritrean.

The story of respondent E2 is a pertinent example to demonstrate how everyday encounters re-shape belonging. He has lived in Addis Ababa for eight years, but initially was based in Mekelle in the north of Ethiopia, the capital of the Ethiopian province of Tigray that borders Eritrea. He was a university student at Mekelle University, a university at the time known for admitting Eritrean refugees relatively easily. When respondent E2 started to politically engage around human rights of Eritrean refugees in refugee camps in Tigray, he was expelled from the university where political engagement by Eritreans is not welcome. He subsequently went to Addis Ababa, where he got by doing odd jobs, and at the time of the interview worked in a barber shop. He explains how his interpretation of belonging to Eritrea is being transformed towards defending official, Eritrean-government proclaimed narratives about the past. This is being enforced by daily encounters in the barber shop:

They [Ethiopian colleagues and clients] try to tell us that we are part of Ethiopia and we try to explain to them that Eritrea has never been part of Ethiopia, instead it was forcibly occupied by the Ethiopian empire. On the other hand, the Tigrayans do not like Shabiya [Eritrea's ruling party], and though we do not like it ourselves, we tend to defend it in our discussions. We tell them Shabiya has won Eritrean Independence. I try to tell them that the Eritrean internal matters are ours [Eritreans] and are not their business. Despite all those arguments I have good relationships with my Ethiopian colleagues as well as Ethiopian customers. I started hating TPLF [the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front] while I was at Mekelle University. […] I have come to the conclusion that anyone who supports the TPLF is an enemy to me. This infused in me Eritrean nationalism, a nationalism that I did not have before. (Interview, 15 December 2020)

Another dimension of being thrown back to one's Eritrean roots in the city are experiences of exploitation common to refugee groups, that in turn enforce belonging to Eritrea. Respondent E7 explains this in concrete detail:

Many of us when we arrived here, our enthusiasm was to do something that can improve our lives, invest in small businesses with the remittances that we get from family and friends. However, many of us, including me, have been scammed by gangs. As a result of this experience, most of us prefer not to get involved in any such activities and we live for the day. I believe this attitude has resulted in an isolated life among the Eritreans, we engage only among ourselves, we are not taking advantage of many opportunities the city offers. […] The very few who managed to […] improve themselves smoothly engage in the social life of the city like local people. Some have studied and now work in very good positions in industry, international organisations or have a business. (Interview, 24 March 2021)

More generally, those who have work, study, or are otherwise engaged in their neighbourhoods or the city at large, feel, in the words of respondent E15, “some sense of belonging to the city” (Interview, 14 September 2021). Respondent E10 elaborates on this:

You can take the example of some of the members of my artists’ group. They have their jobs other than acting. They are proud of working and not depending on others for their survival. They look at themselves as doing something for the community here. One of them, for example, is a structural engineer working for a housing development firm in the city. He considers himself as part of the city. He is working in his profession and is happy and feels at home. People like him feel as residents of the city as any local person. (Interview, 26 May 2021)

Interestingly, also those interviewees who feel part of the city, would not consider Ethiopian citizenship if it was on offer. Rather, like those who mainly saw Addis Ababa as a stop on a journey further afield, their ultimate stated objective was a return to Eritrea – if the political situation would change. “My home is always Asmara” in the words of respondent E10 (Interview, 26 May 2021), sums up this attachment. This speaks to other findings in the literature that a successful professional career or integration into the life of a host city does not necessarily imply stronger belonging to migrant places of residence (Geurts and Phalet, 2025; Hur, 2023).

Respondent E11 explains in more detail his reasoning for not wanting to accept Ethiopian citizenship, if it were an option:

Life in Eritrea and Ethiopia is no different. Currently to have a life here [in Addis] is more sustainable for us Eritreans, for obvious reasons. That is why I sought refuge in Addis. I work like everybody in Addis now, thanks to the reforms in the Ethiopian government. It was different three years ago for refugees to get any employment, but now that has completely changed. Refugees have more rights now. If the situation in Eritrea changes so that we can work and live freely inside the country, I would fly home the next day. (Interview, 9 July 2021)⁵

An additional dimension that partly influenced daily life in the city and practised forms of belonging emerged when conflict erupted between the Ethiopian region of Tigray and the central government, and in the period of actual war, Eritrean troops intervened in support of the Ethiopian army. This was not only a war between the central Ethiopian government and Tigray, but had many ethnic-based undercurrents involving Amharas, Oromos and others in changing and shifting alliances. For context, both, Ethiopia and Eritrea, are multi-ethnic states, and have been characterised by shifting histories of hostility, mistrust and allegiances between the main ethnic groups. Those are most pronounced (but not limited to) relations between Eritreans, Tigrayans, Amharas and Oromos that came to the fore again in the recent lines of conflict (for further details on history and the present see Pool, 2001; Trivelli, 1998; Tronvoll, 1999, 2022).

These current political conflicts had various repercussions for the Eritrean migrant communities in Addis Ababa, mostly indirectly but sometimes with forms of violence, influenced by past histories of alliances or mistrust. Respondent E5 explains:

The relationship with the local people has not changed. […] However, you can notice some body language from Tigrayans, they do not speak it out in public, but they do not hide their inner hatred towards us as Eritreans. There were also some occasions when people overreacted. For example, two weeks ago, some friends called me for support. They had some altercations with Tigrayans during their work. […] Two of them were seriously injured and we had to take them to the nearest hospital for help. […] These are the kind of things we notice. Especially when we meet Tigrayans on public transport, they say abusive words about us in Tigrinya, they call us evil Shabiyas [followers of Eritrea's ruling party]. Other Ethiopians are sympathetic to us. (Interview, 20 March 2021)

In that, migrant communities and local communities from different ethnic backgrounds often act out the narratives of their respective governments or political leaderships: At the time of writing, hatred between Tigrayans and Eritreans, forms of sympathy between Eritreans and Amharas – but such allegiances are always fragile and can change easily. These dynamics sometimes enforce narratives grounded in the Eritrean liberation war and wider Eritrean history (see Hirt, 2021, on the role of memory in migratory imaginations), but do not necessarily lead to a more cohesive understanding of what being Eritrean in Addis Ababa may mean. Rather, they resulted in Eritreans avoiding conversations about the conflict, enforcing the silence about political issues discussed above, held together by fear as the uniting factor. E5 continues to say: “People are avoiding every kind of discussion on the matter for the sake of safety. We are in limbo. We do not know how the situation will develop, better to be quiet when the tides are high” (Interview, 20 March 2021).

Even in cases where discussions and interaction about the conflict take place, these follow the political divides within Ethiopa based on ethnic allegiances. Respondent E6 says about the dynamics in his neighbourhood (Lancia) and the wider city, noting friendly relations with Amharas but mixed experiences with Tigrayans:

I feel they [Tigrayans] hate us simply because we are from Eritrea. Five days ago, for example, a Tigrayan who does not know me, shouted ‘you evil Shabiya’ to my face, I was simply walking by and out of nowhere he came and shouted. […] On the other side many Tigrayans are well behaved and discuss the issues with civility. We raise our arguments, and we politely discuss it. They tell us that we betrayed them by siding with the Amharas, something that I do not agree with. (Interview, 24 March 2021)

Taken together, the statements above demonstrate how encounters at the level of the city with local populations re-enforce interpretations of belonging to Eritrea that follow the narrative propagated by the Eritrean government. The way in which respondent E2 reacts to what happened to him in Mekelle aligns with the national narrative of the TPLF as the main enemy of Eritrea, and the wider narrative around Eritrean independence and the heroic role of the predecessor of the current government in it. The same can be said for other interpretations of everyday encounters with Ethiopians, who are narrated along ethnicity categories and divided into normal and hostile accordingly, following past memories and histories. Perhaps surprisingly, for Eritrean migrants with a history of trauma caused by their own government who might have experienced torture by the Eritrean army during their migration journey, this extends to the denial of atrocities, committed by Eritrean troops in the province of Tigray during the latest war. These have been well-documented (see, e.g. Amnesty International, 2020; BBC, 2021; Physicians for Human Rights and Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa, 2023) but were always denied by the Eritrean government. Reflecting on a friendship that deteriorated with a Tigrayan, Respondent E16 says in this respect:

I also told him that it is very hard for me to believe that the Eritrean soldiers have committed these atrocities, as I was part of that army and I know the discipline in the army. They might shoot, but raping, especially in groups, is unthinkable. He did not agree and told me that I sided with the people who were the cause of my migration. He could not understand that my problems are with the authorities, not with the Eritrean nation or its people, nor with its military. (Interview, 30 September 2021)

The intersubjective dimension of lived citizenship that comes to the fore in the above section in relation to past histories is also connected to its affective dimension, as it centres on emotionally charged divisions and/or commonalities. Living in the city of Addis Ababa, the capital of the state Eritrea used to be part of, and in a region, the Horn of Africa, where nation-state boundaries have been important markers of identities and in flux for centuries (Clapham, 2017), implies that migrants are seen and reacted to first and foremost as Eritreans. Numerous examples above demonstrate how this plays out in the everyday ranging from contested interpretations of past and recent history to concrete attacks. This has re-shaped belonging to the Eritrean nation-state.

In addition, even for those who have made Addis Ababa successfully their home, visible in various social relationships, who regard it as a welcoming environment that allows them to work, start businesses or fulfil other aspirations, belonging to Eritrea is at the centre, expressed by the deeply engrained objective to return if conditions change. This implies that belonging in a formalised way to the place where they now live is out of the question. This speaks to other findings in the literature that when looking at migrant belonging at the level of the city, belonging is often thicker than formal citizenship or concerns about status (see Antonsich, 2010).

Performing Belonging Through Practical Engagement

What it means to be Eritrean in Addis Ababa is also lived in forms of practical engagement among Eritreans, the performed dimension of lived citizenship. Prominent here is filmmaking to show young migrants how to live properly. This pedagogic endeavour is based on a normative understanding of how a “good Eritrean” should behave, not only following cultural values but sometimes also those propagated as desirable by the Eritrean regime. Respondent E9, a freelance film maker/director, outlines this agenda and the moral underpinnings of what belonging to Eritrea requires:

I want to teach our Eritrean community. Most of the newcomers to Addis Ababa are under-age. […] [They] get remittances from family and friends and spend their time drinking, resulting in clashes among themselves and with local communities.

[…] The under-age, who were under their parents’ control in Eritrea, when they arrive here, there is nobody to guide them. In Asmara, with everything you do, the news will reach your family soon and you have to respect the authority of your parents and their position in society, and among the neighbours. Here, they have no one to account for their actions, the city is big. […] This uncontrolled freedom is a great concern. Therefore, as a writer and artist, I use my position to educate the young using my films. I also want to show the transnational diaspora how what they remit to their family members here in Ethiopia is used and tell them to be more careful how much they send. (Interview, 13 May 2021)

This engagement in preserving what are perceived as core values of belonging to Eritrea also has important transnational dimensions. Not only, as outlined in the quote above, are those who send remittances made aware of the potential misuse, in the eyes of the respondent, of those remittances, and indirectly lobbied to re-think their support. In addition, the market for Eritrean brides to be married to members of the diaspora in the Global North is another tendency seen as detrimental for the future of Eritrea as an imagined community with specific values. This moral challenge is a focal point of film, video, and (fictional) writing locally and transnationally. Respondent E9 says in this respect:

In addition, the biggest challenge of marriages arranged through Facebook are causing problems to both parties, the one that comes from Europe/America for the wedding and the one who is getting married. Both have made the arrangements in their own interest only, not thinking about mutual benefits. The result is often a disaster. That is what I reflect in my writing. But these things are becoming a new custom and that is more worrying than the current political situation and conflict in Ethiopia from my perspective. I prefer to react to things that I can influence, not something that is beyond me. (Interview, 13 May 2021)

This last point is prevalent among all respondents – they prefer to live their belonging in ways in which they can have some concrete impact. This can be, as in the case above, through making migrants’ experiences visible and communicating those experiences across borders, to the wider transnational Eritrean community, with the intention to change behaviours. Alternatively, it can have a more concrete material focus on the here and now in Addis Ababa or Ethiopia more generally. This happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people organised help for compatriots in need – even though such assistance was not as prevalent among Eritreans as one might have thought, as discussed in a different publication from the project (Müller, 2022).

Belonging as expressed in concrete ways is most visible in the various networks and initiatives that have sprung up to help those Eritreans in Ethiopia who live in refugee camps, mostly in Tigray province but also in other places in Ethiopia. E1 is one of those actively involved in such support. He is an ordained priest as well as a student at a theological seminar. He explains:

When I was in Tigray, I was forming an alumni association, with the aim of supporting the set-up of a social community association of university graduates who can help the Eritrean communities in different cities in Ethiopia, through training and consultation as well as advocacy for the rights of the refugees. We have tried to get a licence for the association. We were denied because the aims and vision of the association included advocacy for the migrant community. Despite the lack of licence, we were able to informally organise and help migrants in the refugee camps. The association in Mekelle was active in organising some relief support that went into the refugee camps in the region. Its activities are now affected by the current situation [referring to the civil war between Tigray and the central government of Ethiopia]. (Interview, 15 December 2020)

Some of the activities for Eritreans in refugee camps go beyond Eritreans in Ethiopia but incorporate the wider Eritrean diaspora, as respondent E10, another writer and filmmaker, explains:

‘There are other groups of people who engage in charitable activities to help refugees in the camps […] They work on their own as volunteers. I found out that such groups collaborate with donors among Eritrean diaspora members across the world who are interested in helping the refugees in the camps.’ (Interview, 26 May 2021)

Such acts of volunteering and charitable response do not, however, take place within a vacuum, nor do the educational efforts of filmmakers, writers and other artists aimed at the Eritrean community in Addis Ababa. These performances of lived citizenship, even if sometimes seemingly in line with conceptions of the Eritrean regime, are also a contestation of what belonging to Eritrea means (see also Bernal, 2017). Respondent E9 says about his films in this respect:

I think the films I write are an effective form of protest. If you have noticed, my films raise the issue why people leave the country [Eritrea] and how the government's policies forced us to migrate, and the abuses we suffered, in a flashback mode. I want to show all Eritreans, especially supporters of the government policies, what the consequences of these policies are. (Interview, 13 May 2021)

Equally, engaging with refugees and advocating on their behalf, in Ethiopia but also beyond, is an act of defiance to the Eritrean government narrative that “considers the refugees as kedaat [traitors] who forsake the pledge to the martyrs” (Interview E10, 26 May 2021).

This performative dimension of lived citizenship as practical engagement in Addis Ababa often has connections to global networks, be they faith-based or human-rights networks, both underpinned by defiance against the Eritrean state-propagated narrative that to be Eritrean means a life of sacrifice and duty with little respect for individual rights or ambitions. Respondent E1 explains some of his activities in this regard:

We [my friends and I] advocate for human rights of refugees. We send information about what is going on in relation to refugees in Ethiopia to human rights organisation across the world, usually anonymously. We are the ones who reported that Eritrean migrants who fled the conflict in Tigray are being deported back to the camps against their will and with no security. It was necessary to make the world aware of the dangers these refugees face. There was a fear that the Eritrean government might forcibly return them back to Eritrea with the collaboration of the Ethiopian Authorities. It is such kind of underground advocacy we take part in at this moment. We can only do this covertly for fear of persecution. (Interview, 15 December 2021)

Similarly, respondent E2 says about the Eritrean network in Addis Ababa he is a member of:

We have many links, including to international human rights organisations, and refugee advocacy groups. We have working networks and relations with the Eritrean diaspora from different countries such as the US, Europe, Canada, and Australia, where we have large Eritrean communities. We do not have any link to the Eritrean Embassies as they do not accept or recognise us as refugees, but see us as deserters. (Interview, 15 December 2020)

As can be seen from the above, performances of lived citizenship as practical engagement are ultimately driven by the affective dimensions of lived citizenship. They demonstrate the enforcement of belonging to Eritrea as complex processes where government-propagated conceptions sometimes underpin and at other times are contested through such concrete engagement. Belonging may be expressed here in surprising ways, like in upholding beliefs in the ethical behaviour of a militarised state and its soldiers, a militarised state that is the root cause of Eritrean migration (Kibreab, 2017). In that, emotional allegiances to an imagined (rather than the in-reality existing) nation-state form an important constitutive part of the social world (see Brubaker, 2010) Eritrean migrants find themselves in. But belonging enacted as practical engagement also presents itself in forms of contestation of national ideology and narratives. This is most explicit in support for Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia: Recognition that these refugees are part of Eritrea and deserve empathy and compassion is in itself an act of resistance. What unites all forms of practical engagement is belonging as an Eritrean in Addis Ababa in all its facets as the underlying motivation.

Conclusion

In this article, I have made the following contributions: I investigated belonging of Eritrean migrants through key dimensions of lived citizenship in the host-city of Addis Ababa, a city to which Eritreans have a contested relationship based on history and contemporary politics, and where their status is insecure. I used the four categories that have been proposed to better define lived citizenship – spatial, intersubjective, performed, and affective – to argue that the affective dimension is the key to understand its spatial, intersubjective, and performed dimensions. I further argued that those dimensions and their articulation are strongly intertwined with conceptions of what belonging to Eritrea means. Lastly, I argued that acts that establish belonging in the lived citizenship of the everyday sometimes contest, and sometimes reinforce, state-narratives, and are equally shaped by concrete encounters in the city.

I have analysed different dimensions of lived citizenship of Eritrean migrants in Addis Ababa with respect to three categories linked to belonging: being silently political; being thrown back to one's belonging as Eritrean in everyday encounters; and belonging as concrete engagement. These relate to the spatial; intersubjective; and performed dimensions of lived citizenship, and, I argue, are bound together by its affective underbelly.

Taken together, I have shown through a focus on lived citizenship in the city, that belonging is a key category to explore and contest exclusions and inclusions of migrants in host-cities. In this, I emphasise the importance of the home-nation in the everyday construction of belonging that finds its expressions in the practices of lived citizenship.

These practices are on the one hand geared towards life in Addis Ababa and determine how being Eritrean is enacted spatially, intersubjectively through social relationships, and through performed practices. But more importantly, they are geared towards Eritrea and act as an important driver to shape migrant lives and/or secure migrant rights – locally or globally through transnational diaspora networks.

A comprehensive literature exists on Eritrea as a diasporic state, with a large percentage of the population living outside the country but with deep connections to the Eritrean nation-state as either supportive or aiming for regime change, all underpinned by different forms of socio-spatial interconnectedness (Graf, 2017; Hepner, 2007; Iyob, 2000). The wider literature on Eritrean migration often emphasises ambiguity towards their homeland and migration movements themselves (Belloni, 2019; Cole, 2019; Hirt and Abdulkader, 2018).

The focus on lived citizenship and its affective dimension in the everyday allows me to contribute to a more nuanced argument here: Belonging to Eritrea is the core to understanding how everyday life in Addis Ababa for Eritrean migrants unfolds. This belonging is not ambivalent in itself, nor can it clearly be demarcated as pro or against the Eritrean nation-state and its conceptions of citizenship based on sacrifice instead of rights (Bernal, 2017; Kibreab, 2017). Rather the forms it takes are strongly connected to the localised environment of the city. The lived reality of belonging in exile here mirrors what has been said about the two separate spheres of social remittances and opinion formation in the context of Eritrea: they are part of a process that challenges and cements the meaning of being Eritrean at the same time (Belloni et al., 2022; Cole, 2019). As the data has demonstrated, even for those in diaspora an important part of belonging is shaped by parameters set by the Eritrean regime and determines how lived citizenship unfolds in the host-city.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/S016589/1).

ORCID iD

Tanja R. Müller

Notes

Author Biography

Tanja R. Müller is a professor of political sociology at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. She is the author of The Making of Elite Women: Revolution and Nation Building in Eritrea (2005) and Legacies of Socialist Solidarity: East Germany in Mozambique (2014). Tanja has written on African politics in general and Eritrea in particular since the 1990s. From 2020 to 2024, she was the lead of an ESRC-funded research project on transnational lived citizenship in urban centres in the Horn of Africa. Currently she works on a collaborative project on activist citizenship in creative production in Manchester, Malmö, and Tel Aviv.

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