SLAVERY, RESISTANCE AND THE LEGACY OF WANANKHUCHA: ADAPTATION AND THE CONTSTRUCTION OF SOMALI BANTU IDENTITIES IN THE UNITED STATES.

Recent theoretical and empirical studies on immigrant adjustment have shown how social, psychological and cultural factors in the pre-migration stage of migration can potentially influence the post-migration adaptation of immigrants. Based on ethnographic research I conducted in the United States, I argue that social history – seen through the lens and cyclical calendar of slavery, brutal oppression and stigmatization – is a significant pre-migration facilitator in the post-migration adaptation of Somali Bantu refugees. I discuss how Somali Bantu refugees use narratives from the past and identity discourses as resources in adjusting to the new challenges they face as immigrants and in constructing new identities. I contemplate the relevance for post-migration adaptation of the gendered narratives told of Wanankhucha, the legendary 19th century female leader, who reportedly conducted a well-orchestrated escape and led her fellow slaves from bondage on Somali plantations to freedom in the Jubba Valley. My point of departure is to show how history and social structure occur at the local, individual level to produce individual modes of adaptation, of resisting domination and defying hierarchies – whether real or imagined. I also show how young Somali Bantus merge the past and the present to usher in new identities and new gender roles within the Somali Bantu community, and to create, simultaneously, new affinities and antagonisms with hosts and other ethnic minorities.

Gaudencia Mutema is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research, (SKOK), at the University of Bergen in Norway. She specializes on gender and migration. Her most recent publication deals with religion in the new African diaspora in Europe and the United States and the gendered impications of being African in the age of transnational migration. Her other research interests include poverty, minority children and education, as well as genocide and ethnic conflict. As part of her multi-sited study, “Migration, Gender and Education: Somali Children in the Diaspora,” Mutema was a Visiting Scholar in 2009 at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.