Do Diasporas Contribute to the Persistence of Authoritarian Rule? Responses of Eritrean citizens abroad to transnational governance
Final Report Abstract
The objective of the project was to answer the research question if the behaviour of diaspora communities in democratic European countries can contribute to the stabilization of authoritarian rule. Eritrea was chosen as a case study due to the substantial numbers of Eritreans with residence in Europe and the presence of transnational structures, which have been maintained by the Eritrean regime over decades. In order to explore the transnational policies exercised by the Eritrean government and its diplomatic missions and community organizations abroad, we interviewed hundred diaspora Eritreans and explored how diaspora communities with different social, religious and ethnic backgrounds respond to the regime’s efforts to take advantage of and control its citizens abroad. Key scientific findings: • The efforts of the Eritrean government to reach out to diaspora Eritreans through its traditional transnational structures, namely its diplomatic missions, the Young PFDJ youth organization and community centres (the so-called Mahbere.koms) have become less successful in recent years because diaspora Eritreans increasingly avoid these institutions and instead organize in communities marked by religious or ethnic identities. • In response to these developments, the Eritrean government has developed alternative strategies and tries to infiltrate sub-national and religious communities to extract funds and to create conflicts within these organizations (for instance Orthodox church communities and regional/ethnic-based organizations). • An important finding was that the overwhelming majority of Eritreans abroad remit money to their relatives and thus contribute significantly to regime stabilization by preventing an economic breakdown due to the fact that most Eritreans of productive age inside Eritrea have to serve in an open-ended national service without noteworthy renumeration. • The peace agreement with Ethiopia caused general uncertainty among diaspora communities and concerns that the government had plans to undermine Eritrea’s hard-won independence. Surprises encountered in the course of the project and in the results obtained: • We were positively surprised by the readiness of our participants to share their sincere opinions and to speak frankly about their emotional relations to their homeland and its government. We consider this as a great success, given the prevailing culture of secrecy among Eritreans as a result of prolonged political repression. • We did not expect that the Eritrean government had successfully infiltrated Orthodox Church communities in Germany and Norway and employed lay personnel as false clergy with the purpose of extracting funds for services such as marriages and baptisms. Likewise, we were surprised to which extent regional and ethnic-based organisations were infiltrated by government-supporters who created mistrust, which led to numerous splits and weakened the agency of government opponents. • We found that refugees were extremely worried about their insecure residence status and that many of them felt that European governments are unaware of the long transnational arm of the Eritrean regime in Europe. Many refugees were pressured by the authorities of their specific host countries, including Germany to contact Eritrean diplomatic missions to obtain documents such as birth certificates.
Publications
- (2018): Peace Between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Voices from the Eritrean Diaspora, in Horn of Africa Bulletin 10, pp. 29-35
Hirt, Nicole and Abdulkader Saleh Mohammad
- (2019): Forced Migration (erzwungene Migration) aus Eritrea und die transnationalen Strukturen des eritreischen Staates. Expertise für das Jahresgutachten des SVR-Migration 2020
Hirt, Nicole
- (2020): Der lange Arm des Regimes – Eritrea und seine Diaspora, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung
Hirt, Nicole
- (2021): Eritrea’s Chosen Trauma and the Legacy of the Martyrs: The Impact of Postmemory on Political Identity Formation of Second- Generation Diaspora Eritreans (accepted 3 Nov 2020) in: Africa Spectrum56(1), pp.19 -38
Hirt, Nicole
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0002039720977495) - (2021): Eritrea’s Self-Reliance Narrative and the Remittance Paradox: Reflections on Thirty Years of Retrogression, in Remittances Review 6(1), pp. 17-31
Hirt, Nicole and AS Mohammad
(See online at https://doi.org/10.33182/rr.v6i1.1056) - (2021): The Resurgence of Religious and Ethnic Identities among Eritrean Refugees: A Response to the Government’s Nationalist Ideology, in: Africa Spectrum 56(1), pp.39-58
Mohammed, Abdulkader Saleh
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0002039720963287) - (2022): The limits of diaspora: double vulnerabilities among Eritreans in Saudi-Arabia, in: Abdelhady, D and R Aly (eds.): Routledge Handbook on Middle East Diasporas
Hirt, Nicole and AS Mohammad
(See online at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429266102-7)
