Living transnationally: Somali diasporic women in Cairo

Since the Somali Civil War in 1991, there have been a large number of Somalis living in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Australia. An increasing number of these Somalis are living in transnational households where family members live and sometimes move back and forth in different nation-states, yet these families maintain strong ties, share resources, and make decisions collectively about the well-being of different members. In this paper, I argue that women play central roles in establishing and managing these transnational households. I examine these roles and their significance through an analysis of the activities and experiences of two groups of Somali women in Cairo within the domains of their transnational families and communities. These groups of women are: (1) refugees who have been granted or are seeking asylum from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Egypt, and (2) naturalized citizens of Western countries who have relocated to Egypt, and whom I will refer to as émigrés. I argue that many of these women become active members of transnational households and communities to (1) resist legal, economic, and/or cultural "othering" of host societies, and (2) renegotiate past and present identity discourses that marginalize these individuals on multiple levels that are determined by clan affiliations, socio-economic conditions, and gender inequalities. By using complex transnational strategies, these women are engaging in new forms of activism to establish lives with more security, better future opportunities, and more dignity for their families and themselves. Yet their transnational family and community lives have benefits and challenges, which the women experience differently because of their varied diasporic histories and their uneven access to legal and social capital. © 2006 IOM.