5.02 Jonathan Miran; Marina de Regt
Ethiopians in Yemen, Yemenis in Ethiopia: Transregional mobility in a historical perspective
According to the estimates of international NGOs and refugee agencies more than 500,000 Ethiopians and Somalis crossed the Gulf of Aden and were clandestinely smuggled into Yemen between 2006 and 2013. Many thousands more cross the Red Sea into the Arabian Peninsula at large in search of better livelihoods. Most migrants first arrive in Yemen from where they intend to cross the border into Saudi Arabia. In this panel we propose to put contemporary migration flows between Ethiopia and Yemen in a historical perspective. The historical relationship between Yemen and Ethiopia reaches far back in time. Goods, people, and ideas have long circulated between these two areas and have contributed to shape societies inhabiting both sides of the Red Sea. We invite papers that shed new light on the experiences of Ethiopians in Yemen and Yemenis in Ethiopia (traders, slaves, religious specialists, laborers, and a host of other migrants) during the past two millennia. We are particularly interested in papers that study the multiple dimensions of population flows between Ethiopia and Yemen from a ‘global history’ perspective that focuses on the transnational linkages between the two sides of the Red Sea. We hope to explore how the relationships between actors, circulation, space, networks and polities (states) influenced, transformed and reconfigured notions of “translocality,” culture, place, and a complex spectrum of negotiated and hybrid identities across the Red Sea area.
ACCEPTED PAPERS
| Mr | CASTIGLIONI Luca | Rise to the Highlands. Assab between Yemen and Ethiopia in the 1880s |
| Ms. | KLOSS Magdalena | Ethiopian Slaves in Yemen: A Study of Medieval Arabic Texts |
| Prof. | MIRAN Jonathan | Zabīd: Translocal Histories between Yemen and Northeast Africa |
| Dr. | REGT Marina de | From Yemen to Ethiopia and Back: A Twentieth Century Family History |
| Dr. | SERELS Steven | Yemeni Farmers and the Sedentarization of Pastoralists in Eritrea, 1891-1935 |