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The US Somali Diaspora

Natoschia Scruggs, African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley
nscruggs@aol.com

In the last two decades, the number of African immigrants to the United States more than quadrupled from 109,733 (between 1961 and 1980) to 531,832 (between 1981 and 2000). It is estimated that Southern California alone is home to over 80,000 African immigrants and refugees, most originally from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana and Somalia. The presence of Ethiopians in Los Angeles is so great that city government formally recognized a section of town as "Little Ethiopia" in an August 2002 ceremony. Estimates of the total number of Somalis in the US are 100,000-150,000. Somalis are one of the largest groups of refugees in America, with more than 40,000 resettled since 1980. In 1999, the US government specifically identified Somali Bantus as persecuted minorities that should receive special resettlement consideration. In 2002, they were the largest single group to be resettled in recent US history and majority of the 20,000 African refugees the US pledged to resettle that year. By the end of 2005, more than 12,000 Somali Bantus will be living alongside ethnic Somalis and other immigrant and American-born minority groups. This paper examines post resettlement life for Somalis in the United States. Special focus will be paid to Somali communities in areas that have traditionally had low Black/African populations, such as Lewiston, Maine and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The primary research questions probed are: what is life like for Somali refugees after they have fled their homeland? What is the reception Somali refugees experience in the US? And, in what ways, if any, have Somalis impacted the US communities they now call home? Answering these three queries reveals just as much about the migrants in question as it does about American society.