SISTER SOJOURNERS: ROUTING THE TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN By Malinda Rhone Submitted to the Facuity of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Anthropology Dean of the College ~\it,·i~~ Date 2010 American University Washington, DC 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY g 5~i}- UMI Number: 3406835 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI __..Dissertation Publishing..___ UMI 3406835 Copyright 201 O by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Pro uesr--.... ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ©COPYRIGHT by Malinda Rhone 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SISTER SOJOURNERS: ROUTING THE TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN BY Malinda Rhone ABSTRACT Transnationalism has become one of the fundamental ways for understanding contemporary border crossings. Discussions about contemporary transnationai movement compel us to engage with the cultural politics of home and belonging as well as the ways transnational migration informs processes of identity construction. This dissertation investigates how African American women's contemporary transnational migration to London England influences the ways they conceptualize and articulate their identities as raced and gendered diasporic subjects. While few studies position London, England as an endpoint in an African American diasporic trajectory, I assert that African American women's contemporary transnational movement and experiences represent a departure from and challenge to predominant characterizations of gendered migration and diaspora. In contrast, to making a vertical move from a "third world" nation to a "first world" nation, African American women's movement from one industrialized, predominately white space to another places them in a paradoxical position in which they may have access to certain privileges associated with first world citizenship yet continue to be devalued for being Black and female despite geographic context. 11 Using ethnographic data conducted with current African American female residents of London, I find that transnational migration provided a distance from locally specific forms of identity and identification. This distance offered a space for the renegotiation of identities that compelled research participants to investigate the criteria of individual and group membership along the axes of race, gender, and nation. 11l ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of my family. To my parents, Audrey and Henry Rhone; my sisters, Gena Archer and Melissa Rhone, my brother Henry Rhone Jr. and brother-in-law Omar Archer, thank you for your never ending encouragement. Thank you to my little speckled frog nephew, Brandon and niece Halle for providing their Auntie Linda with a source of joy and excitement that only a two year old and a newborn can provide. And to Curt, who entered my network of support at the final stages of this process but whose encouragement was no less essential in bringing me to this moment. I would also like to acknowledge the amazing group of intelligent Black women with whom I was privileged to move through my doctoral program - Arvenita Washington Cherry, Ariana Curtis, Tiwanna DeMoss, Calenthia Dowdy and Jacqueline Reed. Thank you for being a sounding board, proofing papers and providing stimulating conversations inside and outside the classroom. I would be remiss not to also mention Shaconna Haley and Brianna Weadock with whom I could never have made it successfully through two sociology courses. Our "debriefing" sessions were indispensable. A special thank you to Loma Skyers and the Steinhardt family, who warmly welcomed me into their homes in London and Henley, respectively. Finally, I must thank my committee members-my chair, Dr. Sabiyha Prince, Dr. Clarence Lusane, and Dr. Celine Marie Pascale for helping to guide my academic career and for pushing me to think in different ways. lV LIST OF TABLES Table 1 ................................................................................................ 92 v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT..................................................................................... u ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES.............................................................................. v INTRODUCTION.............................................................................. 1 Chapter 1. RESEARCH SITE AND HISTORY........................................... 8 2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORY.................................... 38 3. RESEARCH METHODS AND ANALYSIS . 90 4. SKINFOLK: LONDON AS A CROSS POINT FOR DISENTANGLING RACE, IMMIGRANT STATUS & NATIVE ORIGIN .............................................................................. 120 5. AS AMERICAN AS SWEET POTATO & APPLE PIE: BECOMING AN AMERICAN BLACK IN LONDON..................................... 175 6. HAIR AND THERE ..................................................................... 215 CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 255 APPENDICES.................................................................................. 265 REFERENCES .................................................................................. 277 Vl INTRODUCTION Transnationalism has become one of the fundamental ways for understanding contemporary border crossings (Dahinden 2009). Discussions about contemporary transnational movement compel us to engage with the cultural politics of home and belonging. They compel us to interrogate the relationship between an individual's "roots"; which refers to an individual's country of origin and "routes"; which refers to the actuai physicai movement of an individuai from one geographic iocation to another (Brah 1996, Sawyer 2002) and the space this movement offers for the (re)negotiation of identities. I scrutinize this relationship by focusing on the politics ofhome and awa/ which I define as the relationship between ways of being, knowing, identifying and getting identified that emerge from the space of "home" to reconciling and/or (re)creating forms of being, knowing and identifying in a new "away" space. Characterizing this dynamic relationship in this way speaks to the duel positioning that contemporary transnational migrants find themselves in as they choose to live their lives in a new place. For African American women, as members of an African Diaspora,- the -politics of home and away is primarily experienced through a transition of being perceived and received as a slave 1 The phrase the politics ofhome and away has been used frequently by other scholars (cf., Marangoly George 1996 and more recently Pablo Shiladitya Bose 2008). I am using the phrase as defined above. 1 2 a slave descendant black female body to being perceived and received as an immigrant black female body. Purpose of Study This study explores how transnational mobility influences the ways African American women conceptualize and articulate their identities as raced and gendered diasporic transnational agents. It investigates how African American women negotiate the politics of home and away as they move from various locations in the United States to London; England. I place US born African American 1 women's narratives about their transnational experiences at the center of my analysis in order to investigate the relationship between transnational migration, diaspora, identity and notions of belonging. These are the key concepts that I engage with in this research. Following the work of scholars such as Hall (1997, 2003), Harrison (1998) and Smedley (1999), I conceptualize the construction of identity as a process that is constantly in flux and as one that is heavily influenced by language and discourse. Therefore, I focus on the (re)negotiation of identities that transnational migration compels. I conceptualize transnationalism as the narrow and direct migratory movement from one nation to another and position African American women's transnational movement and the processes and practices that accompany that movement in a larger African diasporic context. While I do consider diaspora as an essential conceptual framework in thinking about Black American women's transnational movements and experiences, I position them, more specifically, as African diasporic transnational agents. 1 Throughout this dissertation, when I use the term African American and/or Black American I am referring to women of African descent who were born in the United States of America. 3 Positioning African American women's individual movements as part of a larger African Diaspora connects these women to the collective history and consequences of the trans­ Atlantic slave trade as well as to the contemporary communities of African descended individuals living globally. It is this legacy of membership that profoundly informs the shift from being perceived and received as a slave descendant black female body to being perceived and received as an immigrant black female body.