(Re)making Somali diaspora space in conflict: Affective conflict transportation, racialisation and everyday life in Denmark and Finland

This dissertation is in its simplest sense, an attempt to understand the lived experiences of peace and conflict dynamics in the everyday in diaspora space, from the perspective of Somali background populations in Denmark and Finland. While the links between diasporas, peace, and conflict have been amply studied, few analyses have examined the everyday and affective dimensions of the continued presence of conflict within diaspora spaces. In both Denmark and Finland, people of Somali background constitute large population groups, many arriving as refugees in the late 1980s and early 1990s following a period of intense violence in Somalia. This migration history, combined with ongoing conflict dynamics in the country, provides a relevant starting point for exploring how conflict transportation processes are experienced in diaspora spaces. At the same time, the deeply racialised contexts of Denmark and Finland create a complex and important backdrop against which to understand these processes. Holding space for the notion of conflict transportation while recognising the presence of racialised violence in the two countries of residence, the dissertation develops an intersectional analysis of diaspora space that captures the multiple and layered workings of conflict transportation and belonging. It pays particular attention to the relationship between broader societal processes of violence and the affective, discursive, and material dimensions of conflict transportation, exploring how these processes are experienced, embodied, and navigated in the everyday. The dissertation investigates Somali diaspora spaces in Denmark and Finland, focusing on how conflict in Somalia is present and reconfigured in everyday life, and paying particular attention to how racialised violence(s) in the country of residence are entangled in these processes. The dissertation employs ethnographic methods, drawing particularly on “patchwork” ethnography and an affective methodology that is sensitive to shifting positionalities and locations of power in the research process. Specifically, it highlights the use of tension and discomfort as productive entry points for reflexivity in research encounters. Situated at the intersection of diaspora studies and critical peace and conflict studies, the dissertation combines feminist peace research approaches and assemblage thinking to develop new ways of conceptualising diaspora space in contexts of ongoing conflict. It argues that an assemblage approach, when combined with feminist attentiveness to intersectionality and affect, allows for a more encompassing understanding of the links between diasporas, peace, and conflict. This approach also works productively with the conceptual and methodological tensions that characterise key debates in diaspora research. The dissertation advances the original concept of affective conflict transportation, arguing that attention to affect reveals new dimensions of how conflict manifest in the everyday in diaspora spaces. This perspective enables a more nuanced understanding of the emotional, relational, and embodied presence of conflict in everyday life. Moreover, the focus on the everyday provides an often-missing dimension in studies on diasporas and conflict, which have tended to prioritise transnational mobilisation and formal associations over lived and felt experiences. Empirically, the dissertation contributes to limited research on how conflict transportation manifests in the everyday lives of Somali-background people in Denmark and Finland, and how these experiences intersect with processes of racialisation and othering. The three empirical chapters build upon one another to trace the complex production of diaspora space and conflict transportation. The first chapter shows how multiple forms of violence are entangled in diaspora spaces, producing specific subjectivities, everyday borderings, and unequal power relations. The second chapter delves into the affective and material dimensions of diaspora space and conflict transportation, developing the concept of affective conflict transportation to show how transnational conflict dynamics are deeply felt and shaped by affective relationalities. The third and final empirical chapter explores how people navigate and transform these processes in their everyday lives, highlighting the hyper-awareness, and everyday political agency of diasporic individuals and communities. It shows how diaspora space is continuously (re)made and reconfigured through interactions with conflict and racialised violent structures. Overall, the dissertation contributes new conceptual, methodological, and empirical insights into how conflict transportation is experienced navigated and transformed, offering a more nuanced understanding of the entanglements between conflict, affect, power, and diaspora space.