From Addis to Inglewood: Panethnic Placemaking Practices in Los Angeles County Within Diasporic Communities from Ethiopia

Keywords: placemaking, diaspora, Los Angeles, Africa/Ethiopia, identity, belonging
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between transnational belonging, identity and panethnic placemaking in Los Angeles County (LAC) among individuals with ties to Ethiopia. While early Ethiopian emigration to the United States dates back to the 1950’s, those initial asylees were students, scholars, and/or elites drawn to places such as LAC for educational attainment purposes.1 In the decades that followed, waves of Ethiopian migration to LAC have resulted in the formation of the first Little Ethiopia ethnic enclave and countless panethnic and ethnically specified placemaking institutions; arenas; socioconsumerscapes; and intangible spaces throughout the geographically dispersed region.2 My paper therefore explores these processes of identity-based community-building by interrogating how “Ethiopian identity” is defined within these diasporic institutions, arenas, socioconsumerscapes, and/or intangible ethnic places in Los Angeles County and what are the boundaries of belonging and exclusion? As Ethiopia now marks nearly two years of ethnic conflict, LAC diasporic groups constantly grapple with identity-based inter-/intragroup representation as they engage in placemaking processes within and across 80+ ethnic groups with ancestral ties to Ethiopia. Through qualitative methods, including participant observation and interviews with LAC diasporic community leaders, I examine how placemaking entities construct notions of group membership among first, second, and 1.5 generation Ethiopians in Southern California by coding for themes such as community, exclusion, and belonging using NVivo. Thus, this project serves as a useful case study for understanding ethnic placemaking within highly diverse Black immigrant populations, and ultimately provides scholarly insights into intragroup kinship within East African immigrant communities.