Tanzanians in the Land of Oz: diaspora and transnationality in Wichita, Kansas

Abstract

Studies of recent African immigration to the USA are part of increased scholarly concern for new diasporas and transnationality. Geographers' interests in how particular US settings impact upon African immigrants' experiences and how immigrants transform those settings can be enriched through studies of smaller communities, and their impacts on and experiences in the US outside of the main host cities. This case study of Tanzanians in Wichita, Kansas, concentrates on themes within this community's migration stories that emerged in our research. These include the pull of educational opportunity, the ambivalence of displacement, the simultaneous transnationality and translocality (or local fluidity) of Tanzanians in Wichita, and the diversity of experiences even within a small number of migrants. These themes appear commonly in many US African immigrant communities. We seek to address the possibly distinctive aspects of this case, due to its Tanzanian-ness and its relation to a presumably less likely migration destination, a mid-sized and not very diverse city in Kansas.