Somali Bantu Refugees Research Articles

Book Review: Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman

Book Review: Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman

Two Classes of “Marriage”: Race and Sexual Slavery in Al-Shabaab-Controlled Somalia

ABSTRACT Some Somali majority clan girls and women receive economic and security benefits from marriage to Al-Shabaab fighters. Yet, the literature treats women’s experiences monolithically and misses the role that race plays in determining the circumstances of such unions. The authors argue that one should not refer to the unions of Somali Bantu girls and women with Al-Shabaab fighters as a “marriage” but rather as sexual and domestic slavery – a form of extraction by Al-Shabaab that works to ethnically cleanse the Bantu from their ancestral land. Drawing on data from an original survey conducted in 2017 of 139 Somali Bantu refugee households who fled to Kenya during the previous year, the authors examine the nature and extent of unions between females from different races with Al-Shabaab fighters. Women and girls from majority clans are more likely to marry fighters freely. Compared to majority clan females, Somali Bantu girls are enslaved by Al-Shabaab fighters at younger ages and typically remain with their own families rather than moving to the man’s household, contrary to Somali’s patrilineal marriage customs. Al-Shabaab fighters do not claim the children they have with Somali Bantu girls and women, whom they despise as a racially distinct minority with low social status. This work underscores the need to avoid the term “marriage” when referring to the sexual slavery of minorities in Somalia by Al-Shabaab and for the international community both to investigate claims of ethnic cleansing as well as support the fledgling Somali government in establishing a system of rule of law.

Traditional Medicine and Help-Seeking Behaviors for Health Problems Among Somali Bantu Refugees Resettled in the United States.

Somali refugees have resettled in the United States in large numbers. The focus of this study was specifically on the Somali Bantu refugees, an ethnic minority group from Somalia. The goal of this study was to understand the following: (a) jinn (invisible beings or forces in Islamic theology) and related health problems resulting from jinn possession affecting Somali Bantu refugees, (b) types of traditional healing practices integrated into help-seeking behavior, and (c) pathways of care utilized to address health problems. In total, 20 participant interviews were conducted with Somali Bantu refugees resettled in the United States. Overall, participants described types of jinn and associated health problems. In addition, participants identified different pathways of care, including formal and informal health care. Participants accessed these pathways both concurrently and sequentially. Somali Bantu utilize complex and varied health care services based on their understanding of the causes of health problems and experiences with care providers.

Stronger together: Community resilience and Somali Bantu refugees.

Refugee populations are at risk of adverse mental health outcomes. It is important to identify refugee strengths at the community level that can be leveraged to overcome barriers to well-being. In pursuit of this goal, this study focuses on identifying what promotes community resilience among Somali Bantu refugees in the United States. Researchers used snowball-sampling strategies in a large New England city to recruit 81 Somali Bantu youth and adults to participate in 14 focus groups conducted between 2011 and 2013. Researchers used principles of thematic content analysis to analyze data specific to the construct of community resilience. Authors identified 2 main components of Somali Bantu community resilience: independence and cultural preservation. There were 2 themes related to promoting community resilience among Somali Bantu: commitment to community, and religion and spirituality. We discuss the importance of identifying culturally informed components of community resilience that can be used to develop services for refugee populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Stronger Together: Community Resilience and Somali Bantu Refugees

Supplemental Material for Stronger Together: Community Resilience and Somali Bantu Refugees

Review of Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman

Review of Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman

Reproductive health decision-making among US-dwelling Somali Bantu refugee women: A qualitative study.

To explore Somali Bantu refugee women's reproductive health decision-making, as influenced by their resettlement in the USA. Available literature on reproductive health of refugee women is mostly from the healthcare provider perspective, neglecting the lived experience of the population. Qualitative descriptive. A purposive sample of 30 women was recruited for five focus groups. Data were collected via demographic survey and semi-structured focus group discussion. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. Our study revealed that Somali Bantu women considered children as wealth. Reproductive health decision-making was influenced by three main factors: family influence, cultural/religious ideas and experience with various hormonal birth control methods. Nurses and other healthcare providers would better serve refugee women if equipped with a more nuanced understanding of factors in their reproductive healthcare decision-making. This study can inform tailored and cultural relevant interventions to improve reproductive health among those at greatest need. Our findings can serve to guide nurses and other healthcare providers' clinical approach to a subset of the population whose cultural beliefs and practices regarding reproductive health may be unfamiliar. Incorporating the perspective of the Somali Bantu women will facilitate the provision of person-centred care and ensure women receive appropriate, efficient and quality care that meets their needs, which may potentially reduce financial costs to the healthcare system.

Acculturation and Assimilation: A Qualitative Inquiry of Teacher Expectations for Somali Bantu Refugee Students

This article explored the range in teacher expectations held for Somali Bantu refugees using content analysis of one-on-one interviews with teachers who taught Somali Bantu students at an elementary school in Chicago. Analyses revealed the emergence of five categories of expectations: (a) general acculturative expectations around language and knowledge (b) behaviors, (c) internal attributes, (d) classroom behaviors, and (e) family/home. These findings raise questions about the potential danger of teacher’s expectations that might suggest assimilation to oppressive racial statuses. Implications for teachers and future research are discussed. Limitations and generalizability are also discussed.

When worlds collide: Academic adjustment of Somali Bantu students with limited formal education in a U.S. elementary school

This paper reports on the findings of a two-year ethnographic study of newly arrived Somali Bantu refugee students in a U.S. elementary school (K-6) in Chicago. These data paint a detailed picture of students’ behavioral and academic adjustment to school, and the drivers behind “behavioral incidents” (instances when children’s behavior presented a problem for school staff) and their academic engagement or disengagement. Bantu students required a degree of flexibility and accommodation from their teachers, whose attitudes toward acculturation could generally be characterized as “assimilationist” (requiring students to conform to U.S. culture and school rules) or “multicultural” (respecting and accepting the students expressing their heritage culture at the school). This study illustrates the difficulties faced by refugee students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) when adjusting to U.S. schools, and the pressures placed on teachers and other school staff. Strategies used by teachers in working with SLIFE are described. These findings also extend the literature on the academic engagement of immigrants to this group of SLIFE. In this study, SLIFE were disengaged not because of disinterest or resisting adult expectations at school but because they were unfamiliar with the culture of schooling and did not have the academic background necessary to complete school tasks. The study also illustrates the need to provide schools with adequate support to accommodate the needs of SLIFE.

“We would never forget who we are”: resettlement, cultural negotiation, and family relationships among Somali Bantu refugees

Somali refugees are resettling in large numbers in the US, but little is known about the Somali Bantu, an ethnic minority within this population. Refugee youth mental health is linked to the functioning of the larger family unit. Understanding how the process of culturally adjusting to life after resettlement relates to family functioning can help identify what kind of interventions might strengthen families and lead to better mental health outcomes for youth. This paper seeks to address the following research questions: (1) How do different groups of Somali Bantu refugees describe their experiences of culturally adapting to life in the US?; and (2) How, if at all, do processes of cultural adaptation in a new country affect Somali Bantu family functioning? We conducted 14 focus groups with a total of 81 Somali Bantu refugees in New England. Authors analyzed focus groups using principles of thematic analysis to develop codes and an overarching theoretical model about the relationship between cultural adaptation, parent-child relationships, and family functioning. Views and expectations of parent-child relationships were compared between Somali Bantu youth and adults. Cultural negotiation was dependent upon broader sociocultural contexts in the United States that were most salient to the experience of the individual. Adult and youth participants had conflicting views around negotiating Somali Bantu culture, which often led to strained parent-child relationships. In contrast, youth sibling relationships were strengthened, as they turned to each other for support in navigating the process of cultural adaptation.

Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman

Reviewed by: Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman Cindy Horst Catherine Besteman, Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 352 pp. Making Refuge explores the question of how people whose entire way of life has been destroyed construct a new future for themselves. In this beautifully written book, Catherine Besteman argues that in the process of trying to rebuild life, refugees and those who host them transform each other. She shows how refugees and their hosts are affected by the slow border crossings of all kinds that accompany human mobility. The book is highly relevant at a time when the hosting of refugees is debated extensively across the world. The renewed interest in the hosting of refugees has been sparked by the fact that Europe, the continent whose historical events led to the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention, is facing tremendous challenges providing refuge for the refugees at its borders today. The focus of the book is on "Somali Bantu" who aim to establish new lives in Lewiston, Maine. Besteman describes the process by which many different groups "became Bantu" when resettlement to the United States became an option for them. She describes how the Italian colonial authorities may have been the first to use the term "Bantu" in the 1930s to distinguish the riverine farmers from the pastoralist Somalis. Yet the Somali Bantu were not an actual group, but consisted of a range of widely divergent communities, many with a slave ancestry from Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and Kenya. The Bantu then became a group worthy of resettlement in the US resettlement scheme due to their particularly oppressive past and minority status in Somalia, making them a good objective of relocation from the region. Besteman shows how the strategic actions of both various Bantu leaders and those working for the UN and Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 2, p. 549–552, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2017 by the Institute for Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of The George Washington University. All rights reserved. [End Page 549] donors on resettlement, solidified the case for resettling them as Somali Bantu to the United States. With this she reclaims the figure of the refugee as an individual with political agency, which is far too rarely done in academic texts on refugees. The book offers important perspectives on the transformations and border crossings taking place as a consequence of this group's arrival in Lewiston. This happens in three ways, reflected in the three parts of the book: the first discusses the process of becoming refugees, the second describes the reception in Lewiston from the perspective of the hosts, and the third the process of making refuge in Lewiston from the perspective of the Somali Bantu. The first strength of the book is that Besteman's interaction with those who came to be known as Somali Bantu, started long before they arrived in the US and in Lewiston. As a young anthropologist, Besteman lived in Banta in Southcentral Somalia in 1987–1988, just a few years before the collapse of the Somali state. There, she conducted extensive fieldwork for her doctoral research while her photographer husband engaged in taking pictures of the community and way of life. Within three years after their departure, the village was consumed by civil war and they never managed to go back to Banta. Almost two decades later, Besteman is reunited with some of the people she knew from her stay in Banta and their neighbors in surrounding villages, when she meets them in Lewiston. Sharing everyday life in Banta before the war and having access to the many pictures of life her husband took, Besteman has an in depth understanding of the entire way of life that has been destroyed and an extremely valuable tool to inspire people's memories of that time. She also knows many of those who lost their lives in the war or during flight and can relate to the life histories she is being told on a deeply personal level. A second strength of the book is that in Part 2, Besteman presents three different perspectives on the arrival of Somali Bantus...

The Role of Shift-Induced Interference in the Development of a Typologically Rare Phonological Contrast in Somali Bantu Kizigua

This paper discusses the development of a typologically rare phonological contrast in an under-documented language called Somali Bantu Kizigua. The contrast in question is a contrast between two coronal places of articulation for NC (Nasal + Consonant) clusters, a genetic feature found across Bantu languages. The argument of this paper is that shift-induced interference as a mechanism for contact-induced change (Thomason & Kaufman, 1988) played a crucial role in the development of this contrast. The linguistic data comes from consultant work with speakers from a Somali Bantu refugee community in the US. This data was compared with data from missionary publications from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries (Kisbey, 1897, 1906). The comparison shows a two-place coronal contrast in the recently collected data, but only one place of articulation for coronal stops in the older data. To build a case for contact-induced change, relevant socio-historical information is presented. This discussion shows that the Zigua people, originally from Tanzania, migrated to Somalia in the 19th Century as part of the East African Slave Trade. This forced migration eventually brought the Zigua in contact with Chimwiini speakers. Some Chimwiini speakers absorbed themselves into the Kizigua speech community in Somalia through intermarriage. Language shift from Chimwiini to Kizigua is argued to have introduced retroflex NC into Kizigua. The subsequent borrowing of Standard Swahili loan words with alveolar NC then introduced the two-place coronal contrast found in the language as spoken by speakers today. What is most intriguing about this change is how retroflexion of historic alveolar NC results in a pattern identical to what would be expected of a Neogrammarian sound change. The fact that it is not and the fact that cases of shift-induced interference are under-reported in the literature raises the question of how many other purported cases of internally-motivated change may actually be due to shift-induced interference.

Struggling to start over: human rights challenges for Somali Bantu refugees in the United States

Despite persistent challenges to successful refugee resettlement in the United States, migration from Somalia has attracted little widespread attention from human rights scholars. Utilising longitudinal data from qualitative interviews conducted at three points over the course of ten years, this study shows that resettled Somali Bantu refugees face a range of rights challenges, particularly related to financial concerns and family issues. Rather than solely focusing on cultural differences, interviews highlight the obstacles created by practical concerns and inadequacies – including those that threaten the full enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). Recommendations include the extension of support services and the creation of mentorship programmes for adult refugees.

Borders and Intersections of Possibility: Multilingual Repertoires of Refugee Families in the Southwest U.S.

This study examines the linguistic and cultural intersections of recently arrived Somali Bantu refugee students in South Texas through the lens of border theory. The use of Spanish in the homes of refugee families is explored in addition to ways in which an educator used testimonios to honor students’ migration experiences. Findings show how specific approaches used in schools that affirm both the receiving communities’ and the new arrivals' local knowledge can have a lasting impact on literacy acquisition and resettlement experiences. Findings from this study also illuminate the potential impact of educators who develop a critical, inquiry stance by embedding multiple entry points for students to cross social, cultural, linguistic, and curricular borders in school.

Refuge fragments, fragmentary refuge

This experimental essay shows the ways that Somali Bantu refugees’ experiences of resettlement, especially their encounters with the bureaucracy of immigration and resettlement, fragment what for the refugees are meaningful wholes (such as families), as well as the sometimes creative, though often frustrated, ways they work to re-create wholeness and meaning in their new context. Revealing cognition and feeling in the moment, these fragments challenge the conception of refuge as relief or resolution, the end of the journey. Instead they expose just how fragmentary refuge is, where the fragments, like the experience of refuge, take the form of a puzzle that shows the precarity and uncertainty of refuge. But the stories told in these fragments also push back at their fragmentation by revealing how refugees puzzle through and attempt to control fragmentation, demonstrating the strength of refugee agency and the beautiful potency of their resistances.

The Elderly Somali Bantu Refugees' Adjustment to American Healthcare

The Elderly Somali Bantu Refugees' Adjustment to American Healthcare

Multi-tier mental health program for refugee youth.

We sought to establish that refugee youths who receive a multi-tiered approach to services, Project SHIFA, would show high levels of engagement in treatment appropriate to their level of mental health distress, improvements in mental health symptoms, and a decrease in resource hardships. Study participants were 30 Somali and Somali Bantu refugee youths in the English language learner classroom in a middle school in New England. Project SHIFA is a multi-tiered program including prevention and community resilience building for the community at large, school-based early intervention groups for at-risk students, and direct intervention using an established trauma model (trauma systems therapy) for those with significant psychological distress. Data were collected from students at time of enrollment, 6-month follow-up, and 12-month follow-up. Measures used were the War Trauma Screening Scale, Adolescent Post-War Adversities Scale-Somali version, UCLA PTSD Reaction Index for DSM-IV (Revision 1), and the Depression Self-Rating Scale. Students across all tiers of the program demonstrated improvements in mental health and resources. Resource hardships were significantly associated with symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder over time, and the stabilization of resource hardships coincided with significant improvements in symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder for the top tier of participants. Project SHIFA is a promising model of treatment for young refugees.

Resettlement of Somali Bantu Refugees in an Era of Economic Globalization

Resettlement of Somali Bantu Refugees in an Era of Economic Globalization

Health education for Somali Bantu refugees via home visits

Somali Bantu refugees, with unique health information needs, created challenges for health and social service providers. A service innovation was developed (i) to raise awareness, especially among local health and social service providers, about the Bantu refugees' presence in the community, their culture, and their information needs and (ii) to deliver needed health information, emphasizing child health, to the Bantu mothers in their homes. The project consisted of: (i) a community conference targeting local health and social service providers, describing the refugees' presence in the community, their culture, and information needs. (ii) Focus groups conducted with members of the Bantu population elicited additional information needs. (iii) Curriculum was developed based on identified needs, and (iv) the curriculum was delivered to the refugees in their homes. A clinical informationist and MP3 technology enhanced the project. Conference attendees' evaluation responses indicated improved understanding of Bantu culture. Focus groups' identification of health information needs provided a framework for the health education curriculum. A project website made educational materials available to other healthcare providers. The project raised awareness of the Bantus' presence, culture, and information needs. Identification of other unmet needs demonstrated that additional support for refugees is required.

Whose Deficit Is This Anyhow? Exploring Counter-Stories of Somali Bantu Refugees' Experiences in "Doing School"

In this article, Laura Roy and Kevin Roxas draw from two studies with Somali Bantu refugee families in South Texas and Michigan. Findings from both study sites revealed a disconnect between how educators perceived the Somali Bantu families'educational goals and Somali Bantu families' actual views of education. In contrast to educators' perceptions, Somali Bantu caregivers stressed the high value they placed on education through their storytelling practices in the home that related past struggles, including experiences of violence and poverty. The stories told and advice given by parents and elders showed an embedded value of education within the community and a counter-story to the way in which Somali Bantu families were viewed by the majority of their teachers. The authors conclude that the discourse employed by educators was grounded in a deficit-based paradigm that created missed opportunities for connecting with Somali Bantu parents and marginalized students by blaming them rather than evaluating the lack of education provided to families in how to "do school" in the American context.