Abstract
Somali migrants in Minnesota are actively involved in the American society through education, employment, entrepreneurship and political participation, but they also remain connected to their homeland through kinship, economic, religious, political and cultural ties. Although the contemporary communication technologies have made these connections more accessible, the relationship to the country of birth is nevertheless not an easy one. This chapter explores how Somali migrants in Minnesota comprehend their relationship to their distant homeland. By paying attention to the differences between the first and the 1.5-generation migrants, this chapter contributes to the ongoing debate about the transmission of diasporic orientations from one migrant generation to another.
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- 1.
First generation refers to those migrants who have left their country of birth as adults and second generation to their children born in the country of residence. 1.5-generation, in turn, usually refers to those children, who came to the US between the ages of eight and twelve (Rumbaut 1994). In this article, the scale of 1.5 is wider (). For that end, it would be more accurate to talk about 1.25–1.75 -generation.
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Kananen, M. (2019). The Call of the Homeland: “My Relationship to Somalia Is Difficult to Explain”. In: Armila, P., Kananen, M., Kontkanen, Y. (eds) The Contexts of Diaspora Citizenship. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94490-6_4
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