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Ethnic Hierarchies

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Abstract

Ethnicity is another factor that impacts social mobility and this chapter explores how being Tigrayan in Ethiopia impacted experiences and outcomes of urban-to-urban migration. Tigrayans have often been assumed to be privileged because of their ethnic affiliation with the former Tigrayan-led government. For many interlocutors, these perceptions led to violence against them during their university studies and influenced social relations when they worked in urban centres outside Tigray. Exposure to these stereotypes and personal experience of contentions over their ethnicity-based position led them to develop strategies to assert their identities in ways that were more compatible with multi-ethnic contexts. Their adaptations of how they presented their Tigrayan ethnicity gave them skills that distinguished them from fellow Tigrayans who had less exposure to such diversity. These distinctions emerged from their migration and contributed to further shape commonalities among urban-to-urban migrants.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The lead party in the multi-ethnic EPDRF coalition was the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which was also the party of its long-term prime minister Meles Zenawi.

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  1. Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Markus Roos Breines

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Correspondence to Markus Roos Breines .

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Breines, M.R. (2021). Ethnic Hierarchies. In: Becoming Middle Class. Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa . Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3_6

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