The Politics of (In)security: Reconstructing African-Asian Relations, Citizenship and Community in Post-Expulsion Uganda

Abstract

This dissertation explores the dynamics of geopolitical South-Southism and the possibilities and limits of renewed African-Asian relationships in contemporary Uganda. More specifically, I analyze processes of post-1990s Ugandan Asian and South Asian migration to Uganda and the re-integration of a South Asian racialized minority in President Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) national order. First, I demonstrate that contemporary Uganda is a historically and culturally specific space characterized by the intersection of Ugandan Asians who remained in the country after former President Idi Amin’s 1972 expulsion decree, Ugandan Asian returnees, and new economic migrants from the South Asian sub-continent. Through ethnographic and historical method, I utilize the analytics of citizenship, sovereignty, and security (as well as political economy, race, culture ethnicity, gender, and sexuality) to explore the lived experiences of Ugandan Asians who remained, Ugandan Asian “returnees,” and new South Asian migrants in Kampala. Oral history interviews with Ugandan Asians who remained in Idi Amin’s regime (1972-1979), research at the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) in Kampala, ethnographic analysis of the politics of South Asian community-building, and an examination of the practices of Ugandan African and South Asian women as they respond to the increasing vulnerability of Indian women and their bodies—all of this material reveals historical transformations in South Asian inclusion and exclusion in Uganda and the multiple registers of racialized insecurity within which Ugandan Asians and new South Asian migrants are embedded. While the post-1990s state recognizes, legitimates, and manages South Asian presence in the country by constructing Ugandan Asians and South Asian migrants as “investors,” I show that South Asian women are rather invisible and unrecognized by emerging modes of neoliberal economic and security-oriented global and state governance. Furthermore, I argue that Ugandan Asians and South Asian migrants are engaged in a number of flexible securitization practices both in Uganda and in transnational contexts. These flexible securitization practices allow them to respond to the historical politics of racialized insecurity by enhancing their sense of personal, family, and community-based security.

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