{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.022843639228042535, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011421819614021268, 'mean_word_length': 5.091127098321343, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The anthropology and sociology of the Somali diaspora

Somalis have been travelling outside the Somali Peninsula since time immemorial, but the most outstanding exodus of their recent historical and contemporarymass migration – displacementwould be abetter term – occurred after the 1970s, when themobility and movement of the Somali diaspora to the Arab Peninsula, especially to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, attracted many Somalis. In comparison with other African diaspora communities, it is striking that the Somali diaspora –which constitutes one of the largest in theWest and provides one of themost vibrant trading communities in Africa and the Middle East – has attracted less attention in diaspora studies. The only previous books on the Somali diaspora were Rima Berns-McGown’s Muslims in the Diaspora: the Somali communities of London and Toronto (1999); Abdi M. Kusow and Stephanie Bjork’s edited volume From Mogadishu to Dixon: the Somali diaspora in a global context (2007); A. Osman Farah, MammoMuchie and Joakim Gundel’s edited volume Somalia: diaspora and state reconstitution in the Horn of Africa (2007); and Nahla Al Huraibi’s Islam, Gender and Migrant Integration: the case of Somali immigrant families (2014). With the publication of these two well-researched books under review, the anthropology and sociology of the Somali diaspora may no longer be misread or misrepresented. Cawo Abdi’s and Stephanie Bjork’s books provide differing explanatory analyses on the cultural and trade dynamics of the Somalis who migrated out of Somalia, following the collapse of Somalia as one unitary nation state when the military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre fled the capital in 1991. The result was Somali migrants scavenging for social, economic and physical security around the globe, with a preference for the West due to the perceived notion of finding solace there. Migrating overseas was seen as going to Jannah (paradise). It has become normal to find a Somali in every continent of the world. The widespread displacement of the Somali diaspora remains a clear reminder that Somalis no longer live solely in East Africa or the Horn of Africa, but also form a critical refugee group in the USA, Australia and Europe. Despite their increasing presence in the diaspora, the history of the Somali global diaspora is yet to be written. Any serious study along this line would start with the Berber Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who hinted in 1331 at the presence of Somalis in Arabia and India, and even in the Maldives.1