Sister sojourners: Routing the transnational movement of African American women

Transnationalism has become one of the fundamental ways for understanding contemporary border crossings. Discussions about contemporary transnational movement compel us to engage with the cultural politics of home and belonging as well as the ways transnational migration informs processes of identity construction. This dissertation investigates how African American women's contemporary transnational migration to London England influences the ways they conceptualize and articulate their identities as raced and gendered diasporic subjects. While few studies position London, England as an endpoint in an African American diasporic trajectory, I assert that African American women's contemporary transnational movement and experiences represent a departure from and challenge to predominant characterizations of gendered migration and diaspora. In contrast, to making a vertical move from a "third world" nation to a "first world" nation, African American women's movement from one industrialized, predominately white space to another places them in a paradoxical position in which they may have access to certain privileges associated with first world citizenship yet continue to be devalued for being Black and female despite geographic context. Using ethnographic data conducted with current African American female residents of London, I find that transnational migration provided a distance from locally specific forms of identity and identification. This distance offered a space for the renegotiation of identities that compelled research participants to investigate the criteria of individual and group membership along the axes of race, gender, and nation.