My master’s thesis deals with migrants and migrants’ expulsions from Uganda in the 1960s and early 1970s. More specifically, I focus on Kenyan and Asian minorities who were progressively excluded and expelled by the Ugandan government with the argument of redistributing economic opportunities to “nationals only”. During my own research, I came across actors who belonged to transborder communities. In particular, Kenyan citizens in Uganda had maintained transnational family and friendship networks that stretched across the Uganda-Kenya border.

 

During this summer school, I met people who also worked in borderland areas and thereby faced relatively similar challenges. The question of how we identify one’s national belonging came up several times during informal conversations and I was fascinated by the many common points which we could observe between otherwise extremely dissimilar geographical areas (namely, Eastern Europe and East Africa).

In my thesis, the “borderland focus” comes as a “micro” approach within a broader national narrative in which I investigate how a Ugandan nation was delimited in the postcolonial period through the marginalization of “foreigners” on the basis of race and citizenship. Therefore, the question of “scales” is paramount for me and turned out to be a crucial problem explored in this conference. Kenyan and Indian minorities were caught between a fallen British imperial space and the incipient postcolonial nations. The empire having collapsed, these former imperial minorities fell into a limbo and became foreigners in an international system of nation-states. Targeted by nationalist policies, their expulsion caused international tensions between the UK, India and the East African countries. How to integrate the “local” borderland scale with the Ugandan national frame and the international global system was a key-problem that I faced. Therefore, the discussions revolving around the simultaneous integration of various scales (global, imperial, national, local) and the way they interact with one another resonated strongly with my own experience.

However, this interplay of scales and transnational ties also raised practical problems. This point was particularly raised during Patricio’s presentation as well as the Wednesday morning “Research Symposium”. The trouble of having to visit several archival centres in a limited time and on a low budget is undoubtedly an unavoidable limitation while the adoption of a transnational angle pushes researchers to consider an ever-increasing amount of sources spread around the world. Thereby, the question arising is where one may decide to set the limits of one’s own topic and artificially “cut” a study’s ramifications.

 

From borderland issues to practical questions, I was glad to enjoy this opportunity to exchange perspectives and know-how with more experienced researchers. Surely, this conference will help me overcome obstacles on the road to presenting my own PhD project.