Mussa Idris publishes study about East African migrants in Washington D.C.

Assistant Professor Mussa Idris from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology recently published a peer-reviewed book chapter titled “Same migrants, two business models: Culture-centered and non-traditional businesses established by Ethiopians and Eritreans in Washington D.C.”

The chapter can be found in pages 93-108 of the book Africa and Globalization: Challenges of Governance and Creativity published this year by Palgrave Macmillan. It describes how Washington, D.C. is the city where one can find the largest number of Ethiopians living outside of their home country, as well as a large number of Eritreans, and how these migrants have transformed certain areas and neighborhoods of D.C. with their entrepreneurship.

The chapter compares and contrasts the characteristics of two types of businesses: the culture-centered ones, which are based on offering traditional cultural products such as ethnic foods and coffee, clothes, music and more, and the non-traditional businesses, which focus on activities not related to cultural expressions, such as providing transportation services and parking.

The editors for the book accepted 11 chapters after the peer-review process. The book was edited by Toyin Falola, the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and by Kenneth Kalu with the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada).

Assistant professor Mussa Idris has previously published research in the journal African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal and in the book “The African Metropolis: Struggles over Urban Space, Citizenship, and Rights to the City,” published by Routledge in 2017. He has also presented his research, consistently, in venues such as the American Anthropological Association and the Society of Applied Anthropology’s annual conferences.