「移民力」を発揮する

―在米ケニア人移民による母国の社会開発―

抄録

The Republic of Kenya has made remarkable progress in the past 20 years. On the outskirts of the capital city of Nairobi, multilevel roads have been constructed, and modern shopping malls and beautiful residential areas have been built. These coincide with a period of high economic growth driven by the development of natural resources. At the same time, however, poverty is still prevalent in Kenya, and it is said that a quarter of the population is poor. I began my fieldwork in Kenya in the mid-1990s. Since then, I have witnessed this imbalance and wondered whether the government is making efforts to improve people's lives. In such a situation, when I paid attention to the presence of Kenyan migrants living abroad, I thought that their multifaceted contribution, not only through their economic power of remittance, would impact their home country and lead to its social development. It is not a top-down development but a bottom-up aspiration to help each other among the fellow countrymen.

Kenyan immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland, the United States, where I conducted fieldwork, had strong feelings for their people back home and the ability to take actions to save their home country from crisis. They showed an attitude of improving the work capacity and correcting unequal gender relations and social hierarchy. Also, they make efforts to resist injustice and discrimination prevailing in their home countries and return to their hometown with glory. This paper examines the potential for these immigrants' attitudes, behaviors, and newly acquired abilities, which I named “immigrant power,”to promote social development in Kenya.