Solidarity until the end

Abstract

Southern California has an Ethiopian diaspora population that goes back to the exodus from Ethiopia caused by the socialist revolution in the early 1970s. This diaspora increased immensely in number because of political and economic reasons around the turn of the millennium. With around 80,000 members, the Ethiopian population in southern California forms one of the largest immigrant communities in the USA, a country that hosts the largest Ethiopian diaspora in the world, of 500,000 people. One of the central and most widely attended life rituals in Ethiopia is the funeral service. For most members of the com-munity in the USA, it is important to hold this event according to cultural norms or to repatriate the deceased to their home country. Both options are very expensive and require the help of others, whether that be in the preparation of Ethiopian food or knowledge of American laws. Around ten years ago, once many members of the Ethiopian diaspora were more settled in the USA, they established many insurance associations to help give culturally appropriate farewells to deceased members of the community. The fol-lowing article discusses these groups as a form of "solidarity from below" (Featherstone 2012) and describes the imaginative power and ideas that lie at the foundation of these association as well as their limits.