IMAGINED PLACEMAKING: TIZITA, “PLACEBASED-NOSTALGIA”, AND THE CREATION OF IMMIGRANT SELVES AMONG AMHARA ETHIOPIANS IN MINNESOTA, USA

Mesganaw A Mihiret

This research investigates the experiences of Amhara Ethiopians in Minnesota, USA, emphasizing tizita, “place-based-nostalgia”, imagined placemaking, and creation of immigrant selves, by nuancing a multimodels approach including imagined-ness of community, cultural schema theories, cultural domain analysis, theories of self-construct, and counterfactual thoughts. The primary research methods used include participant observation, key informant interviews, and informal conversations. Formal data was gathered from a total of 70 participants selected based on snowballing, chain referral technique, and analyzed using narrative (discourse) analysis, salience score analysis, and elicitation of self-schemas. The research mainly addressed: How do Amhara immigrants in USA engage in imagined placemaking guided by tizita, “place-based-nostalgia”, rooted in the vitality of history, and reconcile American and Amhara cultural schemas as well as negotiate models of Amhara (non-western) and Western self to create an immigrant self capable of successfully adjusting in American cultural context? It specifically addressed: How history shapes Amhara’s relations with other groups; why Amhara engage in imagined placemaking; major discrepancies and challenges; major conflicting cultural schemas and how they impact adjustment processes; whether Amhara self-concepts changed; and, how negotiating cultural schemas and self-construal models creates contextualized selves. The research finds that, tizita, “place-based-nostalgia”, coupled by historicity, is a crucial aspect of Amhara imagined placemaking. Besides, they reconcile discrepant expectations and realities as well as conflicting home culture and destination culture schemas while strategizing minority ideological resistance, and, without changing their core-self-schemas, create a contextualized self. The research draws how Amhara, coming from a non-western culture, engage in tizita, placemaking, identity consolidation, ideological resistance, and creation of contextualized selves to becoming capable persons in American cultural context. More broadly, it speaks to tizita, “place-based-nostalgia”, as an experience of immigrants in general, although the Amhara situation elaborates a place-based nostalgia and are dealing with a history fraught with the ambiguities of place, it may be the case that imagining a home that is full of ambiguities is something that immigrants in general have to grapple with, and this aspect of the immigrant experience has not been fully appreciated yet, and this dissertation helps to draw attention to it.

IMAGINED PLACEMAKING: TIZITA, “PLACEBASED-NOSTALGIA”, AND THE CREATION OF IMMIGRANT SELVES AMONG AMHARA ETHIOPIANS IN MINNESOTA, USA

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