Decolonizing the Sojourner/Settler Paradigm: Reimagining Histories of Yemenis in the United States

In Sojourners and Settlers: The Yemeni Immigrant Experience (1988), an anthology on the lives of Yemeni immigrants in the U.S., the trope of the “sojourner” versus the “settler” served as a guiding framework that informed the trajectory of the case studies, the types of research questions that were asked, and the scholarly claims that were made. Under the sojourner/settler binary, is the categorization of two types of Yemeni immigrants: those who come to the U.S. temporarily with plans of eventually returning to Yemen and those who permanently settle in the U.S. and successfully assimilate to “American” culture and lifestyle. Implicit in this generalizing categorization, however, is the erasure of complex and lived experiences within Yemeni communities. While the title, Sojourners and Settlers, preempted the possibility of complicated, non-binary narratives, it did accurately point to the ways in which Yemeni immigrant experiences were (and continue to be) portrayed in the academic scholarship. In this paper, I will explore the ways in which, unlike other Middle Eastern communities, scholarship on Yemenis the U.S. has overwhelmingly been informed by the sojourner/settler framework. This is partly due to the fact that historically Yemeni immigrant communities have been overwhelmingly Muslim and working class. As a result, Yemeni communities have been racialized through both religion and class and are often described as being isolationist, non-assimilative, and traditional. Through a critical historical analysis, this paper seeks to decolonize the sojourner/settler paradigm and re-imagine histories of Yemeni diasporic communities. In doing so, this paper will contribute to imagining new ways of doing community-engaged research in Middle Eastern communities.