Staging the Rwandan Diaspora: The Politics of Performance

This article explores how the Rwandan state ‘stages’ its diaspora as agents of change. I argue that
‘staging’ – in the sense of creating a specific, positive image – is an important aspect of the present
government’s effort to create a new Rwanda of national unity and reconciliation. Although the diaspora
mostly is articulated in policy documents in positive terms, there is also a strong acknowledgement
of the so-called ‘negative forces’ of the diaspora. Staging the diaspora as agents of change is
therefore a means to deal with this ambiguous perception of the diaspora and cultivate only its positive
sides, and becomes part of a larger state-building project that is about ‘staging’ or ‘performing’
national unity and asserting state sovereignty. I argue that the Rwandan state performs its sovereignty
and governs its hostile diaspora through processes of categorising the diaspora and
through processes of inclusion and exclusion of certain categories.