Voices Nima Dahir
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[00:00:00] 

Nima Dahir: What does a just and equitable city of Columbus look like for all communities?

How might the city be attuned to all of these differences, but also be responsible for uplifting as many communities as possible? And I think the answer to that is to be determined, to be determined. 

Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. 

David Staley: Joining me today is Nima Dahir, Assistant Professor and Provost's Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. She's also affiliated with the [00:01:00] Institute for Population Research and the Kerwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Her research investigates how race and immigrant status intersect and modify one another in shaping residential patterns, neighborhood change and residential segregation.

Dr. Dahir, welcome to Voices. 

Nima Dahir: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. 

David Staley: I'm eager to dive into your research. So, I know one of the areas of research right now you're working on is the historic presence of Black immigrants in cities and how they are portrayed both in newspapers and in government documents.

Maybe we start with newspapers first. 

Nima Dahir: Yeah, so that project really came out of trying to understand the role of the media in representing how Black immigrants differ from African Americans, and I wanted to examine, you know, often we think about ethnic differentiation in terms of Black immigrants.

Differentiating themselves highlighting the fact that they are immigrants as a way of distancing themselves from African Americans, and it's [00:02:00] often treated as this sort of individual choice and this individual behavior on the part of Black immigrants themselves. And I was curious about the structural and institutional forces that might actually

promote that kind of behavior and might actually codify some of that behavior as well. And so the idea of the media really came to me, what role does the media play in understanding and relating Black immigrants to African Americans? And the case that I was focused on was the case of the Senegalese community in Harlem and New York City.

And the goal really with that community and focusing on that, was that Harlem is this large outsized place in Black American communities, that it's such a center of culture and history for Black America, and I was interested in thinking about this African immigrant community that moves in largely from the 1980s.

How are they portrayed in relationship to the larger African American community of Harlem? How are they differentiated? How are they understood? And so that's really where that project and the idea for [00:03:00] that came out of. 

David Staley: Which newspapers were you examining? 

Nima Dahir: So I looked at really all New York based newspapers,

and as you can probably guess, the New York Times was the premier source of data for that. And so, ultimately what I did though was sort all newspapers into either mainstream media, things like the New York Times, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, and then also into Black owned media, things like the New York Amsterdam News, which are speaking to a Black audience and thinking about the different postures that each of these sources of media might have towards these communities and their relationship.

David Staley: What conclusions did you draw? 

Nima Dahir: Ultimately, it's a pretty different story that these two sources of media are telling. So, things like the New York Times really focus on the immigrant, the fact that they are an immigrant community emphasizing their ethnicity above their actual race, and thinking about this as sort of an entryway for other New Yorkers into the sometimes inhospitable Harlem.

Really, the [00:04:00] immigrants then become a means of gentrification, of a way of opening the door into here are these new, exciting restaurants, here are these new, exciting community institutions, and so, this place of Harlem that might've seemed scary before to other New Yorkers, now it becomes, it's opens the door to Harlem.

And we see that, of course, Harlem has undergone extreme gentrification over the past several decades, and I think the Black immigrant community is a small part, but a part of that story. And then the Black owned media really portray the African immigrant community as part of this larger Black diaspora,

and so it's a very welcoming portrayal in terms of we are now all part of this Black diaspora. We have this, we have these ethnic differences, we have these nativity differences, but ultimately we're all part of this community, and Harlem itself is part of this larger continuum of the African diaspora that extends from Africa to the Caribbean into places like New York City.

And so it's a really cohesive story rather than a divisive one that I think the other sources of media are [00:05:00] sometimes telling. 

David Staley: How did you read or interpret the newspapers? What was the method you employed? 

Nima Dahir: I was really focused on a close reading, so it was basically a qualitative content analysis and that was ultimately a new thing for me.

I've never really engaged with media sources in that way. And primarily I am a quantitative scholar as well, so qualitative approaches our brain. 

David Staley: Sounds like you're coming around to history. 

Nima Dahir: Yes, I really am. I've been having a lot of fun with thinking about historical sources and archives as a means of understanding where we are now by looking at the past and these

such rich sources of data emerge from archives. And so, I was coding them, thinking about iterating between the initial ideas I had, the themes that actually began to emerge, thinking about analytic memos, and so it was a really qualitative close reading of the articles.

David Staley: When you say coding, what, what does that mean in, in terms of your research? 

Nima Dahir: So that means ultimately I was looking at the newspapers themselves and then thinking about any instances of text or descriptions that were interesting that pointed [00:06:00] potentially to, towards some larger themes. And then as I did a first go through, then returning back to developing some larger ideas about what is actually.

The stories that are being told, the themes that are emerging, and then going back and iterating and returning to those earlier articles and coding them again and seeing what stories start to emerge in that process. 

David Staley: I introduced this research as saying you've worked with both newspapers and with government documents.

Which government documents? 

Nima Dahir: Yeah, so this is a brand new project, and so it's focused on the city of Columbus, which... 

David Staley: Oh, okay. 

Nima Dahir: Is home for me, and is a place obviously as Ohio State faculty that is the backdrop for a lot of the place, the, this university and I want to engage with this community in some ways.

And so the idea for this project really comes out of wanting to understand in the Harlem Project, I'm thinking about the newspapers as this institution and this source of potentially relate the relationships between black immigrants and black Americans. And then [00:07:00] this other idea came to me of what role does the government play in understanding and sorting and classifying various

black populations, what different postures might they have towards different black populations. And so Columbus came to me not only as a, obviously a convenient sample, someone who's from here and someone who lives here, but also as an interesting one, this in the sense that the, there's a very large and prominent Black refugee population here of the Somali community here in Columbus.

And I wanted to understand, neighborhoods like Northland in Columbus, as they've changed over the past several decades, really transitioning not only, from white to black, but also within that Black population, a real diversification of ethnic origin that's happened. How does the city understand and describe, govern those areas differently ultimately. And so I've been, in the archives of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, really taking a very large search of All City documents starting [00:08:00] from 1982 to 2008 was really the a. So a sort of prior period with the Somali population and then the crux of the growth of the Somali population was during the 1990s into the early two thousands.

And so I wanted to see how, as the neighborhood changed, how government mentions of the neighborhood has changed as well. And so that analysis is still very much ongoing. But what has been interesting to see is that it seems like the government is really attuned to. Racial change in terms of the tran, the transitions from whites to, to black that Northland underwent in the late eighties and early nineties, but perhaps less attuned to the ethnic changes that happened post after afterwards, and is perhaps less concerned about those changes and less concerned about the neighborhood in terms of the actual.

Resources that the community gets as it changes ethnically. And this emerged, the idea for this project [00:09:00] emerged out of an interview based project that I've been working on with the Somali community here in Columbus too, which I'm happy to talk a little bit more about. And so that project is an interview-based project.

I've been recruiting and engaging with Somali community members in first, and second generation Somali community members in Columbus, and really trying to understand their relationship to neighborhood institutions and how they understand their neighborhood identities. And while I was conducting the first 15 or so of those interviews, a theme that kept emerging that I wasn't necessarily eliciting or wasn't necessarily expecting either was that.

The Somali community feels really shut out of government programs that, especially government programs that have a racial bend to them. And so there was this common refrain of we too are black and we too are disenfranchised, but we don't feel as though we are the beneficiaries of programs that, the city has built to start to [00:10:00] ameliorate some of those racial inequalities that are so embedded in our city.

And that felt like a big disservice to a lot of my respondents. And so the idea was really to look at the archive and say, is that, does that seem to be true? In some ways? The city really have a different attention towards these different populations and somewhat. So far it seems the answer is yes.

That there is this recession of governmental attention that happens as the neighborhood becomes more Somali transitioning from Black American to Somali. And the question remains that I'm still trying to figure out is whether attention is a good or bad thing, right? Is the city when it has a sharp focus on a neighborhood and is focused on redeveloping it or making it better, in some ways, better being in quotes?

Is that a good thing for the residents? Do they actually benefit from that? Answer is often no, but that the Somali community does feel as though they're not even given the chance to potentially benefit from some of these from some of this governmental attention. [00:11:00] Yeah. 

David Staley: So aside from publishing this in a scholarly journal, do you foresee your research having any sort of policy implications for the city, for the Somali community?

Nima Dahir: I haven't thought about that too explicitly so far. I think, as a sociologist, I often why, one of the reasons I love sociology is that so much of our research is policy relevant and has the capacities to, impact policy in hopefully good ways, but I always want to focus on getting the science right first.

And so right now I feel very hesitant to even share, it's very much a project in formation. Sure. So I'm curious to see what it ultimately will be, and I think the question will remain, the question that has been in the backdrop of my mind the entire time is, what is it? What is a city? What does a just and equitable city of Columbus look like for all communities?

How might the city be attuned to all of these differences, but also be responsible for uplifting as many communities as possible? [00:12:00] And I think the answer to that is to be determined. To be determined. 

David Staley: I'm interested in another project that you're working on. You're looking at residential segregation in New York City during the inner war period. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing here? 

Nima Dahir: I'm so glad that we're chatting 'cause I do feel like I've been in a very historical sense of mind lately. So, that project really came out of wanting to understand,

looking towards the past to understand where we are right now. So there was an the immigration, the Heart Seller Immigration Act in 1965 fundamentally reshaped immigration to the United States, and one of the largest changes it made is that it really ushered in a period of a diversification of the Black population by really facilitating a lot of Caribbean migration and then later African migration.

But Caribbean immigration to the US didn't start in 1965, it's actually been around for much longer, and so, I wanted to understand in this pre 1965 period, where were these Caribbean [00:13:00] immigrants? How were they understood? How were they in this really entrenched racial regime of the United States where race was very important determinant of everything that was a spatial outcome in terms of where you live what those home ownership, all of these things that, that relate to where people actually are.

And I wanted to know where are, where were the Caribbeans? They were largely in, in New York City and in Miami. And what were their outcomes? How did they differ from other black people? How did they differ from southern born migrants who were really influxing into New York's? City as well, and the descendants of enslaved people.

What were their, were they perceived differently? Were they understood differently? Did they emphasize their ethnicity? And so I read a lot of work of that time in the early 20th century, in the thirties and forties. 

David Staley: You mean like sociology or...

Nima Dahir: Yeah. So there was... 

David Staley: as opposed to newspapers or something like that, right?

Nima Dahir: Yeah. Sociological works on the Black immigrant population, and it seems like there was always a bit of tension between the communities, especially in New York City in [00:14:00] terms of Caribbean and West Indian migrants, often emphasizing their ethnicity as a way of distancing themselves from Black Americans by emphasizing that they were often British subjects, British citizens.

And so. Had a different relationship to the city and to the United States overall than did the descendants of enslaved people. And so I was curious about what does that actually look like in terms of the neighborhoods themselves that they then actually sort themselves into different places?

And so what I've been doing is looking at the micro data of the individual level census data from the 19 30, 19 40 and 1950 censuses, and trying to really trace what locational attainment or the actual places that people were able to achieve in terms of the neighborhoods that they were able to enter, did those differ systematically between black immigrants and black Americans?

And the short of it is that, no, the answer is no in sense, in the sense that there was a very strict and [00:15:00] strong racial boundary in New York City that ultimately almost no one was able to bypass. But Caribbean immigrants within that, those racial boundaries and within the Black neighborhoods often sorted themselves into specific enclaves that then were, on, on surface, not quite different than the larger area, but did have businesses and things that really facilitated then movement out of those that, the racial ghetto that existed.

So there is, at any. Cross-sectional static period. There's no real difference in terms of where people live, but that Caribbeans are able to, even if they have identical characteristics to a black American, are able to exit somewhat and enter into home ownership in a different part of the city.

And I think that's facilitated by some of that co-ethnic partnership and also money sharing businesses that facilitate some exit from the ghetto. 

David Staley: Of course there's a sub-discipline called historical sociology. Do you think of yourself as an [00:16:00] historical sociologist? 

Nima Dahir: I haven't actually,

prior, I think I, I have primarily thought of myself as a quantitative contemporary sort of sociologist and, but I am starting to realize the immense value that it has to have a longer term, longer temporal range. When we think about the phenomena that we observe in the current moment, that they are shaped and understood by everything that's happened prior, and there are so many rich sources of data that are.

Not necessarily speaking to 2026, but can tell us about what has happened. And so I'm really hoping to dig into that and hopefully be soon, be able to call myself a full fledged historical sociologist. 

David Staley: Let's talk about some of your research that's more present focused. You've recently published surveillance camera prevalence and racial diversity in 10 US cities.

What were the results of this research? 

Nima Dahir: Yeah, I love this project. This was a really fun project. It uses Google Street View imagery data. With computer vision, meaning that [00:17:00] we identified where using machine learning, identified where surveillance cameras actually are across the 10 most dense cities in the us.

And prior to this method that my team and I developed, there was really no systematic way to understand where surveillance cameras actually were in the us. Some cities had, some. Manually collected data in terms of, these are where cameras are, but there was no large scale approach to understanding what the distribution of surveillance cameras actually is in the US, which is surprising. I think it's just hard to collect data on where these are, and also surveillance has become so. Banal to people's lives that they don't necessarily think about it as something that might relate to inequality in some ways. And so the idea really became using these images, Google Street View, now we have almost 20 years of data.

It starts in 2007 and you can see how, where surveillance [00:18:00] cameras are at any given time, but also. You can see how surveillance cameras change. And the question then became is there a relationship between the racial demographics of a neighborhood and where these surveillance cameras are? And prior theory would suggest that, black neighborhoods are disproportionately surveilled and so are likely, thus those neighborhoods also likely have the most cameras.

But we actually find it. It's not, that's not the case. That actually black neighborhoods all else held constant tend to have fewer cameras than similar neighborhoods. And so that got us thinking of what is, so what might actually explain where these cameras are, because otherwise there was no other racial group that had a strong relationship with the presence of surveillance cameras.

And so we instead thought about, is it something about the coalition who was like, if there are neighborhoods that are. The makeup of the neighborhood itself rather than the presence of any single one group. And so that led us to thinking about [00:19:00] diversity. And so we looked at the relationship between racial diversity in a neighborhood and surveillance camera presence and found a really strong and consistent relationship there.

And so that we theorized that about, there's something about social. Threat potentially in terms of these really, when groups are not, it's not a cohesive neighborhood when it has a diverse subset of racial demographics, that there might be something going on in terms of who is entering the neighborhood, who's exiting the neighborhood that might make it.

A place that warrants surveillance. And so then we tested, depending on who's entering the neighborhood, so we found that neighborhoods that are experiencing white influx, while they are, the diversity is growing because white people are moving in, are the neighborhoods that have the most surveillance cameras.

And so there we posited that this is a story about social control that white people are entering when they enter neighborhoods in which they don't. [00:20:00] Feel as though they are a majority and don't necessarily have control over the neighborhood in the sense that they are the largest group, but they are.

So there is some threat that they experience, but potentially, brand new gentrifying neighborhoods, for example, that they want to give garner some sort of control. And so surveillance might be a means of doing so. And so that's that's the story. Diverse and diversifying neighborhoods are those that are

have the most surveillance cameras. 

David Staley: So surveillance is about who, not what exactly, it's not like, traffic cameras or something like that. 

Nima Dahir: Exactly. So one thing that we weren't able to look at is the presence of Ring and Nest and, those doorbell cameras. Just because they're too small to really capture efficiently and effectively on the, on Google's street review images.

But I imagine that would tell even. A more interesting story is like now that every house has a surveillance camera on it, in some ways, where are those more or less likely to be prevalent? So that's an open question. 

David Staley: I'm just [00:21:00] thinking out loud now. Could that data certainly would be useful to sociologists,

i'm thinking if you could get access to 

Nima Dahir: it?

I imagine that as now we're in, we were working on this project, five or so, we began at five or so years ago. And so now in the age of increasing AI and the computer vision technologies are even, are stronger than ever that there might be a way to identify these cameras, more, more effectively.

But at the time we, we weren't able to, yeah. 

David Staley: You have published _Relearning to Be a Woman :Virtual Space and Post-Migration Womanhood in the Somali Diaspora_. I'm interested to hear about the findings here. 

Nima Dahir: Yeah, so this paper came out of a phone line of Somali women, so. 

David Staley: A phone line?

Nima Dahir: A phone line, yes.

So there's, it's in essence a phone conference. You know those conferences that you dial into and then you are entered into a space with hundreds of other people listening in on things. And I'd heard about this. I'm Somali, and so I'd heard about this phone line through my aunts, my mom, my [00:22:00] grandma.

They would all just dial into this. Line of women that were all over the world and were engaging in questions of advice giving, in terms of questions of recipes, religion, all of these various different kinds of conversations. It was such a structured phone line as well. It had a real clear schedule, a moderation.

Stem, all of that. And so this was during COVID where I was working on this project, and I wanted, this was my first foray into ethnography and I wanted to do a qualitative project. And, but obviously we were all shut at home. So I remembered this phone line as a means of maybe doing a digital ethnography of sorts and trying to understand.

Does this group, what is it in service of? What might it tell us about immigration, about gender, all of that. And so I did a lot of listening in on that call for a very long time, along with 56, I think, interviews with Somali women who were either participants or moderators or creators of this particular phone line.

[00:23:00] And the crux of that paper is really that this pro, this phone line, this project emerged out of trying to understand this medium identity of being an immigrant woman. Not necessarily. Of being a Somali woman, that they had the template of being a Somali woman from their own mothers and grandmothers, but that they were no longer in that context, and thus that didn't feel like a right way to be.

But they also weren't necessarily Western women in the sense that they didn't feel entirely American or Swedish or Australian or wherever they were. And so this was this intermediary practice of being this Somali immigrant woman, that's like a fundamentally different thing, especially in the domain of motherhood where they are mothers to children who are foreign to them in many ways.

And that this gave them a chance to think about and talk about how to actually navigate and develop that identity, this intermediary identity. And so it was a gender paper. It was an immigration paper. It was a qualitative paper. It was a [00:24:00] different from a lot of the work. I've done a lot of. Ways, but it was such a fun, fun project and a really great chance to engage with and develop my interview skills as well.

David Staley: And I'm interested in the scholar, the ethical issues of listening in on such conversations. Tell us about that process. How did you listen in, how did you in, include yourself in this discussion? 

Nima Dahir: So I was always, I was exclusively a participant observer in the sense that I want... 

David Staley: Tell us what participant observer means.

Nima Dahir: Yeah. So I wanted to observe the space as it was without necessarily intervening or making my presence. A fundamental change to the system itself, which was quite easy because it's a call of hundreds of people at any given time. And so my presence was often not known by most people. But one, one rule I had for myself and that I maintained was that I never spoke.

So I never asked to speak during the actual calls, but before I began any observation itself, I always I [00:25:00] spoke early on with. A few of the moderators just to let them know I was doing this project. And, that was one domain in which my positionality as a Somali woman, I think was really valuable.

They had really very little questions about what I was doing. Were just excited for me and was, were very happy to let me participate in this. And I've chose, and I chose throughout the. Article itself, of course, kept the anonymity of everyone as much as possible. Which also wasn't very hard because I didn't often have any information about them.

There were people just hidden in the phone line. But even in terms of the notes that I took, the stories that people were telling, I tried to keep as many identifying details, if any away from that as possible. But I tried to also. Stigmatize my actual observation of the time, of the times and the content that people were talking about.

So as I mentioned, there were different schedules in terms of. At this time, we speak about religion at this time. We speak about food at this [00:26:00] time, we speak about children at this time. This is an advice call in show, et cetera. And so I tried to really diversify the types of calls that I was listening to as well as the time of day that I was listening to because it really transitions, at certain points.

It's a primarily American and Canadian audience That's speaking and participating. And other times it's European, other times it's people in Australia. And that would be in the middle of the night, I would've to call in and listen to the Australian part of the diaspora. And so there was really interesting, because it was such a large community, but I got the chance to really observe different different parts.

But I stayed on one phone line. There were, at the time dozens of them. And I think they don't largely exist anymore. I think they've shifted into various other. Media. No, but it was a captured it at its tail. End of relevance, perhaps.

David Staley: I don't know if this is part of your research, how did the moderators manage a phone conversation like this,

as you say with hundreds of people? 

Nima Dahir: Yeah, it was an incredibly organized and [00:27:00] sophisticated method that they had been developing for many years. So I spoke with one of the creators of this particular phone line, and she had the idea when she was living alone without any large Somali community around her.

In the Netherlands in the early two thousands, and she just wanted a chance to speak with her sisters and cousins. So it really started as just people that she knew in her family who were in different parts of the world. And it expanded over time in a way that it required a lot more, obviously moderation, a lot more organization.

And they just picked that up whenever, whenever that was needed. And over time it really developed into this systematized clear approach to understanding and discussing these various topics and this really organized system of moderation that happens at certain times, and people who really felt a lot of onus of responsibility on making sure that it was upkept and that it, was maintained in a way that.

Kept its integrity [00:28:00] as a phone line that people were able to share and learn. So it was really interesting to, to learn more about. 

David Staley: Your bachelor's degree is from this university, the Ohio State University, in mathematics and economics. Terrific. But your graduate work, your PhD is in sociology from Stanford.

So, why the switch from mathematics and economics to sociology? Or maybe it wasn't a switch at all, maybe you see it all as part of the same intellectual enterprise? 

Nima Dahir: Somewhat, I would say. So I began college just as a, a math major. I was a person who really liked math in high school and started a little bit unmoored.

And then I met an economist who taught my introduction to microeconomics class, and she really transformed the trajectory of my undergraduate experience in that she showed me the capacity of social science to ask questions that are extremely relevant to people's lives. That were forming in my mind as I grew up [00:29:00] in Columbus, thinking about all the various different unequal outcomes I could see across the city.

I've always been really interested in questions of inequality and so I took her advice to, to be an economist, and I took it seriously. And so I wanted to do a PhD in economics but as I, continued throughout my undergraduate experience. And then ultimately I was a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as well.

And while I was there, I started to realize that the questions I was most interested in were not necessarily about, individuals as the unit of analysis, but thinking about individuals as embedded in these larger structures that shape who they are, what they, how they relate to other people, especially questions of neighborhoods and housing, which was always my main interest.

I was interested not only in, where does a particular individual live, but how is that a reflection of everything that they are and all of the identities that they hold, and how those shift over time as well. And so I blindly applied to sociology. It felt like the social science that was [00:30:00] legible to me and clear in terms of thinking about structures and as I started at Stanford, I think those first few years was a lot of learning of what sociology really is.

But I imagine, a lot of the questions I'm still asking and answering are questions that were percolating in my mind as an undergraduate, and I think are relevant to a lot of different social sciences as well. 

David Staley: What's next? What are you working on now? 

Nima Dahir: So the project that we spoke about in the Columbus City of Columbus archives is ongoing.

But also the larger interview based and ethnographic project with the Somali community here in Columbus is something that I'm really excited about and continuing to collect data on to see really what can this community, this black, this refugee immigrant community, what can they tell us about? What does relationship to neighborhood look like?

How do neighborhoods change over time? What does attachment to neighborhood look like? And so collection for that is, is ongoing. And I'm hopeful we'll spark a lot of different [00:31:00] directions moving forward as well. 

David Staley: Nima Dahir. Thank you. 

Nima Dahir: Thank you.

Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.