“Little Senegal” in New York: The daily reproduction of “Home” Among Senegalese Women Migrant in New York

Awa Ba,
Uppsala University, Sweden
Awa.ba@teol.uu.se

This paper deals with the Senegalese women migrants in New York and their relationship with their home country. The main focus of this paper is the role of the religious and community based associations in the migratory trajectories of these migrant women. From ethnographic data gathered during a field research in New York between July and November 2002, I present and reflect on the social and religious life of the Senegalese women migrants in New York, and their representations of, and relationship with ‘home’.

First, I examine the functioning of these associations and their symbolic and socio-political significance both in Senegal and in New York. Secondly, I examine the changes in identities and gender roles associated with “success”, and how these changes are perceived among the leadership of the Sufi orders whose associations (daa’ira) and international networks facilitate the migration of many of their female disciples to the USA.

My main argument in this paper is that the Senegalese women migrants in New York show that they can reproduce home everywhere by reconstituting associations such as ”dahiras” (religious organizations), ”mbotaays” (affinity organizations common in Senegal among women of the same age group or living or working in the same place, etc.) with the usual ”tontines” (informal savings and credit associations), etc.

Concerning this question of ”home” addressed by some anthropologists and theoreticians of globalization, Cohen points out the following question: ”Can migrants ever call their places of settlement a home? Is ”home” still one’s natality or even one’s parent’s natality (place)?” (Cohen, 1999: 134). Concerning the actors I am interested in, my working hypothesis is  that for them there is just one ‘home’ which is their place of origin, but a ‘little home’ can be built anywhere.

This follows the patterns, on the one hand, of what Appadurai calls a ”production of locality”, and locality here is understood as ”a practical value in the quotidian production of subjects and colonization of space” (Appadurai, 1997). It also consists of a need of routes and roots to construct (Hannerz, 1996) for ”alternate public spheres” (Clifford, 1994). These are, according to Clifford, ”forms of community consciousness and solidarity that maintain identification outside the national time/space in order to live inside, with a difference” (Clifford, 1994: 308). On the other hand, this process of building a ”little Senegal” is another face of globalization not from above this time, but from below.