Working Paper 10 - Migration Aspirations and Immobility in a Malian Soninke Village
Jul 07, 2008
Migration Aspirations and Immobility in a Malian Soninke Village
Gunvor Jonsson
Abstract
This paper explores the local meaning of migration and the experience of
immobility amongst young men of Soninke ethnicity in a village in the Kayes
region of Mali.
Soninke communities in Kayes are characterised by a “culture of migration”;
increasingly since the 1950s, Soninke men from this region have supported local
households and contributed to local development by working as labour migrants
in France.
This paper explicates how young Soninke men’s aspirations to migrate
internationally relate to the structural and cultural features of the local
Soninke community. The analysis focuses upon young men who aspire to migrate
but who – for political or other reasons – are unable to do so, resulting in a
condition of “involuntary immobility”. The paper shows how these young men
construct their social identities in the context of immobility. While some seek
out alternative forms of livelihood that are not based on international
migration, most young men devote their time to socialising in groups called “grins”. In the grins, they reinvent youth culture, contest hegemonic notions of
social becoming, and attempt to connect to an imagined world of global flows
that these “immobile” youngsters are otherwise cut off from.
Keywords: Migration aspirations, culture of migration, immobility, Soninke, West Africa, youth, anthropology
