make the logical jump that to be abroad is to have money. This equation makes citizens of an economically depressed Senegal desperate to be associated with the world outside of Senegal. Though economic opportunities do exist abroad, this equation of life abroad and automatic, easily attainable, and infinite wealth functions as a myth, in Ferguson’s sense when he says that myths are not merely fictional stories, but “ways of expressing and constructing complex political and cosmological schemas” (Ferguson 1999: 203). This myth impacts Senegalese society in myriad ways—from fashion and dreaming to, as is developed further below, migrant-class status and the selection of spouses.
The Senegalese belief that the West is full of riches and that Europe represents “El Dorado” (Riccio 2004) leads non-migrants to think that merely setting foot outside of Senegal means access to riches and the good life. Disconnected from labor processes abroad, non-migrant Senegalese can conclude only that it is the overseas location that itself generates easy wealth. The idea that if one could only get abroad, then the money would begin flowing is Senegal’s version of the “locally nuanced fantasies of abundance without effort” that characterize the casino capitalist zeitgeist in the new millennium (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001: 6).
Honwana and de Boeck discuss how the West functions as “an imagined topos,” just out of reach for most young Africans (2005: 8). Indeed, as immigration regulations in “Fortress Europe” and in the United States become stricter, impatient young Senegalese are ready to risk their lives for the chance to make it overseas. “Barça walla barsakh” (“Barcelona or death”) became a popular saying to capture the desperation of the tens of thousands of young men (and some women) who piled into fishing boats beginning in the 2000s, hoping to sail from the coast of West Africa to Southern Europe (Carling 2007, Willems 2008, Melly 2011). These boats continue to depart from the shores of Libya—and Morocco as well—full of migrants from Senegal and other economically depressed nations.9 Many of these boats have famously sunk in the Atlantic or Mediterranean, and others arrived on the shores of the Canary Islands of Spain or the Italian island of Lampedusa only to be met by border police who incarcerated their passengers in detention centers. The International Red Cross; the governments of Spain, Italy, and Senegal; and other international organizations have attempted to stem this tide of economic refugees through various sanctions and development programs. Although the rate of clandestine immigration to Spain dropped for a time in 2009 (Gimeno 2010), hopeful would-be migrants continue to attempt the voyage by sea. The total number of drowning deaths of clandestine migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean was estimated at 7,189 in 2016, according to the IOM. Although the majority of migrants from Senegal attempt to reach Europe and the United States by much less dramatic methods, these clandestine voyages represent the spirit of anxious certainty in Senegal that a better life waits just across the ocean and the lengths to which many Senegalese would go to make it overseas.
Searching for Goor Jaarin
A less risky strategy to migrate is to marry a migrant who is already overseas. Most of the migrants’ wives I interviewed said they would like to join their husbands abroad, or at least go visit, but few were willing to claim that desire as a motivating factor in their marriage to a migrant. Many were happy, however, to project that motivation onto other migrants’ wives. A young woman named Mariama—herself a migrant’s wife—drew a direct comparison between women who marry migrants and women who marry “toubabs,” or Europeans. “It’s only to travel. A woman will do anything to change countries. There are lots of women like that.”10 She was herself, she assured me, not that type of woman.
The employment obstacles and inflation woes that trouble men in Senegal have a parallel impact on working women as well. Mariama gave me the example of her own financial calculations as a gas station shop clerk in Dakar before she married a migrant. She worked the night shift, from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. five days a week and was paid a salary of 100,000 cfa (CFA Franc), which is about $200 US per month. She tabulated that every day she would pay 2,000 cfa for her transport to and from work and another 500 to 1,000 cfa to buy herself food at her shift break; these expenses would eat away at her already trivial monthly earnings.
Mariama went on to describe the difficulties of accumulating wealth and saving on a meager salary in a culture of communal sharing and low employment.
When I worked, it was difficult, everyone counted on you, everyone. They don’t know how much you are paid, but they know that, “Mariama, dey, she works!” At the end of the month, everyone calls you, “I have this or that problem.” It’s just you with your 100,000 cfa a month—it’s not enough!
Mariama lived in her family’s home while working, and thus didn’t pay rent, but she felt pressure as an employed person to contribute to household expenses, to help her siblings who were still in school, and to make her own displays of generosity and giving at family celebrations and rituals.
These paltry salaries and insecure working conditions are the types of available employment that workers in Dakar must negotiate. Mariama explained that these sorts of considerations make labor migration appeal to many Senegalese.
Where I worked, if you are sick, it is you who pays for your care. You don’t have benefits or paid vacation. That’s why everyone wants [to travel/migrate] … because over there at least you can work, you can réaliser quelque chose.…11 Here you can work for years and never even have a bank account!
Though Mariama insists that her desire to go abroad and work to support her parents did not factor into her decision to marry a migrant, she hopes that her husband Serigne will eventually bring her overseas to join him. She envisions working abroad and sending money home to support her aging parents.
As this book makes clear, however, marrying a migrant does not necessarily lead to migration. The common Senegalese vision of the migrant’s wife—the “jabaaru immigré”—is one who does not migrate, but rather receives remittances from abroad and awaits the visits of her husband. Women are far more likely to be accused of marrying a migrant for “intérêt” (self-interest or financial advantages) than for the hope of migrating, and this was another motivator my interviewees denied in their own cases but projected onto their peers with wild abandon.
Pursuing relationships for intérêt, rather than with more respectable intentions such as religious or filial duty, is considered regrettably commonplace in contemporary Senegal. Nyamnjoh (2005) describes the growing gap between the increasing availability of images of consumerism and consumables and the declining economic conditions of most sub-Saharan countries as pushing young Senegalese to pursue romantic and sexual relationships with wealthier partners “for consumer opportunities and consumer citizenship” (2005: 296). It would be inaccurate and an oversimplification to—as Nyamnjoh does—restrict women’s motivation to marry with intérêt to a greedy desire for material things. The reality of what most women yearn for is both more modest and more complex. A closer look at what women wish to do with their wealth belies the idea of sacrificing morality and seeking money for the sake of mere consumption alone. The longing for disposable income among Senegalese women comprises not only the desire to adorn oneself with expensive locally tailored clothing and European “pret-à-porter” items, but also the ability to give generously at religious holidays and life-cycle ceremonies as well as to support elderly parents and other relatives. Women seek money explicitly to play a role in Senegal’s moral economy and to garner religious honor (Buggenhagen 2012).
Furthermore, I depart from Nyamnjoh—and many Senegalese—who point to women’s desire to make financially advantageous marital unions as a new phenomenon that signals moral decline. Senegalese culture has long emphasized the importance of a husband as provider, and this quality traditionally has been given value equal to other characteristics, such as provenance from a good family, strong character, and religious piety. Women always have sought to attach themselves to goor jaarin, or a man who is worth something. Even as women join the workforce more and more,
