How do places of origin influence access to mobility in the global age? An analysis of the influence of vulnerability and structural constraints on Senegalese translocal livelihood strategies

Abstract

Abstract. Literature has often underlined the relevance of mobility for modern lifestyles. However, it has frequently overlooked that mobility has long been the rule in Senegal. There, mobility has allowed households to cope with environmental and economic vulnerability. Over the last decades, households have extended their traditional mobility through internal and international migration. This paper investigates how place-related vulnerability and structural constraints influence the way Senegalese households construct translocal spaces and livelihood strategies in the global age. For this purpose, a multi-sited ethnographic study has been conducted at four villages in Senegal and at two immigration destinations in Italy and Spain. The empirical results show that vulnerability and structural constraints in the home place do not prevent households from adopting strategies based on mobility, but rather influence the composition of translocal spaces, the ability to move between places, and the construction of translocal livelihood strategies.

Typologie des conséquences de la migration sur les stratégies d’adaptation à l’érosion côtière au Sénégal

“…L'approche des moyens de subsistance durables dans des espaces translocaux examine l'utilisation des capacités et des ressources des individus et des ménages afin d'améliorer leurs moyens de subsistance en rapport avec les opportunités et les contraintes de leur lieu de vie. Les personnes seraient des agents actifs (Greiner et Sakdapolrak, 2013a, 2013bSchöfberger, 2017). La deuxième approche, celle de la New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) propose de prendre le ménage -et non l'individu -comme unité d'analyse (Piguet, 2018).…”