It's Only a Matter of Hope: Rethinking Migration Decision-Making in Contemporary Senegal; Among Lived Immobilities, Development Interventions, and Social Inequalities

Abstract

This article stems from ethnographic research conducted in three Senegalese contexts: Louga, Diaobé, and the Saloum Islands. The underemployment of young people, deagrarianization, and other phenomena are intertwined with a growing criminalization of displacement and an irregularization of international migration. By debunking the idea that the processes of deciding to migrate are linear, we propose an alternative understanding of what choice means in the context of contemporary migration. We are not asserting that migrant agency is absent, but we argue that uncertainty is often the norm, rather than the exception, and that we need a more dynamic and sophisticated notion of choice as a lens for understanding why and how people migrate. The relationships among mobility-restriction regimes, development interventions, and the individualized way in which people represent their lived (im)mobilities affect migration choices in all three contexts. For those we encountered, it is the present that looks uncertain and the future that offers hope.