Abstract
Based on ethnographic inquiries in migrant-sending Soninke communities in rural Gambia, this chapter seeks to complicate the meaning of “home” in home–diaspora relations. It describes how ancestral households actively strive to maintain their position as homes of the diaspora by featuring as permanent centers or hubs of social reproduction indispensable to the functioning of the migrant moral economy. However, several family units, either internal to the household or settled in diasporas, make claims to this “home” status. The chapter thus shows that the form and geography of cooperation between home and diaspora depends on a delicate politics of domestic centering, whereby such family units negotiate the pooling of their socio-cultural, economic, and moral assets.
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Notes
- 1.
Research for this publication was supported by: Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research (funding code 01UG0713); Missione Etnologica in Benin e Africa Occidentale; and a doctoral scholarship from University of Milano-Bicocca/Unidea Foundation. The author is responsible for the publication.
- 2.
This chapter develops a complementary conceptual reading of processes of domestic reproduction and (im)mobility analyzed in greater detail in Gaibazzi (2015).
- 3.
Tensions between the diaspora and the Jammeh regime escalated on 30 December 2014, when a dozen Gambian migrants from the USA and Germany, some of whom had become naturalized citizens of those countries, attempted a coup while the president was abroad. The initiative, which was disbanded by the presidential guard and was condemned by a number of members of civil society in the diaspora, prompted a series of arrests and retaliations on the part of the government. Due to their lower levels of education and a widespread attitude of avoidance of political involvement, Soninke migrants are generally not very active in diasporic politics.
- 4.
- 5.
By contrast, elders may curse their juniors, thus preventing them from advancing in life. Although cursing is rarely done, it constitutes a powerful disciplinarian tool in the hands of elders (cf. Hardung 2009).
- 6.
Traditionally, Quranic teachers provide religious education.
- 7.
Having many wives and children confers status on men in terms of “wealth in people.” Men have historically used outmigration as a way of accumulating the necessary finances for marriage. In recent decades, migrant wealth has partly maintained and intensified polygyny.
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Gaibazzi, P. (2017). The Homing of the Diaspora: Ancestral Households and the Politics of Domestic Centering in Rural Gambia, West Africa. In: Carment, D., Sadjed, A. (eds) Diaspora as Cultures of Cooperation. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32892-8_5
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