Cultures and Exile and the Political Kingdom: Migration, Memory and Nation-Building in Senegal

This project centres memories of international migration in the late colonial and postcolonial political history of Senegal. Migrants returned from abroad with new social and cultural resources that allowed them to participate in political action more independently. Prominent public narratives of migration were also used and contested in political discourse. By gathering oral histories from former migrants and examining popular and official representations of migration, I study the tension between these processes. This inquiry into personal and public memory will reveal whose voices have been erased in the course of nation-building in Senegal.