"Barcelona or Death": A multidimentional analysis of Senegalese irregular migration and post-colonial transnationalism
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2014
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Abstract
In the mid-2000s, thousands of young men from Senegal and other West African countries began
migrating to Europe in a way that was considered peculiar to some, and insane to others, and
extreme to most. Known colloquially as "Barca walla Barzakh," Wolof for "Barcelona or
Death," these migrants travelled for days at sea on small wooden fishing boats, some reaching
Europe where they faced new struggles of making a living as irregular migrants, some being
detained and deported before they could try their hand at this, and others dying en route in a
neither-here-nor-there limbo. While these migrations were a spectacle that captured the attention
of Senegal and many other nations, in this thesis I shift attention toward what it meant for these
men to return from Europe back to Senegal - often by forcible deportation, in the case of the
majority of my informants. I take post-colonial transnationalism as a theoretical framework for
understanding the complexity and contradiction that found and color these experiences, in
particular how colonial structures of oppression and value systems persist and come into conflict
with "traditional" Senegalese structures and value systems, as well as the how transnationalism
widens the field of social imagination, identity, and connection to engender multiform and
contradicting pressures and loyalties. In looking at political and economic structures,
negotiations of masculinity, experiences of return migration, and Senegalese narratives about
irregular migration, I argue that the complex dynamics that cause Barca/Barzakh migrants to
depart not only persist through migrants' returns, but are often further complicated by migrants'
particular experiences abroad. Instead, migrants may be drawn into cyclical migration as a way
of constantly negotiating and balancing conflicting pressures, and those who are unable to remigrate
are often left imagining the possibility of doing so while dealing with frustration,
disappointment, and shame when unable to satisfy familial and societal expectations.