Thursday, November 9, 2017
4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
McKinney Conference Room
Reception to Follow
In Senegal, a relatively small African country with few profitable natural resources, transnational migration has kept household budgets and the national economy afloat for generations. Today, both state agendas and popular conceptions of belonging are seen as contingent on migratory circulations to destinations like the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. At the same time, however, migration abroad has become increasingly impossible for the vast majority of Senegalese. This talk examines this critical paradox and its effects on everyday urban life and development policy. It does so by retooling a vibrant cultural term — embouteillage (bottleneck) — that circulated during research years there. Drawing together ethnographic research conducted on Dakar’s traffic clogged roads and in bustling bureaucratic offices, this talk considers what insights the bottleneck concept might afford in our quest to understand migration, state practice, and everyday urban life in Africa and beyond.