Dreaming up the best of both worlds : Senegalese candidate migrants’ imaginations of a life ‘away from home’

The incongruity between the demands for solidarity, put upon individual West African men and women by their extended families, and the decreasing economic possibilities to satisfy those demands because of the current crisis entices many young men and women to consider emigration as their only option for a better future. Within the Senegalese context, the pressure to share one’s resources with others is enormous and not respecting will lead to one being socially excluded. Recent interviews with candidate migrants show that they imagine being able to escape from some of the most pressing socio-cultural obligations ‘back home’ for the price of a monthly remittance once emigrated. Europe hence becomes the other world in the candidate migrants’ imagination where both economic and cultural aspirations could be fulfilled.status: publishe