Comparative Migrations Lecture Series: “Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Cultural Imaginaries, and Racial Formations”

“Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Cultural Imaginaries, and Racial Formations” by Maya Smith, PhD (University of Washington)

This talk examines language and multilingual practices in qualitative, ethnographic data to shed light on the construction of national, postcolonial, racial, and migrant identities among the Senegalese diaspora in Paris, Rome, and New York. On the one hand, I investigate how ideologies of race travel. On the other hand, through an exploration of multilingualism, I argue that there is more to both mobility and language learning/use than simple utilitarian purposes. I demonstrate that while the people in my study express complicated and fraught relationships to the languages they speak and the places they inhabit, many of them also find joy and pleasure in both travel and language.  I, therefore, go beyond the political economy perspective found in most research on West African migrations to show how the stories my informants recount blur the lines between utility and pleasure, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of why and how people move.