Muslim Migration In & Out of Africa
African Studies Program Summer Institute 2012
Senegalese Muslims in Harlem, NY August 2005

Muslim Migration In & Out of Africa
 Beth Buggenhagen
 Assistant Professor of
Anthropology
 Where you can contact me
with futher questions:
babuggen@indiana.edu
 Fieldwork in Senegal and US
Dakar, Senegal Dec. 2010
Muslim Migration
African Continent
True Size of Africa
(Kai Krause 2010)
Tuba, Senegal
Muslims
Web resources for teaching Islam
 Frontline, “Muslims” at PBS.org
 http://pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslim
s/
 Michigan State
 http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/index.php
Muslim Migration in the Recent Past

Immigrants were first welcomed into France after WWII to address a
labor shortage, many of these immigrants had been conscripts and
sailors during the period of the war

1970s the French economy, like the American economy, suffered a
recession and immigrants became competitors for low skilled low paying
jobs

Itinerant single male immigrant workers became permanent immigrant
families, esp. after 1974 under the family reunification act

Far right played on insecurity and racism,

1980s: resentment over cultural differences, fear of suburban violence,
and international terrorism

Many West African Muslims come to U.S. from France
Muslim Migration Today

If a defining feature of migration in and out of Africa is its circular nature,
then how do we understand processes of assimilation and integration in
receiving countries?

Rather than settling permanently in foreign countries, many Africans
remain tied to their home countries.

Some migrants are refugees of war, such as people from Libya, Somalia,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo (DRC).

Others are economic refugees, such as people from Senegal, Mali, Niger.

What is the impact of global sojourns on social and moral orders at
home?

How does the political economy of migration and the global War on
Terror affect people around the world?
Muslim Migration and Globalization
 West African communities have a long tradition of
migration and Islamic cosmopolitanism
 Muslims in West Africa have always been tied to
long distance networks.
 The question of globalization here then perhaps is
one of directionalities and temporalities
Muslim Migration and Globalization
 Think about relations, processes, paths, networks
that operate beyond the level and purview of the
nation-state
 not as undermining the state,
 But as the spaces in which the state is constituted,
that is way in which state kind of steps back from
these processes and then profits from them
 Or even ways in which the traders made a profit by
being able to cross boundaries, evade regulation,
Muslim Migrants
(pbs.org 2004)
Muslim Migrants
Muslim Migration and African States
 Focus on global circuits rather than nation-state,
usual way of looking at globalization as weakening
of the state
 How traders switch in an out of the law
 When official structures collapse, people turn to
unofficial activities
 In other cases, states rely on revenue from overseas
remittances
Muslim Migration and the West
 How does a religious minority fit within a secular
nation?
 Islam and a universal and global religion
 Versus French republican ideology
 Or U.S. notions of integration
Additional Resources
Recent Ethnographies of African Migration
 Carter, Donald Martin. 2010. Navigating the African
Diaspora. Minnesota University Press.
 Kane, Ousmane. 2011. The Homeland is the Arena.
Religion, Transnationalism, and the Integration of
Senegalese Immigrants. Oxford University Press.
 Abdullah, Zain. 2010. Black Mecca. The African
Muslims of Harlem. Oxford University Press.