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Mobility and Cultural Citizenship: The Making of a Senegalese Diaspora in Multiethnic Brazil

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Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture

Part of the book series: Contemporary Performance InterActions ((CPI))

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Abstract

Media reports and social science literature on Senegalese migrants in Brazil have focused on market experiences of the camelôs (street vendors) and the economic function of the dahiras (religious organizations) that have facilitated their recent arrival or lives in Brazil. This chapter shows that the focus on economic processes obscures the various profiles of Senegalese migrants, the long history of their presence in Brazil, and the impact of their everyday actions. Thus, the chapter examines how some Senegalese migrants, as Africans and/or Muslims, embark upon the performance of ethnic and religious identities to counter harmful stereotypes about Africa and Islam.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I draw from three ethnographic field trips (thirteen months) to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre between 2014 and 2018.

  2. 2.

    President Wade and President Lula had five official meetings between 2005 and 2009, either through state visits or during the UN General Assembly. Interviews I conducted in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the summer of 2016 indicated that the first Senegalese immigrants arrived around 2008.

  3. 3.

    In January 2015, the Ministry of Justice announced that Brazil “broke its record” of the number of foreigners granted refugee status.

  4. 4.

    A smuggler was recorded by his Senegalese client explaining how he can obtain an entry visa and a Protocolo for someone who is in Senegal if they are willing to mail their passport and pay CFA 2,000,000 (around $3500). If agreement is reached, the migrant will be entering Brazil for the first time, whereas the “legal” papers they will carry indicate that they are returning after a visit to Senegal (see http://www.sen360.fr/video/xalass-ndoye-bane-parle-des-traffic-de-visas-au-bresil-avec-mamadou-mohamed-ndiaye-tfm-40086.html, accessed September 15, 2016).

  5. 5.

    The expression has been used to refer to how asylum seekers choose between countries that are likely to grant them refugee status.

  6. 6.

    I interviewed seven people who arrived in Brazil via this route. They would pay someone in Dakar who was in charge of arranging with his partner in Ecuador proof of a hotel reservation, which was the only document necessary to pass border control, since Senegalese did not need a visa to travel to the country. From Ecuador, the migrants were transported—“if needed [they would] get in the trunks,” one interviewee told me—via Peru to Brazil. Once in Brazil, the smugglers often “advise [them] to declare refugee status so as to get food and assistance and hope for papers.” Ecuador started requiring visas for Senegalese on November 16, 2015.

  7. 7.

    In theorizing super-diversity, Steve Vertovec (2007, 1025) stresses this diversification of migrant populations.

  8. 8.

    I visited Campos, where there was only a family of four Senegalese and had the chance to know the people mentioned in the story. See Globo (2015).

  9. 9.

    This is the term Michael Fallon, British Secretary of Defense, used in October 2014 to talk about migrants in British East Coastal cities.

  10. 10.

    These theories maintain that people from poor countries are driven by employment, war, crime, and other “push factors” to developed countries.

  11. 11.

    See also Tedesco et al. (2013).

  12. 12.

    A Google search for “senegaleses no brasil” yields hundreds of items that have the phrase “haitianos e senegalese” in their titles, the Haitians being the ones associated with Senegal.

  13. 13.

    Africa Arte has a strong social media presence: https://www.facebook.com/africaarte/.

  14. 14.

    See Cheikh Babou (2007) for a thorough discussion of the genesis and the philosophy of Muridiyya.

  15. 15.

    Other Sufi brotheroods also have dahiras, but it is generally accepted that the practice was started by Murids, particularly by a guide called CheikhMbackéGaindéFatma.

  16. 16.

    Interestingly, as shown by Babou (2005), the creation of the city of Touba and the genesis of Muridiyya during colonial time followed a process somewhat like the one I am describing here. I adapted the title of this section from that paper.

  17. 17.

    One can even add that the Keur Serigne Touba also serves as a “siège culturel et cultuel”: beyond its regular function as the venues for Koran recitations and the reading of Sufi poetry in Arabic, in places where there is no mosque, the headquarters of the dahira (siège culturel) becomes the site for Friday and Muslim holidays, prayers thus becoming a siège cultuel, where worship takes place.

  18. 18.

    For a report on Senegalese designers in São Paulo, see Romàrio de Oliviera, “Moda Afro: calças, saias, vestidos, sapatos, acessórios,” iG São Paulo, July 7, 2017, https://ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/colunas/afro-igualdade/2017-07-07/moda-afro.html (accessed July 20, 2018).

  19. 19.

    A mediation from the National Council for Refugees led the Brazilian government to postpone the application of the new law until December 31, 2016.

  20. 20.

    The Madeka case led many Senegalese I interviewed to ponder over the future of their own children in Brazil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Gana Ndiaye

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  1. Gana Ndiaye
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  1. Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Yana Meerzon

  2. Department of History, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    David Dean

  3. Department of History, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Daniel McNeil

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Ndiaye, G. (2020). Mobility and Cultural Citizenship: The Making of a Senegalese Diaspora in Multiethnic Brazil. In: Meerzon, Y., Dean, D., McNeil, D. (eds) Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39915-3_9

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