The preceding chapter discussed the sending of remittances and recorded the different uses to which remittances are put (see Sect. 5.1). Remittances are primarily private financial transfers within families, but their effects are also felt outwith the family, in localities and communities of origin. This is seen in many different ways: in the building of new houses and the adoption of new architectural styles and modern conveniences; in the changing consumption habits of remittance-receiving families, leading to new jobs in local economies but also to new inequalities between remittance-receiving households and those with no members abroad (De Haas 2006). Remittances may also be collective, channelled by hometown associations into development projects in migrants’ regions of origin (Mercer et al. 2008). Such projects often seek to provide basic infrastructure and services such as clean drinking water, electricity, schools and medical clinics. The present chapter will detail such changes affecting the home communities of my respondents, and analyse in particular how such effects impact on the process of re-integration which prospective returnees must negotiate. As noted in Chap. 2, processes of re-integration are often ignored in the literature on return, particularly within the neo-classical and NELM paradigms which view return as being conditional on an individual’s experiences only in the host country (and specifically its labour market). Yet, as Cassarino stresses, “return is also a question of context” (Cassarino 2004: 257, 260). The perspective of structuralist theory, as was summarised in Chap. 2, is invaluable here as it sheds light on the socio-structural mechanisms in home countries which have a bearing on re-integration, defined as the “process of adaptation (...) between those who have returned and those who remained behind during their absence” (Arowolo 2000: 62). This process unfolds in domains as diverse as physical environment and climate, but especially social, economic and normative structures (Arowolo 2000; Athukorala 1990; Dumon 1986; Gmelch 1980).

In Chap. 5, several respondents complained that they had ‘lost their bearings’ within their families. In this chapter, I will unpack the notion of ‘bearings’ and explore its relevance to the issue of re-integration in communities of origin following retirement. Dictionaries attribute several meanings to the term, but there are two aspects which I would highlight as relevant in the context of migration studies. Initially this chapter will explore bearings in the physical sense of the word: “the direction or position of something relative to a fixed point; awareness of one’s position relative to one’s surroundings” (Concise Oxford Dictionary 1999). It will be demonstrated how retired hostel residents’ degree of influence over their physical surroundings in places of origin – notably through house construction and involvement in hometown development projects – in turn has an influence on the second social meaning of bearings, namely “a person’s way of standing, moving or behaving” (Concise Oxford Dictionary 1999). Above all, it is hostel residents’ standing and behaviour in places of origin that will be discussed in the latter half of the chapter.

Before turning to hostel residents’ physical relationship to their home places, it will be useful for the reader to have an idea of the physical environment in the two localities where I conducted fieldwork: Dembancané in Senegal and Tiznit in Morocco. These case studies describe the re-integration prospects of a necessarily limited number of respondents in two unique local contexts, but it is noteworthy that the divergent trends observed in Dembancané and Tiznit were reproduced in the contrasting testimonies of North and West African respondents originating from all corners of these two sending regions. Many North African men had lost their physical and social bearings back home, whereas West Africans, being the drivers of physical and social change thanks to their contributions to development projects, were less disoriented by their return trips and found it far easier to re-integrate, hence the central significance to the question considered here regarding late-in-life return.

6.1 Sketches of Dembancané (Senegal) and Tiznit (Morocco)

Dembancané

The village of Dembancané (population 5293Footnote 1) is situated on the left bank of the Senegal River, 40 km downstream from the departmental capital of Bakel. Geographically, historically and linguistically, Dembancané has always been a frontier town. The river itself constitutes the frontier between Senegal and Mauritania, and in terms of administrative boundaries, Dembancané separates the regions of Matam to the north and Tambacounda to the south (see Fig. 2.2). Furthermore, the village marks the start of Senegal’s ‘fertile crescent’, a floodplain extending 450 km to the north-west forming a region known historically as Fuuta Toro (Dilley 2004). This region is distinguished demographically by the preponderance of the Haalpulaar ethnic group, whereas to the south and east of the village in the regions of Ngalam and Guidimaxa, the majority of the population belong to the Soninke ethnic group.

The village was founded by a Haalpulaar fisherman named Demba, hence the name Dembancané (literally, ‘the houses of Demba’). The date of its founding is not known, but there is documented evidence of its existence in the late-seventeenth century. Over time, Soninkes have displaced Haalpulaar as the principal ethnic group in the village. The Soninke are reputed to be primarily a sedentary farming group: in terms of economic production, given the village’s situation on this fertile floodplain, agriculture has long been the principal economic activity (M’Bow 1954).

The principal documentary source of information on Dembancané is Amadou Mahtar M’bow who made a survey of the village in 1954 during his time as a junior field officer for the national education board. M’bow later went on to become director-general of UNESCO from 1974 to 1987, the first African to hold this post. M’Bow estimated that the population in 1954 was 95% Soninke. However, this ethnic homogeneity “masks rigid social distinctions” (M’Bow 1954: 6), the most notable of which is ‘caste’Footnote 2 – an element of social structure which, on the African continent, is somewhat unique to West Africa, especially Senegal and Mali. Since M’Bow’s time, the caste system has lost some of its significance, at least in terms of its economic basis, and it did not appear to be a major factor with regard to my research question.Footnote 3 A second axis of stratification in the village is age: Soninke society is traditionally gerontocratic (Manchuelle 1997). However, through emigration, the preponderance of power concentrated in the hands of the elders from the noble families has diminished as Soninke émigré associations become influenced by demands for more democratic functioning, notably from younger community members (Timera 1996: 68).

As regards the village’s built environment, households are organised on the basis of patrilineage (fabanka), centred on the residential, productive and consumption unit (ka, house). The fabanka can regroup several monogamous or polygynous households (Timera 1996). In the course of his 1954 survey, M’Bow was particularly struck by the spatial concentration of the residential areas:

What essentially characterises the habitat is its extremely concentrated form. One would be astonished to see during the dry season large empty spaces around the village while the houses press up against each other only leaving between them very small alleyways. This concentration has been imposed less by the social structure than by nature. The houses have been established there where they were able to escape from the flooding of the river during the rainy season (M’bow 1954).

Since M’Bow’s time, while the central village still retains this highly concentrated form, the growth in population has led to expansion to the west. At the time of M’Bow’s study, the population was 1400: today it is over 5200. Instead of the traditional adobe-walled one-storey houses separated by narrow alleyways (Fig. 6.1), concrete is the preferred building material of the new, more spacious dwellings (Fig. 6.2). In large part, these new dwellings have been financed by migrant remittances.

Fig. 6.1
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Traditional building style

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Fig. 6.2
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New building style

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Tiznit

Tiznit (population 74,699), the capital of Tiznit province in the Souss-Massa-Draa region of Morocco, is situated 100 km south of Agadir and 10 km inland from the Atlantic coast (see Fig. 2.1).

The town is of quite recent settlement, dating to the fortress built by Sultan Hassan I in the 1880s which was used to subjugate the unruly Berber tribes who inhabited the surrounding area (Baladiya Tiznit 2009). Since then, the town has enjoyed strategic importance as a major regional transport hub, being at the intersection of the north-south N1 highway and an east-west route linking the mountainous interior of the Anti-Atlas with the Atlantic coast towards Sidi Ifni.

The Souss region historically has been populated predominantly by Berber tribes of the Tachelhit-speaking Chleuh ethnic group, as distinct to the Arabised peoples living on the northern and central coastal plains. As noted in Chap. 2, the Souss region was historically a source of seasonal migration to other parts of Morocco as well as neighbouring Algeria. In the twentieth century, as Morocco came under growing French influence, emigration from the Souss became increasingly international, firstly to France and then to the Netherlands and Belgium (de Haas 2006). Migration to Europe has been fundamental to Tiznit’s subsequent growth. On first impressions, Tiznit appears to be a large, prosperous, and well maintained town, visibly better off than towns elsewhere in Morocco of comparable size (Fig. 6.3). According to a local civil servant, Tiznit exemplifies the contribution of emigrants to local development, since it is affluent and expanding yet there are no local “wealth-generating resources.” Instead, prosperity is imported from abroad, by the emigrants.

Fig. 6.3
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Downtown Tiznit (the hotel on the left was built by a returning emigrant)

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Prosperity driven by emigration is clearly something which Tiznit and Dembancané have in common. In other aspects, however, they differ. One obvious difference is their respective sizes, with Tiznit’s population more than ten times that of Dembancané. Another crucial difference is Tiznit’s strategic importance as a transport hub, whereas Dembancané has suffered from its geographic marginality. A third intriguing element to note is the evolution of the social structure in the larger town and its hinterland: whereas in Dembancané the persistence (albeit attenuated) of a quite rigid social hierarchy was underlined, in Tiznit emigration “has contributed to the break-up of traditional villages and the introduction of new (…) consumption habits” (Tiznit.org 2011).

These new trends have been driven largely by returning migrants from France. This pattern began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when vacationing emigrants transformed Tiznit during the summer months, thanks to the homewares and electrical goods purchased in Tiznit and destined to furnish their homes in the villages (douars) of the surrounding region. From the 1980s, some emigrant villagers began to install their families in the town, in order to benefit from the modern amenities and services available there, as will be described shortly. The town has long since expanded beyond the ramparts constructed by Sultan Hassan I a little over a century ago. Indeed, Tiznit is a veritable boomtown with many new housing developments springing up on its outskirts (Fig. 6.4). In the last 10 years the population of the town has increased by almost 40%, from 53,441 in the 2004 census to 74,699 in the 2014 census. Several of my respondents bemoaned the exorbitant real estate prices, amongst the highest in the country. Some locals blame the acquisitiveness of emigrants and their left behind relatives for this inflation in house prices.

Fig. 6.4
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A new housing development under construction on the outskirts of Tiznit

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6.2 Physical Bearings: Constructing a Place to Return to

Family housing was identified as a significant theme by almost all respondents, in both North and West African communities of origin. Building or renovating a house is clearly one means of altering one’s surroundings and physical environment, as well as very visibly augmenting one’s social status, hence the primary importance it is accorded here in relation to the conceptual framework of ‘bearings’ outlined above. The situation in Tiznit and its surrounding hinterland will be treated first.

Tiznit: Boomtown or Ghost Town?

Many current migrants or retired migrants have purchased property in Tiznit, where their families now live, in preference to their ancestral villages in the surrounding countryside. A similar trend was noted by Hein de Haas in the Todgha Valley, a mountainous area of Morocco about 450 km to the north-east of Tiznit where a high proportion of households are involved in international migration (de Haas 2006). According to an employee responsible for international banking in the Tiznit branch of a major Moroccan bank, some 7,400 retired migrants own property in Tiznit. They are attracted by the infrastructure and modern conveniences which are not available in their villages of origin: schools, health clinics, banking, administrative services, as well as electricity and water supply. One consequence of this is that the people who live in Tiznit are more “westernised... here it’s every man for himself,” according to my host in the town, Saleem (60, Tiznit, Morocco). Saleem is originally from the province of Goulmime, further south, but now his family is installed in Tiznit. One advantage of living in Tiznit for Saleem’s family is that it is within commuting distance of the university in Agadir (his three children are all aged in their late teens and early twenties). The town is also convenient for Agadir airport.

Saleem has clearly done well for himself, owning a large three-storey family home in a central neighbourhood of Tiznit. Similarly, the family of Badr (63, Tiznit, Morocco) lives in an upmarket neighbourhood, in a spacious and luxuriously fitted house, to which I was invited one afternoon for tea. Nonetheless, the house lies empty for much of the year. Badr, the head of the household, used to reside in hostels in the northern Paris suburbs, but subsequently was able to move out into normal private housing when his wife and children came to France. Thus he is well-settled in France, and only comes to his Tiznit home during the summer months. His nephew explained to me that many of the homes in their neighbourhood likewise remain empty most of the year, because the owners and their families are all living in France, or in the bigger Moroccan cities. Outside the summer season, parts of Tiznit resemble a ghost town more than a boomtown.

Scholars of migration have long acknowledged the substantial allocation of resources which emigrants direct towards family housing in places of origin (see Sect. 5.1). The different purposes to which remittances are put have sustained a long-running debate within the migration-development literature between ‘migration optimists’ who argue that remittances contribute to sustainable economic development in countries of origin, and ‘migration pessimists’ who argue that remittances lead to more inequality in places of origin, as well as the breakdown of traditional economic structures, and economic inactivity due to dependency on remittances (see de Haas 2006 for discussion). As regards housing specifically, the debate centres on whether such investments constitute a ‘productive’ use of remittances or are merely signs of ostentatious consumption.

In Morocco, the dominant view of scholars used to be that using remittances for housing investment was ostentatious and non-productive. Yet as Hein de Haas notes, “there seems to be ample reason to criticise this attitude as rather patronising, for blaming migrants’ ‘irrational’ mentality a priori rather than trying to comprehend their motives” (de Haas 2006: 575). This rebuttal certainly applies in Saleem’s case: investing in property in Tiznit, the regional urban centre, has enabled his children to attend good schools and have a chance of attending university in nearby Agadir. Although his grand house in central Tiznit is certainly indicative of his status, it also attests to a desire for space, privacy and better health. Furthermore, investment in housing also marks a crucial juncture in Moroccan wives’ empowerment insofar as this heralds family nuclearisation and independence from the migrants’ parents-in-law (Lenoël 2017). As for Badr’s house, standing empty most of the year, this is less obviously a case of productive investment. Nonetheless, investments in housing create important indirect multiplier effects in local economies, for example in creating construction jobs (Taylor 2004).

The Dream Homes of Dembancané

Like Tiznit, Dembancané has undergone rapid expansion in recent years (although on a smaller scale), thanks in large part to the construction of houses by emigrants. As in the North African case, my West African respondents have been expected to construct their own houses. Like in Tiznit, a common feature of West African respondents’ testimony was equipping one’s family dwelling with the modern conveniences and comforts to which the hostel residents have become accustomed during their time in France. Electricity was installed in most parts of Dembancané around 2005.

My host in Dembancané, Jaabé, explained that the émigrés were abandoning the traditional architectural style, consisting of thick adobe walls (see Fig. 6.1), in preference for larger modern houses made from concrete. Jaabé himself was actively engaged in such a construction project during my time in Dembancané: every day he would visit a plot of land at the western edge of the village to supervise the fabrication of the cement bricks with which the new house would be built (Fig. 6.5). Jaabé himself acknowledged that the new architectural trend is not without certain disadvantages, since the concrete constructions are notably less cool during the extremely hot summer months compared with the thick-walled adobe dwellings. This said, the concrete houses are quickly constructed, spacious and solid, hence the popularity of this architectural style.

Fig. 6.5
figure 5

From building blocks...

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Just as in Tiznit, however, some houses lie vacant, such as the one shown in Fig. 6.6, owned by a migrant who has reunified with his wife and children in France. This man has not come back to the village at retirement definitively. Such migrants are “trapped” (coincé) in France, according to their peers to whom I spoke in the village, because their families do not want to leave France. The implication is that those who have stuck to the old model of ‘solo emigration’, leaving wives and children behind, have made the better decision. They have resisted the ‘temptation’ of family reunification, and as a result they have a better retirement, enjoying the physical comforts and visibly improved social status which their grand dwellings in Dembancané confer. Similar stories were recounted to me by respondents from other parts of Senegal and Mauritania. Abdoulaye (44, Tambacounda, Senegal) remarked that the men in this situation – the family reunifiers in France who are retired but cannot return to the large house they have built – are “losers” (perdants). Such grand dwellings are ‘dream’ homes, both literally and figuratively, as they are mostly inhabited only in the men’s imagination. These judgements are not confined to the hostel residents. As other studies have shown, not returning may be portrayed as a sign of failure, particularly in male narratives (e.g. Zontini 2015).

Fig. 6.6
figure 6

... to finished product

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6.3 Re-integration and the Role of Hometown Associations

The expansion and modernisation of Dembancané is not just a result of migrants’ investments in housing. Just as important have been the alterations to the built environment effected by migrants through the construction of communal, collectively-financed infrastructure. This is coordinated through the Dembancané hometown association, which has its ‘headquarters’ in a hostel in Boulogne-Billancourt, just to the west of Paris. The hostel is home to around 200 Dembancané expatriates, and their number is augmented considerably one Sunday per month when fellow villagers living elsewhere in France come from far and wide to attend the association’s monthly meeting. The Boulogne-Billancourt hostel is not unusual in this respect. In fact, many hostels across France fulfil a crucial role as the meeting place and organisational hub of hometown diaspora communities. In addition to their development activities back home, hometown associations may also play a key role in facilitating the integration of recently arrived migrants at the destination, by facilitating the exchange of information and advice about employment opportunities, housing and welfare (Lacroix 2013).

Hometown associations or networks are not unique to the context of West African migration, being a feature of transnational communities from sending regions as diverse as Central and South America (Goldring 1999; Portes et al. 2007), the Caribbean (Levitt 2001), the Maghreb (Lacroix 2009), Central and East Africa (Mercer et al. 2008) and South Asia (Lacroix 2013), to cite only a handful of case studies in what is a burgeoning literature. Indeed, since the mid-2000s the role of collective remittances and hometown associations in the so-called ‘migration-development’ nexus has garnered increasing attention from academics and development policymakers in the Global North (Maimbo and Ratha 2005). Policymakers are excited by collective remittances because they are channelled towards what are perceived as ‘productive’ uses such as the provision of public goods or infrastructure, as opposed to the everyday subsistence needs financed by private remittances within families (Mercer et al. 2008). Furthermore, hometown associations are of interest to development actors in the Global North because of their local knowledge and embeddedness, enabling such actors to sidestep inefficient state bureaucracies in migrants’ home countries (ibid).

Laying the Foundations for Return to West Africa

A prominent critique of contemporary literature on African hometown associations is that this work puts disproportionate emphasis on international migrants’ contributions, at the expense of the ‘domestic diaspora’ who have migrated within African countries (Mercer et al. 2008). In so doing, contemporary scholars have also ignored the historical origins of hometown associations. As Mercer et al. (2008: 65) note: “the focus on transnational associations in current research obsecures a widespread collective amnesia about their emergence in Africa.”

The history of migration from the Senegal River Valley is in fact especially instructive here. For example, Soninke hometown associations have been in existence in one form or another for decades, beginning with the establishment in the early-twentieth century of ‘communal houses’ in West African cities such as Dakar when rural-urban migration first gained momentum. The initial function of the communal funds in Dakar was not ‘developmental’ in the narrow contemporary sense, but rather one of welfare and mutual aid to members in case of unemployment, occupational injury, sickness, or death when away from the village. In Soninke migration culture, the communal houses for émigré village kinsmen are known as kompe xoore (literally ‘big room’), and were first documented in Dakar in the 1930s (see Manchuelle 1997: 123–128 for more details). Schmitz (1994) refers to similar communal arrangements in Dakar in the 1950s among migrants from the other main ethnic group inhabiting the Senegal Valley, the Haalpulaar. With the growth of international migration to France during and after WWII, such institutions were transplanted internationally, to the hostels (Manchuelle 1997; Schmitz 1994). Djimé, now in his 70s, noted his close involvement with the Dembancané hometown association and its development projects since the time of his first voyage to France, in 1961:

I could spend hours talking about the development projects! It doesn’t stop with the projects because the immigrants, since our day, have been contributing without pause to the development of this village. We started with the post office; it was us who constructed our own post office [Fig. 6.7]. It was us who built the primary school. There are loads of projects. The secondary school, we financed it, with the pensioners too – we number more than 90, the pensioners here. Each one contributes to the development of this village. (Djimé, Dembancané, Senegal).

Fig. 6.7
figure 7

The Dembancané post office

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The fruits of these communal remittances were immediately visible in Dembancané: a very wide array of infrastructure and collective goods has been facilitated there thanks to pooled migrant contributions. This infrastructure includes: post and telecommunications facilities (Fig. 6.7); a health clinic and maternity facilities (Fig. 6.8); drinking water borehole and water storage (forage) (Fig. 6.9); schools (both at college and primary level); electricity; water pumps and other irrigation equipment; as well as a covered market hall. The next project is to build a complexe sanitaire (small hospital), costing in the region of €150,000. The website of the local municipal authority leaves no room for doubt: “The quasi-totality of these structures has been financed and realised by the migrant sons of Dembancané” (Dembancane.net 2011).

Fig. 6.8
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The maternity clinic

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Fig. 6.9
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The forage(water borehole and storage tank)

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The work of the Dembancané hometown association is far from exceptional when judged with migrants’ development projects in other towns and villages in the Senegal River valley. Several authors have analysed this aspect of the ‘culture of migration’ which pertains the length and breadth of the famous valley (Daum 1998; Dia 2008; Quiminal 2002). I was struck by the similarity of the infrastructure projects embarked upon by different hometown associations I encountered. For example, I was privileged to observe a meeting of the hometown association to which Ibrahima (59, Gorgol, Mauritania) belongs. This event took place at a hostel in Paris’ 19th arrondissement. The leaders of the association listed the range of infrastructure which they have funded, an almost identical set of projects to that undertaken in Dembancané. Dia (2008) records a similar range of initiatives in the town of Agnam Thiodaye, in the Middle Senegal Valley.

In terms of contributions, every member of the Dembancané hometown association is obliged to transfer a minimum of €10 to the fund per month, and with 1300 members in France, this soon adds up to a significant sum.Footnote 4 This individual contribution is an “ob-li-ga-tion” according to Idrissa (Dembancané, Senegal), stressing each syllable. Even the unemployed and those on the minimum wage are expected to contribute. As Djimé’s quote above indicates, elders from the village with French pensions are also expected to contribute, with typical sums ranging between 50,000 and 100,000 francs CFAFootnote 5 per year (€75 to €150) depending on the projects undertaken in a given year. It is not a fixed regular sum, unlike the monthly levies imposed on villagers of working age living in France.

Through their involvement in development projects funded by communal remittances, the elders of Dembancané, and other hometowns in West Africa whose émigrés I interviewed, have been able to keep their place in the home community despite prolonged absence. The normative expectation weighing on respondents was to be of service to the community of origin at retirement, as Waly (75, Kayès, Mali) noted: ‘When you are retired, you should be of service over there [Mali]; you return to better serve your village and your family.’ For those who live at least some of the year in hostels in France, such service takes place via the hometown associations headquartered in hostels. Through these institutions a great number of development and infrastructure projects – coordinated by the emigrants in conjunction with the villagers remaining behind – come to fruition.

The physical transformation of place thanks to the collective efforts of the Dembancané hometown association has led to a concurrent transformation in the political status of Dembancané. In fact, as Mercer and colleagues underline, “it is impossible to sever the current development work that these associations do from their political work” (Mercer et al. 2008: xi). It should be acknowledged that it is not just international migrants who are at the heart of such transformations: rural-urban migrants in cities like Dakar may bring crucial assistance, and the success of projects also relies on supervision ‘on the ground’ from those villagers remaining behind (Dia 2008). But in all cases, infrastructure and development projects have a political dimension insofar as these efforts are a substitute for absent state intervention. State funding for development and infrastructure projects in the hometowns of my respondents has been very rare, if not non-existent. By substituting for the state, migrants and non-migrants alike are able to boost the political importance of their towns in several ways.

Firstly, insofar as migrant development associations play a ‘gap-filling’ role in the absence of state provision, their villages and towns of origin are regarded favourably by state actors for being self-sufficient. Ibrahima (59, Gorgol, Mauritania) feels that it should be the government who provides these things and finds it “shameful” that they do not. But his village is self-sufficient thanks to the emigrants. There is a justified pride in this self-reliance and the state in effect gives legitimacy to these developmental actions. In Dembancané, the gap-filling rationale has led to a new development strategy: rather than wait for distant state agencies to undertake lengthy approval procedures for proposed infrastructure, the villagers do not inform the authorities until after a project is completed. This creative approach greatly expedites projects which might otherwise get bogged down in bureaucracy and bribes.

The political status of hometowns is enhanced secondly through the ability of hometown association members to mobilise the human and social capital they have accumulated in France in order to forge partnerships with French NGOs and civil servants in the Ministry charged with international development. Such collaborations are prestigious, as are initiatives aimed at twinning hometowns with municipalities in France. At the time I met Idrissa, a prominent (younger) member of the Dembancané community in France, he was in talks about twinning with several municipalities. Another example of transnational partnership was the donation of classroom equipment such as desktop computers, school desks and chairs which the secondary school in Dembancané received from the commune of Villeneuve-Le-Roi, a southern suburb of Paris, in 2008 (see Fig. 6.10). Crucial in this trend towards more concerted cooperation on development has been the policy of ‘co-development’ pioneered initially by the French government, later gaining credence in EU policy-making (Lacroix 2009; Østergaard-Nielsen 2011). The notion of co-development, which is premised on “the instrumentalisation of migrants to develop areas of significant emigration in order to reduce migration pressure” (Lacroix 2009: 1683), has led to the formalisation and professionalisation of migrant development activities. Yet it has also been criticised for promoting a dubious logic of immigration control and a reductionist view of migration motives whereby return to one’s roots is assumed to be the ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ aspiration of all emigrants (Sinatti and Horst 2015).

Fig. 6.10
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Column and plaque erected in central Dembancané to commemorate the visit of a delegation from Villeneuve-Le-Roi in 2008 bringing donated equipment to Dembancané’s secondary school

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Thirdly, as a consequence of the improved infrastructure and wealth in the town, Dembancané has become a focal point for people in the surrounding hinterland. The proliferation of public goods and services – water, electricity, post and communications, a new covered market hall, primary and secondary schools – means that the village has become a magnet for neighbouring populations, thereby boosting its importance politically. This encourages the villagers to break with the past history of enclavement (geographical separation), identified as a continuing blight on the village by Siyaka, a municipal official. The most glaring symptom of this is the poor quality of the access track linking Dembancané with the N2 highway. In the rainy season the villagers are sometimes totally cut off by the flood waters – the track becomes submerged and the village resembles an “island.” These are “primordial and vital questions... for economic life in the village, for life full stop” in Siyaka’s opinion. Indeed, one of the motivations for local officials to assist me in my research was to counteract this isolation – “put us on the map!” they implored.Footnote 6

It was this same desire to put an end to isolation and enclavement which saw the Dembancané elders apply to get the administrative status of the town changed to that of a commune, with a town hall (mairie) and an elected municipal council headed by a mayor. Until recently, Dembancané was part of a lowly communauté rurale comprising 15 villages, with the headquarters in nearby Bokhiladji. My respondents maintained that Dembancané is the biggest and most important of these 15 villages, hence the application for commune status (incorporating the smaller village of Yerma which adjoins Dembancané). The main advantages of having commune status are (i) autonomy in how government money is spent, and (ii) better local services and administration, saving villagers the trouble of having to travel for routine administrative tasks. This application was approved in 2008 by the then-President of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade: as a result Dembancané is no longer a village, but a fully-fledged town of over 5200 inhabitants. An essential ingredient in the success of this transformation has been the dynamism and experience of the expatriate community in France.

Difficulties of Collective Construction in North Africa

The same collective dynamism was not a feature of the testimony of my North African respondents. Thomas Lacroix has written extensively on the contributions of North African migrants living in Europe to the development of regions of origin (Lacroix 2005, 2009, 2013), and his findings point to some interesting similarities and differences between North African initiatives and those centring on the Senegal River Valley. As in the Soninke case, contemporary communal remittances in Morocco have historical precedents, specifically in collective obligations to till common lands and maintain communal infrastructure such as irrigation systems, mosques and cemeteries, overseen by village assemblies (jemaa) (Lacroix 2005). With emigration, absent villagers were still expected to fulfil their communal obligations, but by different means: rather than through physical labour, contributions would henceforth be financial (Lacroix 2009). A similar evolution in collective labour practices occurred in Kabylia, Algeria once large-scale emigration to France became established, with emigrants in France reproducing the forms and customs of the tajmaat or village assembly. As with the early Soninke institutions, a key function of the tajmaat in France was to collect funds to assure repatriation for burial when members died abroad (Lacroix 2013).

A number of my North African respondents noted the importance of these institutions in the early years of their presence in France. Yet, as Paris-based psychiatrist Dr. Slimane observed, the faltering bonds of cohesion between emigrants have weakened these institutions over time, following family reunifications. In their place, Lacroix (2009) has documented the emergence of village development associations in Morocco, since the 1990s. These emerged in a context of the failure of the IMF-imposed decentralisation of governance in Morocco and legal changes making it easier to create assocations. Under decentralisation, municipal authorities (communes) gained new responsibilities in providing local infrastructure and services, but without the resources from central government to fund this. Thus, village development associations sprang up to fill the gap left by the state, for example with initiatives to tarmack roads and bring electricity to remote villages. In need of funds for such activities, these associations looked firstly to their fellow villagers residing abroad for financial support (Lacroix 2009). Nonetheless, very few of my North African respondents mentioned contributing to these associations, in marked contrast to the example set by West African respondents, as noted above.

This disparity between narratives of hometown development among North and West African hostel residents is puzzling. One hypothesis, which certainly would merit further investigation, centres on the skills and financial resources required to deliver development projects in places of origin. This line of argument is suggested by Lacroix’s research on collective remittances to Morocco and Algeria (Lacroix 2009, 2013). In Morocco, it became apparent that the financial contributions provided by the migrants alone were not sufficient, leading to a search for new sources of funding, primarily international donors and French government agencies keen to promote co-development (Lacroix 2009). One key consequence of this shift to new sources of finance has been the professionalization of the Moroccan transnational development field, requiring new skillsets in project management and grant writing and significant levels of social capital to develop working relationships with a range of actors both in Morocco and in Europe. In Algeria, by contrast, migrants have been much less involved in development projects. Lacroix argues that “the inscription of Moroccans into civil society networks in the sending and receiving societies have secured different sources of funding. Conversely, Algerian Kabyles suffer from their low socio-professional incorporation [in France] which is not compensated for by their civic activism” (Lacroix 2013: 1021). Lacroix’s argument suggests that in the North African context, diaspora development projects require significant human and social capital to succeed (see also Portes et al. 2007). In the West African context, by contrast, my research indicates that the bar to successful implementation of hometown projects is lower.

If this is the case, then the non-participation of older North African hostel residents in hometown development becomes less puzzling, as they do not have the requisite capacities. Indeed, among my respondents, even the most dynamic North African residents felt themselves to be blocked in their efforts to pursue collective development projects back home, despite a clear willingness to act. The following testimony from Saleem (60, Tiznit, Morocco) – the president of the Residents’ Committee in his hostel – captures this frustration well. Saleem has been very keen to contribute to the development of his father’s village in Goulmime Province, indeed his resolve –what he calls his “association mentality” – appears to growing firmer as he approaches retirement. In his view it is at retirement that people have the time and expertise to devote to development questions. Such activities can furthermore assist the psychological transition from employment to retirement:

The problem which we immigrants have, especially the retirees, is that we don’t prepare what we’re going to do afterwards. When the person quits his job, all of a sudden he sits down, doesn’t move, the guy doesn’t have any plans, he hasn’t prepared something. Even just an association: the simplest thing is to create an association. (Saleem, 60, Tiznit, Morocco)

Thus Saleem founded an association in 2003, with the aim of assisting “children at risk of poverty, women, widows, people who have need of our help.” At present, there are around 50 members, all of whom have kinship ties to the village and have paid €100 to join the association. The association’s next project is to create a large hall, accommodating up to 60 people, to be used for public meetings and festivities.

Each year – it’s our tradition – we have a festival, there are people who come from abroad, and from the countryside (...) It’s so that the traditions remain alive for the next generation, because we have children who don’t even know their place of origin, so the festival allows people to get to know each other (...) We are going to build a hall, a big one, because with the small room which we have at the moment, the space isn’t big enough. So we have bought the land, we’re going to enlarge the hall, there’s going to be a separation between the men and the women, with toilet facilities etc. That’s the project that we’re currently working on, we’ve already begun it. (Saleem, 60, Tiznit, Morocco)

Yet, even with a project which is not in any way innovative or challenging of the traditional ways of doing things back home (cf. Cerase 1974), Saleem meets resistance:

We have things to do but it’s a shame because we don’t live in the country, we live here [in France], so we’re not given help from over there. And when from time to time we go on holiday there, we can’t do everything. [AH: So there isn’t anyone over there who keeps an eye on the construction work?] No, we even asked to create an association over there which would be linked to ours, but currently there is still no progress (...) We have guys who are retired but they aren’t interested enough in the association, that’s the problem.

Interestingly in Saleem’s example, the local government (commune) has shown its support for this venture by tarmacking the road which will lead to the new meeting hall. In part this is motivated by the fact that local officials will be able to use the space for meetings. Just as in Dembancané, therefore, the state has an interest in this project because of its ‘gap-filling’ potential. However, other respondents in different circumstances mentioned that the Moroccan state was not at all supportive. As the daughter of my respondent Lhoussaine (63, Tiznit, Morocco) put it, “if it is an economic issue, bringing money into Morocco, there is never any problem, but if there’s a legal, administrative, or human dimension, then there are always barriers [erected by the state].”

6.4 Social Bearings: Negotiations of Status and ‘Mentality’

For North African respondents, the difficulties encountered in constructing a physical space to return to lead to a situation whereby they also lack ‘social bearings’, in other words a situation whereby their social standing and behaviour in places of origin is put in question. West African respondents, on the other hand, find it easier to re-integrate socially thanks to their role in coordinating improvements to the physical environment and infrastructure in places of origin.

Retirement in West Africa: The “Start of Another Life”, Not a Social Death

The influence of retired returnees in Dembancané is greatly facilitated by transplanting power structures to France from the village, via the hometown association. The economic resources which hostel residents marshal collectively via these institutions enable them to wield power in their local communities, despite their physical absence. As Catherine Quiminal notes, these associations have ‘transformed the absence of each migrant into a prominent political presence in the home village’ (2002: 40; author’s translation). Upon retirement, West Africans are able to draw on the political, social and economic capital that they were able to retain through their involvement in the hometown associations, in order to facilitate their re-integration to the home village. Many such hometown associations are headquartered in hostels in France. Simply by living in a hostel, residents are constantly informed of events in the village. The contributions they make via their hometown associations enable older hostel residents to be key agents of change in their home communities. The power they wield enables them not only to keep tabs on developments back home, but also to direct change in the village as they see fit. They are therefore not at all disoriented upon their return. This eases their re-integration and gives them a sense of ownership in the community.

The second element to consider is the gerontocratic norms which operate in the West African villages of my respondents. In terms of political decision-making at the village level, older people have the most important role. As Idrissa (Dembancané, Senegal) put it, “social power belongs to them”. In Dembancané, the pensioners’ contribution is political firstly because it is often the elders who take the lead on development projects. Inspiration for collective projects in Dembancané comes from the expatriates in France, as well as from the elders in the village, who necessarily include a good number of return migrants. For example, the covered market was an initiative from France, whereas the new college and ‘Ecole 2′ (one of two primary schools) were initiatives emanating from the village elders. Indeed, the funds for this latter project were almost entirely sourced by the returned retirees, who supplied 8 million francs CFA (over €12,000) of the 9 million francs CFA total.

The men become more active socially at retirement. Contrary to representations of retirement as a ‘social death’ in (post-) industrialised countries (Guillemard 1972), retirement back in West Africa for hostel residents is portrayed as a new lease of life. As a senior figure in Dembancané’s municipal administration described, ‘it’s at retirement that they lead an active life, socially... They become more present socially at retirement.’ For an example of the active social life of retirees in Dembancané, one needs look no further than Samba, the father of Jaabé with whom I stayed during my time in Dembancané. Samba is undoubtedly an important man in the village: people constantly seek him out for advice. He is often away from morning to afternoon, visiting local politicians and mediating family tensions. By midday Samba was sometimes visibly fatigued by his morning exertions and visits.

It is not just in the field of village affairs that older returnees exert themselves, but also in the fields of millet, rice and sorghum which surround the village. The elders are strongly implicated in the economic and productive life of the village. Idrissa and Lassana stressed that those who have not emigrated from Dembancané often die young due to the very hard work they do in the fields. Generally, however, the role of the former emigrant elders is not to provide physical labour: it is more about supervision and strategy, according to Amadou (64, Tambacounda, Senegal), who at the time of our meeting in France was about to return home in order to supervise the coming season’s groundnut planting. The actual manual labour involved in planting is more for young people: the older ones direct proceedings and purchase materials. Idrissa (Dembancané, Senegal) was adamant that old age in Soninke society is not like in the West, where it is considered as a ceasing of activity, as the beginning of the end of life. Instead, in Dembancané, it is the “start of another life, an active life... a return to the soil, for farming and rearing livestock” (Idrissa, Dembancané, Senegal; emphasis added). Djimé also laid a stress on retirement as the start of a new stage of activity:

Here it’s not the same life as the pensioners in Europe, because here, when you return to the village, it’s a time of new activity, a new condition. Because here you’re always working, going to the fields, farming, administrative errands, construction. We’re out there: we’re not resting, unemployed! [laughter] In France, [at retirement] they said to us, “off you go, go and relax, take a rest – we’ll pay you!” But on the contrary, we come here and we work! [more laughter] (Djimé, Dembancané, Senegal)

“We Have a Different Mentality to Them”: Social Bearings in North Africa

This sentiment of being active and socially valued by the home community was not shared by most of my North African respondents. Instead of keeping active and taking control, North African respondents were more passive. Saleem (60, Tiznit, Morocco) stressed that during his holidays he usually has very little time to himself – “everything is programmed” – and often he has very little say in how the programme is planned. “I am like a passenger” is his way of expressing this passiveness in the face of family commitments. In response to the administrative and social re-integration problems which many older Moroccans returning from Europe experience, ‘Migrations et Développement’, an important development NGO in Southern Morocco (Lacroix 2005), launched an ‘orientation service’ for retired migrants in 2007. In our interview, the coordinator of the service, Lahcen, complained: “These people are treated like they are redundant. The Moroccan state should take care of them once they are retired.” He elaborated by suggesting that it might be necessary for the Moroccan authorities to create special services for these elders because they are neglected within the family and local community. Indeed, the questionnaire which he completes with every new user of the orientation service asks whether the Moroccan state should build care homes in Morocco exclusively for return migrants. The very fact that this question is asked illustrates the disparity between how these older returnees are viewed in Morocco and how they are viewed in Senegal. Such a question would frankly be unthinkable in Dembancané: on several occasions, my respondents there voiced to me their horror of being admitted to a retirement home in France (see Sect.7.4). For them, it is out of the question that such facilities could exist in villages on the banks of the Senegal River!

Another respondent highlighted the North African men’s sense of isolation. Many older hostel residents have “cut their ties with the country of origin” to some extent. They are “isolated socially here and there... When they are back home, they stay indoors, they don’t leave the house often” (Dr Ismail, medical advisor, migrant welfare association, Paris). That they do not go out but instead prefer to be house-bound brings to mind the work of Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria, who early in his career wrote about the ‘Kabyle House’ and the gender-based dualism inscribed in this domestic space:

[T]he house being the domain of women, the men are to some degree excluded from it. The place of the man is out of doors, in the fields or in the assembly, among other men. This is something taught very early to the young boy. Men who remain too much in the house during the day are suspect. The respectable man must allow himself to be seen, to show himself and place himself continually under the gaze of others, to face up to them (qabal). (Bourdieu 1965: 222)

When North African respondents did attempt to ‘face up’ to their peers who have remained in the community of origin, their honour – identified by Bourdieu (1965) as a fundamental value in North African society – was put in question. One respondent described this situation very eloquently:

It’s true, I have friends back home who have done well for themselves, and sometimes when I go home, when I sit with them, I feel that I am embarrassed. Because those guys have reached a level which I should have reached. Because for me – in my file it’s written ‘factory worker in France’ – whereas they are doctors, lawyers, so we don’t speak the same language. That’s psychologically embarrassing. For me it’s a regret. (Saleem, 60, Tiznit, Morocco).Footnote 7

My North African respondents were often unsettled by being out of step with the society of origin during their return visits, further complicating the process of re-integration. They would complain that life in their hometowns was “not like it used to be” and that they no longer shared the same “mentality” and “character” of friends and acquaintances who had not emigrated. This could manifest itself in seemingly minor but nonetheless troubling ways, such as time-keeping, bureaucratic frustrations and pace of life, an issue discussed by other scholars of return migration (de Haas and Fokkema 2010; Gmelch 1980; Gualda and Escriva 2014). For example, one of my neighbours in the hostel where I resided laid a particular stress on time-keeping: having been a factory shift worker, he was quite a stickler for punctuality. He had invited me to share a meal with him one evening, and we had agreed to meet in the communal kitchen on his floor. I was three (at the most, four) minutes late, but he was evidently quite annoyed to begin with: “when I say eight o’clock, I mean eight o’clock!” On another occasion, he told me:

When we [immigrants] arrived in these countries in Europe, we followed the European system, a meeting at 3pm, it’s at 3pm on the dot. Back home, a guy might say at 4pm but doesn’t show up, even if you go looking for him, he’ll say ‘yes, but I forgot’ – so we have a different mentality from them.

More existentially troubling for some men was their adoption of a ‘French’ lifestyle at odds with the established moral and religious order back home. This was a feature not only of North African respondents’ testimony, but also of West Africans’ talk. Hadyatou, who regularly travels back-and-forth between France and Dembancané, noted that when he returns from France it takes him a while to adjust, to feel at ease. It is a question of adjusting one’s “mentality (...) The first time, I didn’t have the same mentality as here [Senegal], you know. I had the mentality of a European guy... saying my prayers five times a day?! – I wasn’t used to that. Now that I have returned I do my prayers every day.” Indeed, his comments were revealing of the ‘French’ lifestyle and social life which he used to enjoy when I asked him whether there were aspects of life in France which he missed: “Yes, many in fact. Because I have many friends there; also, I miss a glass of the good stuff from time to time, a Ricard, a glass of Beaujolais [laughs].” Likewise in Morocco, those who have taken to drinking during their time in Europe are not able to indulge this pastime back in their villages. “They have to do all the prayers, they can’t go drinking. And they soon get tired of the strict regime, so they go back to France to continue with their libertine lifestyle” (Younes, 60s, Tizinit).

6.5 Conclusion

This chapter has sought to unpack the processes of re-integration which retired hostel residents confront during their periods of residence in communities of origin, necessitating adaptations between those who return and those left behind (Arowolo 2000). As the chapter has shown, this occurs above all in economic, political and normative terms. In order to capture these re-integration processes, I proposed a conceptual framework based on the notion of ‘bearings’. The concept of bearings did useful analytical work by highlighting two spheres in which re-integration takes place. Firstly, bearings may be physical in the sense of having influence over one’s physical surroundings in places of origin, as was discussed in Sects. 6.2 and 6.3. Secondly, there is a social aspect to bearings, and in Sect. 6.4 I explored hostels residents’ social standing and behaviour in places or origin. As was shown, physical and social bearings are mutually reinforcing: the lack of social capital evinced by North African hostel residents was one reason for the difficulties they encountered in constructing a place back home after retirement, whereas my respondents in Dembancané were able to contribute to the town’s infrastructural development because of their social embeddedness, cemented by their years of participation in the Dembancané hometown association. Indeed, their social status increased with the growing regional significance of the town which their development work has brought about: improvements to infrastructure there have seen it emerge as a local administrative centre and gain in prominence politically.

One puzzling question raised by my findings was why many West Africans engaged in hometown development whereas most of my North African respondents did not. Much of the literature on transnationalism and diaspora engagement explains migrants’ motivations to assist their places of origin on the basis of supposedly fundamental obligations stemming from common ethnicity and kinship ties (see Sect. 2.3 for discussion). As Carolin Fischer notes, “People’s agency and motivation to engage with the country of origin seem to be taken as a given” (Fischer 2013: 56). This chapter has shown that these assumptions about the determinism of ethnic and kinship ties are mis-placed. While many West African hostel residents were strongly motivated to engage in development, and often spectacularly successful, I encountered less enthusiasm among Moroccans and Algerians. Furthermore, those North Africans who were motivated were often frustrated in their efforts. This indicates that a comparison of the potential for agency in the two regions of origin is warranted.

Emirbayer and Mische (1998) argue that social action should be conceived as resulting from the conjuncture of the temporal and structural contexts or environments of action, and the dynamic individual element of agency. Applying this to the discussion of bearings above, it is clear that ‘getting one’s bearings’ is also about the way people navigate different social and structural environments over time. As the chapter showed, such environments can be constraining, notably in relation to the level of resources and skills needed to implement development projects. But at the same time navigation also involves people’s conscious and sometimes creative and transformative responses to such constraints. For example, the strategy adopted in Dembancané to not apply for planning approval and only inform state agencies once infrastructure projects are completed: this calculated gamble rests on the assumption that distant bureaucrats could not possibly overrule or dismantle projects once they are up and running, due to the valuable ‘gap-filling’ function they fulfil for central government.

My final remarks address the theories of return migration presented in Chap. 2. Given the chapter’s focus on re-integration, the explanatory model provided by scholars in the structuralist tradition like George Gmelch and Francesco Cerase is of considerable relevance. North Africans found it difficult to physically construct a place to return to because of a perceived lack of insider contacts among the local power holders, whereas in West Africa, it is the emigrants themselves who have become the power holders. These findings also speak to theoretical paradigms in the transnationalism literature, given the long-distance channels of communication which exist between hometown associations – often headquartered in hostels – and the community back home. Thanks to their hometown association, the Dembancané men in France have reliable information about their hometown, which means they are better prepared for return. Although new communication technologies can be a barrier to return at the family level (see Sect. 5.4), at the village level rapid and regular communications relayed by the hometown associations help members in France maintain a political, economic and symbolic presence in the village, facilitating return if so desired.

Contrary to representations of retirement as a ‘social death’ in (post-) industrial societies (Guillemard 1972), retirement back in West Africa for hostel residents is portrayed as a new lease of life. By contrast, North Africans tended to feel redundant and passive, to the extent that there were demands for the Moroccan state to build care homes for retired returning migrants, a scenario which would be completely unthinkable in Dembancané where institutionalised elder care outside the family is anathema. The issue of care homes and what happens as the hostel residents approach and prepare for the end of life will now be taken up in Chap. 7. While the foregoing chapter was, at least for my West African respondents, imbued with the hope and pride which flowed from their contributions to hometown development, the issues of death and dependency are unsurprisingly marked by less sanguine attitudes.