![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article explores the relations between an environmental history of the Senegal River Valley (Mali, Senegal, Mauritania), Pulaar literature (oral and written) and the processes of migration. To what extent can literature contribute to furthering both the international debates surrounding “refugees” and literary criticism? The article’s hypothesis is that migrations have produced a pendulum effect, promoting an engagement with a literary resilience in which the Pulaar language is invested with a vital, ecological stake. It asks how this geographical imagination can establish a system of alternative laws, becoming a lever of resistance and adaptation in the face of the trauma of dispossession and exile Why are decisive historical moments of regional and international migratory movement coupled with a difficulty in living off the land (and a sentiment of dispossession) concomitant with greater literary output and activism?
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Lily Robert-Foley and Michael Alm for translating the article into English.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Resilience is an individual’s capacity for resistance and adaptation when faced with a traumatic shock and/or difficulties.
2. Current reflection on the conditions of an “environmental justice”, developed between the 1970s and the 1990s, aims to show that the most economically unfortunate live in the most degraded environments, and to call for a social recentring of environmental questions and for politicians to take responsibility (Larrère Citation2017; Schlosberg Citation2009).
3. “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries” (https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/what-is-a-refugee/).
4. Since 2005, some European countries have established lists of “secure countries”, which enables the automatic rejection of applications for asylum coming from these countries. Fleeing a war zone is thus not sufficient to achieve refugee status. In 2014, in France, out of 6000 asylum seekers, only 35 percent obtained refugee status.
5. A new international geopolitical order was put into place in the 1980s following the Cold War and structural adjustment policies (limiting public spending). The massive displacements of populations between southern countries and from the south to the north led the United Nations Refugee Agency to propose humanitarian aid to southern countries. This new role was reinforced in the 1990s when “humanitarian spaces” were put into place within countries, or “refugee camps” in government-attributed territories beyond those countries’ borders.
6. “Environmental Refugees are those people forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. By ‘environmental disruptions’ is meant any physical, chemical and/or biological changes in the ecosystem (or the resource base) that render it, temporarily or permanently, unsuitable to support human life. According to this definition people displaced for political reasons or by civil strife, and migrants seeking better jobs purely on economic grounds, are not considered environmental refugees” (El Hinnawi Citation1985, 4). The definition of environmental migrants is quite similar: “Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment that adversely affects their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad” (Perruchoud and Redpath-Cross Citation2011, 33).
7. Climate refugee, environmental refugee, climate-induced refugee, environmentally induced migrant, environmentally displaced person, environmental migrant, ecological refugee, ecological migrant, environmental displace migrant, eco-migrant, climate migrant, eco-refugees, ecologically displaced person.
8. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) thus put into place an “environmental migration portal” and publishes studies on the subject including those targeted at specific countries, such as Madagascar, Namibia, Vietnam and Senegal (http://www.environmentalmigration.iom.int/#home).
9. Thirty-three out of 36 countries suffering armed conflict between 2008 and 2012 also experienced forced displacements of populations for environmental reasons (Gemenne, Ionesco, and Mokhnacheva Citation2016), such as those acting as a catalyser of the Syrian conflict (Massiot Citation2018).
10. The river basin stretches out over 337,550 square kilometres.
11. This population is divided as follows: 5 percent in Mali, 50 percent in Senegal and 45 percent in Mauritania.
12. In 1935, the Mission d’études du fleuve Sénégal was created and replaced in 1938 by the MAS (Mission d’aménagement du Sénégal), devoted to studying the possibilities for developing the region. In 1945, Richard-Toll started the first rice farm, comprising 120 hectares.
13. From the 1960s, rainfall began to drop, escalating to a drought in 1969 and reaching crisis proportions in 1972 (when the flood period was practically non-existent) that extended into the 2000s.
14. This aid was used to purchase irrigation materials – in particular, water pumps which needed fuel that could be obtained at a reduced price – as well as seed, pesticides and fertilizer.
15. Arabo Berber populations.
16. It would be interesting to study the role these migrants play today, as they are essential to the Valley’s economy, in terms of the protection of an ecosystem, compared to public policy, and the extent to which they might inflect decisions on a state level, while relying on transnational solidarities.
17. In New Zealand, the Wanganui River was granted “legal personality” status, and Māori were tasked with enforcing the river’s rights. In India, the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, both subjected to heavy industrial pollution, obtained the same status (https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2017/03/20/la-nouvelle-zelande-dote-un-fleuve-d-une-personnalite-juridique_5097268_3244.html).
18. In 1966, Arabic was made obligatory in secondary education; in 1968, French was added.
19. The first Pulaar novel was released in Cairo in 1981, entirely financed through the scholarship of the author, Yero Dooro Jallo.
20. Notably the Pulaar Renaissance Association (Association pour la Renaissance du Pulaar) founded in Mbagne, Mauritania in 1962; its literacy activities did not develop in Senegal until the early 1980s.
21. Contesting the image of the refugee as a victim, Marion Fresia (Citation2009) showed how active Mauritanian political opposition was recreated in refugee camps by deported Pulaar militants from the African Liberation of Mauritania Forces (Forces de Libération Africaine de Mauritanie). From Dakar, these militants went to the Senegal River valley and carried out military actions unbeknownst to the UNHCR, raids conducted with the aim of recovering lands seized by the Moors. They also restored traditional leadership that had been stripped of its power in Mauritania, within a highly structured internal organization. Finally, they created strategic allegiances and local alliances with Senegalese villagers with whom they shared a common history and language.
22. The elements presented here in summarized form rely on interviews with authors conducted in various countries between 2003 and 2009 (Bourlet Citation2009).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mélanie Bourlet
Mélanie Bourlet is assistant professor of Pulaar language and literature at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) and Languages and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa (Langage, Langues and Cultures d’Afrique Noire). Her interests are in Pulaar literature from a cosmopolitical and ecocritical/ecopoetic point of view. She currently directs the EcoSen Research Project (co-financed by the French National Research Agency and the Emergences Programme of Paris), a pioneer project which promotes an interdisciplinary ecopoetical approach to the literature of the Senegal River Valley.
Marie Lorin
Marie Lorin is currently a postdoctoral fellow on the EcoSen project. She specializes in comparative literature and oral African literature. Her research focuses on the links between oral literature and environment, and she is also interested in the digital and multimedia documentation of literatures in African languages.