Senegalese migration to Spain: transnational mothering practices

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the relationship between pre-migration fostering practices and the transnational strategies of a group of Senegalese mothers living in Spain. In Senegal, large households, residential separation of couples, and collective fostering are the norm; it is not unusual for children to be under the care of women other than their mother, even for long periods of time. Drawing from data collected during 2 years of transnational multi-sited fieldwork that followed Senegalese mothers between their households of origin and destination, we argue that these women sought to reproduce the Senegalese mainstream mothering ideology in Spain. They did this by adopting two main strategies: long-distance mothering and circular mothering. These strategies were used depending on the age of the child, the constraints imposed on mother and children by migration legislation, and the social capital available to the migrant. This article seeks to integrate a wider range of experiences and the influence of pre-migratory mothering ideologies, kinship systems, and household structures on transnational mothering practices into the existing literature on transnational mothering.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• transnationalism
• mothering
• Senegal
• Spain

Acknowledgements

We thank Kathryn Furlong and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions to previous versions of this article. All mistakes are ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Interviewees used the term ‘bonne’, which in Senegal is generally used to refer to live-in domestic workers. During our fieldwork, we found that although these domestic workers had been hired before participants' migration, their responsibilities increased substantially once their employer left Senegal. These young women (13–15 years old in most cases) came from extremely poor backgrounds in rural Senegal, marginal Dakar neighbourhoods, or neighbouring countries like Guinea. They had very little resources and were illiterate, circumstances that position then in situations of extreme vulnerability (see CSI 2009, 12). Senegalese ‘bonnes’ are the embodiment of the first and weakest link in the global care chain (Hochschild, 2000). It is a belittling term that we nonetheless use throughout the article not to obscure the terms of the relationship that participants established with these workers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte: [I+D (reference number CSO2008-04838)]; Zeit Stiftung, Germany: Bucerius PhD Scholarship in Migration Studies; Oficina de Cooperación y Voluntariado, Universidade da Coruña, Spain: [ref. 3-2008]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship award no. 770-2].