Talk on the move: articulating mobility in West Africa

ABSTRACT

This article explores meaning making in mobilities research by deconstructing the duality of experience and representation. In so doing, it situates language as a form of social action and not a mere representation of preexisting acts of mobility. Drawing on case studies from ethnographic field work in southeastern Senegal, this article examines routines of verbal creativity among West African migrants as well as the life of a migrant who must balance his social investment between linked sites. Viewing representations of mobility instead as articulations helps capture language as a form of social action and reveals an emergent process of site-making in which migrants constitute the sites they act across. This approach to meaning making and representation in studies of (im)mobilities helps resolve several theoretical tensions and offers insights on how to study mobility with an attention to linguistic practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Language
• mobility
• representation
• migrants
• West Africa

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with support from the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I would like to thank the community of Taabe in particular for their friendship over these many years. Many thanks to Allison and Rowan for their support during a time when social opportunities were rare. I am indebted tothe JEMS editors and three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Research permissions

This research was conducted with all necessary permissions and ethical reviews: IRB eResearch ID HUM00075180.

Notes

1 To protect the identities of those involved, all names and place names with the exception of Kedougou are pseudonyms.

2 While this routine did exist elsewhere, within the context of the market its usage was massively expanded and the taboo names primarily concerned migration.

3 From the French, serviette. I write “sarvet” to better reflect the pronunciation.

Additional information

Funding

National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant #1423916 (2014). Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2014).

Notes on contributors

Nikolas Sweet

Nikolas Sweet is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist of West Africa, with an interest in the intersections of language, performance, mobility, and social interaction. His scholarship explores verbal creativity as a form of political action, to understand how people negotiate identity and personhood in the context of mobile and precarious livelihoods.