The social and economic implications of migration: case study of a Soninke village in Mauritania

Benjamin Ryan Burgen

Return migration for economic reasons is a deeply rooted phenomenon in Soninke culture. As a people whose homeland straddles a transition zone of environmental and cultural regions the Soninke have always been invo lved in supra-regional economic exchanges. Soninke traders played an important role in the development and evolution of Trans-Saharan trade in West Africa. With the arrival of Europeans, Soninkes were once again well placed to gain from an expansion of economic possibilities. As European influence became more pervasive in West Africa and industrialization reshaped the balance of power and trade globally, Soninkes became wage laborers in colonial centers and ultimately in the colonial metropole. Today, there is a well established Soninke presence across Western Europe centered in Paris. These migrant communities maintain a great deal of economic and social influence upon the Soninke homeland. To understand the Soninke migratory phenomenon it is necessary to view it as a social phenomenon that is widely celebrated in Soninke communities as a form of ethnic non-reliance upon the state. At the same time, it must be recognized that certain pathways to economic migratory success taken by individual migrants, families, and lineages are viewed by the wider community as socially destructive. Concerns about the social implications of migration have grown with its economic importance to the point where there is a distinct set of mores migrants are supposed to adhere to and clear expectations that they are judged by. Increasingly, migration has come to provide an almost necessary input in order to maintain rural village life in a decreasingly productive environment with an increasing population. As the risks of migration become greater and the environment continues to become less productive rural Soninke villages will have to develop new strategies of economic survival in order to maintain the unique social environment of their traditions. Economic return migration is one rational method of getting the most out of a globalized economy with varying levels of risk and reward at the different levels of social distance from home. However, migration alone is not a viable path to sustaining traditional households in the long term.

The social and economic implications of migration: case study of a Soninke village in Mauritania

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