Marriage Without Borders : Transnational Spouses in Neoliberal Senegal / Dinah Hannaford.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hannaford, Dinah, author.

Series:

Contemporary ethnography.

Contemporary Ethnography

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intercountry marriage--Senegal--History--21st century.

Intercountry marriage.

Transnationalism--History--21st century.

Transnationalism.

Senegalese--Marriage customs and rights--History--21st century.

Senegalese.

Senegalese--Europe--History--21st century.

Senegal--Emigration and immigration--History--21st century.

Senegal.

Genre:

History

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (167 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In popular songs, televised media, news outlets, and online venues, a jabaaru immigre ("a migrant's wife") may be depicted as an opportunistic gold-digger, a forsaken lonely heart, or a naïve dupe. Her migrant husband also faces multiple representations as profligate womanizer, conquering hero, heartless enslaver, and exploited workhorse. These depictions point to fluctuating understandings of gender, status, and power in Senegalese society and reflect an acute uneasiness within this coastal West African nation that has seen an exodus in the past thirty-five years, as more men and women migrate out of Senegal in hope of a better financial future. Marriage Without Borders is a multi-sited study of Senegalese migration and marriage that showcases contemporary changes in kinship practices across the globe engendered by the neoliberal demand for mobility and flexibility. Based on ten years of ethnographic research in both Europe and Senegal, the book examines a particular social outcome of economic globalization: transnational marriages between Senegalese migrant men living in Europe and women at home in Senegal. These marriages have grown exponentially among the Senegalese, as economic and social possibilities within the country have steadily declined. More and more, building successful social lives within Senegal seems to require reaching outside the country, through either migration or marriage to a migrant. New kinds of affective connection, and disconnection, arise as Senegalese men and women reshape existing conceptions of spousal responsibility, filial duty, Islamic piety, and familial care. Dinah Hannaford connects these Senegalese transnational marriages to the broader pattern of flexible kinship arrangements emerging across the global south, arguing that neoliberal globalization and its imperative for mobility extend deep into the family and the heart and stretch relationships across borders.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. Bitim Rëw

Chapter 2. Precarity, Care Work, and Lives Suspended

Chapter 3. Loneliness, Elegance, and Reproductive Labor

Chapter 4. Mobility, Surveillance, and Infidelity

Chapter 5. Sex, Love, and Modern Kinship

Chapter 6. Reunions

Conclusion: The Handmaiden of Neoliberalism

Appendix: Scope and Methods of the Study

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Jul 2017)

ISBN:

0-8122-9419-X

OCLC:

999367048