Da "Modou modou a Européen": rappresentazioni e auto-rappresentazioni. Il caso delle "migrazioni clandestine in piroga" dal Senegal

From 2005 to present, the waves of Atlantic ocean that shatter on the Senegalese, Gambian and Mauritanian coasts, have been ploughed by about ten thousand migrants in pirogues (most of them Senegalese) who lay up for the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, risking their lives in order to "gagner l’Europe". Many of them, without any regular expatriation document, are forcibly repatriated, following a temporary period of detention. In Senegal the phenomenon of the pirogue migrations has triggered a remarkable social production of images and discourses on emigration and on the figure of migrants in relation to the European "Elsewhere". This paper wishes to explore, through an anthropological perspective, these representations/self-representations pursuing an analysis which sets a dialogue between the meanings conveyed by Senegalese media and the narratives of migrants and non-migrants. This "dialectic of daily life" tells us about the ambivalences and the transformations of the Senegalese society; it shows the role assumed by the pirogue migrations in driving to a reversal of the celebrative representation of migrant. The study of the social construction of migrant emerges therefore as a fertile soil to shed light on the Other side of migration and to question the official rhetoric on "clandestine migrations" from Africa.

Keywords: Pirogue migrations, Senegal, Mbour, Elsewhere, Media, Imaginary.

Uberti Stefano degli, Da "<i>Modou modou a Européen</i>": rappresentazioni e auto-rappresentazioni. Il caso delle "migrazioni clandestine in piroga" dal Senegal in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 3/2010, pp , DOI: 10.3280/MM2010-003007