Victims of their fantasies or heroes for a day?: Media representations, local history and daily narratives on boat migrations from Senegal

Since 2005, about ten thousand migrants in pirogues (most of them Senegalese) have braved the waves of the treacherous Atlantic coasts of Senegal to head for the Canary Islands, risking their lives to "gagner l'Europe." In Senegal the phenomenon of boat migrations has triggered a remarkable production of images and ideas. Assuming movement as an exception, the mass-media and official discourses portray pirogue migrants as "daredevils," victims, or "naive adventurers" who are driven to leave by the imagination of an idyllic European "elsewhere," or by the desire to achieve the same economic wealth displayed by returning migrants. Conversely, numerous ethnographic studies suggest that for millions of Africans, being mobile appears rather as a "way of life," a part of their daily experience, implying more than just movement of people in geographical space alone (De Bruijn et al., 2001). Drawing from the analysis of the ethnographic data collected in Dakar and in the urban areas of M'bour-Saly, we suggest that boat migration could be better understood by examining the diverse forms of social representation of migrants within Senegalese society, and the meanings conveyed by Senegalese media and narratives of migrants and non-migrants. The adoption of a historical perspective on the study of M'bour's migratory context will allow us to retrace a locally specific "culture of migration" and its underlying importance in order to deconstruct macro-analytical interpretations, and question the official rhetoric on illegal migrations from Senegal.