Strategic Investments in Multiple Middle Classes

Morals and Mobility between Paris and Dakar

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3751186
AutoresYount-André, Yount-André Yount-André (autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen66
Número3-4
Páginas89
Fecha de publicación2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica Today (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9887 • E-ISSN: 1527-1978
EditorialIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/africatoday.66.3_4.05
OpenAlexW3046182346
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5

This article examines the social work of maintaining middle-class status in multiple national contexts, focusing on university-educated Senegalese in Paris. Once considered elite African intellectuals, these Senegalese find that diplomas no longer protect them from stigmatization in France. While Senegalese increasingly associate Islam with lucrative paths to mobility, in France, religion is treated as a barrier to belonging. French fluency and formal education index status in Senegal and facilitate integration in France, whereas religion is a key point of divergence between French and Senegalese notions of class, complicating efforts to achieve status transnationally. I argue that investments in multiple middle classes are complicated by a growing political and economic distance between Senegal and its former colonizer, showing how the symbols and stakes of middle-classness shift with national context and political–economic transformations

Context (archaeology) · Divergence (linguistics) · Economic growth · Economics · Elite · Geography · Islam · Middle class · Middle East · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Work (physics) · Gender Studies · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature · Religion, Society, and Development