Strategic Investments in Multiple Middle Classes

Morals and Mobility between Paris and Dakar

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3751186
AutoresYount-André, Yount-André Yount-André (autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume66
Fascículo3-4
Páginas89
Data de publicação2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAfrica Today (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0001-9887 • E-ISSN: 1527-1978
EditoraIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/africatoday.66.3_4.05
OpenAlexW3046182346
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5

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