Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

Second-hand clothing commerce and the mobility cultural configuration: A journey to

manhood
Roco A. Castillo, CIESAS

Abstract
Second-hand clothes, advertised as brand new commodities, sold in street markets or small shops
are a common landscape of contemporary Dakar. After the economic crisis that has stricken Europe
since 2008, and the implementation of FRONTEX, international migration from Senegal to Europe
has declined and newer forms of mobility and motility have emerged. The sale of second-hand
clothing from China, Europe and the United States seems to be the main resource for some young
men trying to access the economic and social space of migrants, and this is a popular outlet on the
path to becoming an active member of society by gaining the social and economic status of grown
men. The motility of their merchandise through transnational spaces bestows upon these young
traders an aura of motility, which increases their merchandise value and their own social status,
blending them into the reality of returning migrants. The objective of this article is to open up a
discussion about the close link between second-hand clothing commerce, migration and the
experience of manhood in contemporary Senegal, taking a cultural approach. The focus of this
research is the ways in which young men use the cultural frameworks of migration in the selling of
second-hand clothing in order to gain the resources and the social status of men. This article adds to
the growing academic research that studies migration not only as a spacetime movement, but also
as a cultural configuration involving interactions between the structures, contexts and actions of
those who move, those who stay and those who receive migrants.
Keywords
Migration, mobility, motility, second-hand clothing, manhood, Senegal
Introduction and theoretical framework
This article is organized into three sections. First, I will here outline the theoretical framework for
the following research. The next section, entitled The successful man in Senegal: A changing
stereotype, will explore the historical and social components that have resulted in a social

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

imaginary equating migration with a male stereotype of success in Senegal. This is in order to
understand how, after the 2008 economic recession when Dakarois young males were unable to
afford migration (economically and socially), they adapted the same cultural configurations of
migration to other forms of motility such as second-hand clothing commerce. The final section,
entitled New types of motility and uses of migration values: Second-hand clothing commerce, as
the central part of the article, will focus on the ways in which second-hand clothing is sold and used
to give the aura of mobility to the young sales men.
To begin with theoretical considerations, it can be noted that international migration is the
subject of intense academic interest, due to the economic, political and social impacts this has on
both sending and receiving countries. Most research in this field is supported by migration theories
that are based on an explanation of external elements such as push and pull factors, the global
labour market and the creation of social networks. However, the influence that migration has on
others (not only those who leave) as fundamental actors in the construction of the migration process
has often been overlooked (Cohen 2004).
Stylish second-hand clothes sold in street markets or small shops are a common landscape
of contemporary Dakar. Coming mostly from Europe, China or the United States (Scheld 2007),
these second-hand clothes are usually advertised as imported brand new commodities brought by
mobile entrepreneurs, as I will demonstrate. Many young male owners of these shops make
continual remarks about the journeys made to Europe, Asia or the United States in search of the
most fashionable clothing. Although most of the consumers know that the clothes are second-hand
and that most of the young vendors have never left Senegal, or even Dakar, they engage in the
listening to and cheering on the young vendors imaginary travels. Some questions arise from this:
why do successful young salesmen brag about imaginary migrations? How is second-hand clothing
commerce related to migration, and to the experience of manhood in Senegal? These are the
research questions that will guide this article in trying to understand the complexities of migration
not as an action of movement, but as a cultural configuration that organizes and orders both sending
and receiving societies.
In making up of stories of adventurous and glamorous migrations and business trips, we can
begin to understand how the migrant stereotype has permeated Senegalese society. However,
drawing further from the perverseness of the migrant stereotype, the aim here is to understand how
migration organizes and structures sending and receiving societies as part of specific cultural
configurations and cultural logics. I will analyse the ways that Senegalese youths think about status,

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

success (Ludl 2008), gender and power, all intertwined with a mobility transforming their
expectations of life and of social membership.
This article draws empirically on brief ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Dakar between
November 2010 and January 2011, as part of my masters dissertation for a degree in Asian and
African Studies.1 This fieldwork was based on participant observation and non-directive interviews
with young male vendors (in their 20s) in downtown Dakar (Kermel market), a male student of
UCAD2 and a couple of returning female migrants.3 As my first serious fieldwork experience, it was
based mostly on intuition and the snowball method, which resulted, however, in the recompilation
of non-migratory experiences of young, unmarried men who imagined their lives with the comings
and goings of migrants and the cultural configuration of migration in Dakar.
As a non-African, non-black, single young Mexican woman, interviews conducted in
French with young males were difficult and frequently held up by mutual and divergent gendered
expectations. However, returning female migrants were of vital assistance in the moderating of
these encounters and conversations, and in the translation of Wolof when used in my presence. I
mention this because my position and subjectivity mattered to the responses and attitudes expressed
during these interviews. In particular, overstatements of status and success from young men were
recurrent; however, as these were always translated in terms of migration and mobility, this also
gave me clues concerning the gendered expectations and gender relations of young working
Dakaroises.
My objective here is to open up discussions of the close link between second-hand clothing
commerce, migration and the manhood experience in contemporary Dakar, from a cultural
perspective. Although there is an obvious link between second-hand clothing and migration
targeting transnational commerce, this will not be the focus of my work as other authors have
already studied this (Riccio 2005; Sow 2004; Dowden 2009; Ellis and MacGaffey 1997). The
emphasis of this research is to explore the ways in which young men use migration as a cultural
reference in the selling of second-hand clothing in order to gain the social and economic resources
and status of men (i.e. grown men). This phenomenon has become even more prominent following
the 2008 economic recession in Europe and the reinforcing of the security of European borders,
leading to a visible decline in clandestine migration from Senegal to Europe as seen during the
years prior to the economic crisis (Aardal 2010). In this sense, and as will be further discussed, as
migration becomes a more dangerous, uncertain and less possible enterprise, it is motility that is,
the potential for movement (Kaufmann 2003; Kaufmann et al. 2004) that young men look forward

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

to acquiring in their desire to gain access to the social space of migrants. Therefore, motility has
become a sociocultural imaginary of success, in which those who are able to move meaning those
who are able to move between social and economic spaces, and able to translate them are the
people who can enter the social spaces of migrants and achieve adulthood. The potential for
movement at this time meant the resources needed in order to move, such as economic capital,
social capital and human capital (in terms of information and knowledge about the world).
Therefore, whilst the economic crisis and FRONTEX discouraged and challenged actual migration,
the cultural configuration of motility and the migrant stereotype continued functioning as this
allowed young males access to that same logic of success and entry into adulthood.
The term culture of migration is not new. Jeffrey Cohen (2004) first used this term in his
study of Mexican migration to the United States. Cohen emphasizes the place of origin in an effort
to understand migration as a collective phenomenon that includes a broader link between different
kinds of actors and contexts. Including a very rich analysis of the sociopolitical and historical
context of the place of origin, Cohen has a greater understanding of why a household decides to use
migration as an economic strategy. His framework tries to recreate a model based on the
distribution of the economic and social resources of each household in order to explain the decision
to migrate. For Cohen, a culture of migration is understood as a negotiation between individuals,
households, communities, and national and international socio-economic forces, all of which results
in the decision to migrate for one or various members of the household. From this perspective,
Cohens subjects seem too drowned by rationalized, external, objective elements than by subjective
ones, such as internalization and the construction of a culture of migration.
In this article I will demonstrate how, following the European economic crisis, the cultural
configuration of migration has deeply permeated urban Senegalese society, and how migration is
not only a spacetime movement motivated by a rational economic strategy, but is also an evolving
cultural configuration. Cohens cultural approach cannot be implemented in this research, where a
culture of migration refers to a cultural phenomenon with its own somewhat already agreed
values, social practices and beliefs. In a broader perspective, the idea of migration being a
phenomenon that can be self-reinforced over time by economic and non-economic motivations
(Cohen 2002, 2004; Hahn and Klute 2007; Aardal 2010) may be partly explained through the
approach used here.
H. P. Hahn and G. Klute (2007) have suggested a theoretical framework based on the
concept of cultures of migration (not a culture of migration, as suggested by Cohen), relying on

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

the dynamics and transformations lived in the society of origin. They define the concept of cultures
of migration as a perspective that perceives migration movements as complexes of cultural
representations (2007: 13). From this perspective, they do not perceive cultures as stable sets of
patterns, modeling behavior and thinking. Instead [they] think of the notion of culture as flows, as
momentous results of interactive processes among people and between them and their surroundings
(Hahn and Klute 2007: 14). According to this model, the migrants agency is never determined or
conditioned by the differing economic circumstances in which they are submerged, but these
certainly have an impact upon them. Migrants have the ability to interpret capitalism as a process
resulting from their actions and the values assigned to it. Therefore, migration is presented as a set
of values in constant flux, as it remains flexible to environmental conditions. The transmission of
information, impressions, ideas and prejudices between the community of origin and migrants
abroad constantly renews and shapes everyday discourse that builds on migration as a cultural
framework.
However, Hahns and Klutes tendency towards a postmodern perspective on culture and
the individual suggests a scheme of inapprehensible social practices of mobility and migration,
where structures and context have little relevance. Therefore, I will draw instead upon the
theoretical proposal of Alejandro Grimson (2011) concerning cultural configurations where he
discusses the use of configurational subjectivism as an effective approach to culture or cultural
configurations, in the search for more efficient paradigms beyond objectivism and subjectivism.
From this perspective, cultures are not understood as independent homogenous units or as
an unintelligible overflow of heterogeneous, ever-changing meanings (Hahn and Klute 2007);
instead, they are contingent, contextual and fragile articulations that form specific and contextual
logics and configurations. Grimson proposes a theoretical framework that aims to surpass pasts
understandings of culture (from objectivism to subjectivism) in order to allow spaces of dialogue
between multiple Others in search of contextual and casuistic limits of cultural configurations:
[t]he [cultural] configuration implies that there where the parts do not completely ignore each
other, where they integrate any joint, there is a process of establishing hegemony (Grimson 2011:
45) and therefore conflict.
From this perspective migration cannot be understood just as the dynamics of moving from
one place to another, but rather as a complex cultural configuration that creates dynamic, specific
and contextual logics that organize and structure the life experiences of those leaving, those staying,
those receiving and those in power to control, at differing levels, the migratory process. That is, the

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

focus here is not placed upon spacetime movements but on the interactions between actors,
structures and contexts (Kaufmann et al. 2004: 749). As stated by Salazar:
[Mobility] is not just relevant for studying those who cross borders, but also for those who
at least physically remain firmly located within the limits of a particular place throughout
their lives. Even when a person who is place-bound, his or her imagination can be in
movement, traveling to other places and other times. (2010: 55)
Using the concept of motility will allow me to illustrate the dynamics of a sending society where
not only the act of migrating, but also the potential for mobility has become a pivotal value in
Senegalese society. Some authors have made a distinction between the actual event of movement or
mobility and the potential or capacity for movement termed motility, in order to overcome some
of the analytic dispersion in studies of migration (Kaufmann 2003; Kaufmann et al. 2004). I find
this distinction very useful in studying those who stay rather than those who leave, and according to
Kaufmann et al. a study of the potential of movement will reveal new aspects of the mobility of
people with regard to possibilities and constraints of their manoeuvres, as well as the wider societal
consequences of social and spatial mobility (2004: 749). Beyond movement per se, I intend to
focus on the relations and value that the potential of movement can give to entities be these
persons or things constructing an interdependent link between social and spatial mobility. In this
sense, the concept of motility will help me portray how migration, as a cultural framework, has
been used by young Senegalese people following 2008 not as an actual event of movement but as
an ability not just to move but also to understand and translate foreign social and economic spaces.
Young Dakaroises, as potential migrants, take advantage of their uncertain status, which is
increased by the foreignness and mobile qualities of the second-hand clothing that they sell, and
more importantly, have access to. As will be detailed, through second-hand clothing young vendors,
like migrants, act as intermediaries between Senegal and the social imaginaries of Europe, giving
access to this to their customers, and complying to the social scrutiny and norms of success and
manhood that young males are subjected to.

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

The successful man in Senegal: A changing stereotype

In Senegal, age and gender are the most important social markers of power. Becoming a man is one
of the most important things a young male has to accomplish. This is a social process of success
that requires the young male to become the head of a family - that is, being financially independent
in order to support a household with at least one wife and their children (Ludl 2008: 104). In the
words of Caroline Melly the core of whose research is the materialization of migration through
the construction of houses by migrants: building a house emerges not so much as a call by migrants
for visibility and inclusion, but rather as a prerequisite for male urban belonging and individualized
participation, one that is only available to those who have left (2010: 39).
Although the country has a large population of potentially productive young men who are
eager to start a family and become economically active members of their communities, a lack of
government administration, unemployment, social inequality and the lack of basic services are daily
struggles faced by youngsters in Dakar who see their social needs frustrated. Early marriage is a
prerequisite for becoming a member of society, but a lack of money needed for weddings,
households, ceremonies, construction and so on has resulted in a large sector of unmarried men far
past the age established by social standards (Ludl 2008; Melly 2010, 2011; Aardal 2010). As a
consequence, this sector of society is becoming highly marginal and has a deep need to resignify
success and to find ways of achieving this in order to reach adulthood and become a legitimate
member of Senegalese society.
Authors such as Jean-Francois Havard (2001), Christine Ludl (2008) and Cecilie Aardal
(2010) have written about the evolution of the successful male stereotype for youths in Senegal. All
three authors agree that there has been a clear evolution from the academic/public servant
stereotype of post-Independence Senegal4 towards a self-made man stereotype that arose out of the
Bul Faale movement of the mid-1990s. To begin with, the intellectual stereotype became obsolete
in Senegal following the governments failure to support higher education (Zeilig and Ansell 2008).
From that moment on, Senegal began to be perceived as a land lacking in opportunities for the
young (Ludl 2008), and one ruled by ageing public servants unable to modernize it. As a result,
movements like the Set Setal5 (in Wolof to be decent) and the Bul Faale (in Wolof it does not
matter) gave youths the possibility of collective identification and new role models of success
(Havard 2001).

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

Bul Faale is a term coined by the wrestler Mohammed Ndao, better known as Tyson, and
adopted as his personal slogan during the mid-1990s. In using the term Bul Faale he was making a
statement of indifference towards traditional structures. From the moment Tyson became a
champion; a mythical discourse about his life was constructed around the American ideal of the
self-made man, the stereotype of an independent and successful young male (Ludl 2008; Aardal
2010). The Bul Faale express[es] claims of individualization, emancipation, and political change
(Ludl 2008: 102) through ones own hard work.
The self-made man stereotype worked as a liberating and modern role model that offered
elements for overcoming the obstacles of hard economic conditions and a rigid social structure. Bul
Faale is important as it gave youths confidence to exercise their abilities as active agents of society.
Throughout the 1990s, social movements were springing up and empowering a growing youth
sector that needed to resignify its place in society. As a symbol, Tyson allowed Senegalese youths
to identify themselves with a common feeling that responded to their modern needs. Ndao
embodied the success and expectations of a generation of hopeful young men who wanted to
achieve victory by their own means and individual efforts, as he represented the global and western
values and qualities needed to survive in a modern Senegal, a neophyte in the global market. In the
process of redefining capitalism and its practices, Senegalese youths tried to adapt their own values
and needs in order to find spaces and opportunities to their benefit.
Thus, while Senegal could not offer formal employment and sources of economic revenue
for young men, migration came to be perceived as the only way to achieve success (Ludl 2008) and
gain the status of a man (Aardal 2010). However, in disagreement with Ludl (2008) concerning her
visualization of the migrant stereotype, I would argue that youths are not attempting to skip the
effort or hard work needed for success. Whilst her ethnographic work is rich, the successful migrant
stereotype is portrayed by Ludl as one that acquires its wealth socially or economic very quickly
and almost without effort. I assume that our differences in opinion arise from the fact that Ludls
fieldwork was carried out during 2004 and 2005, i.e., before the economic recession of 2008 and the
establishment and implementation of FRONTEX by the European Union (Aardal 2010).
Presumably as a result of these changes, in my own fieldwork carried out in 2010 I
constantly encountered discourses about the hardships of migration. Therefore, I would say that
migration is not perceived as an easy option so much as an advantage that the privileged few can
afford both economically and socially. Furthermore, aside from all the hardships and risks of
migration, the Senegalese have also created a social imaginary of adventurous entrepreneurs who

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

sacrifice everything in order to succeed. As portrayed by Mellys informant, all these adversities are
worth the effort if you can grow into an important factor in society:
Women today demand millions of CFA [thousands of US dollars] and a house before they
will consider marriage. They say its hard abroad. But no matter how hard it is, migrants
[living abroad] are still able to manage. If you work abroad, you can have a house [gagner
une maison]. You can build. Migrants dont have to rent. (taxi driver, Dakar) (2010: 56)
Cheikh, a postgraduate student from UCAD, confessed with concern that due to the high
unemployment rate and the depreciation of higher education he could only aspire to a teaching
assistant (T.A.) position after graduation. As a T.A. he would not have the former social prestige of
the educated, or sufficient economic means to buy a car or even to have a family of his own:
It is very difficult in Senegal [] I am working to get a masters degree in History and
people think I am not doing anything important because I have not travelled and make no
money. If I was a migrant like my little brother everybody would be proud, at least
someday he will have a car and a house. (Cheikh 27 years, postgraduate student)
In this scenario of precarious higher education, the potential of movement for a young Senegalese
man Cheikhs younger brother became the main asset/resource to start exploiting his economic
and social capital. Cheikhs younger brother has lived without papers in Spain for more than four
years in order to support his mother and older brother.
My brother says he is going to start building a house for my mother and me, in just 4 years
he can dream of doing this, but not me, I cannot even think of owning a car. Still, I do not
regret being a student; migrants have a hard life too. (Cheikh 27 years, postgraduate
student)
On the other hand, Cheikh, like so many of his other colleagues, cannot afford to get married, even
though he has already reached an age when he was supposed to have started his first family.
Although he has a small public scholarship to enable him to complete his degree, he seems to be
more adrift than his migrant fellow men, or the pseudo-migrants that sell second-hand clothing. In

Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

this sense, educated, qualified but poor young males do not have the resources or capabilities for
survival in contemporary Dakar. Because Dakars social and economic dynamics are deeply linked
to motility as a social construct of success, those who does not adapt to this face an uncertain future.
Although economic revenue is a very attractive component of the migratory phenomenon, it is the
social consequences of that revenue that gives migration such value.
As already stated, there is a social imaginary surrounding the idea that migration, or
motility, is still the main route to achieving social position, social prestige and the status of a man.
Following Charles Taylor, the term social imaginary can be understood as the ways in which
people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between
them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions
and images that underlie these expectations (2002: 104). In a society where the status of manhood
is bestowed and expressed through achievements closely linked to the creation of family, migrants
are seen as the only ones able to fulfil the social expectations of the Senegalese (Aardal 2010). In
these terms, the status of success is only achieved by those Senegalese migrants who return and
materialize their migratory experience (Melly 2010, 2011).
Melly (2010) has analysed how the construction of a house constitutes a very important
element in the social imaginary of migration in Senegal (see also Sinatti 2011; Mezger and
Beauchemin 2011). The construction practices of migrants from abroad have transformed the urban
landscape of Dakar, boosting the construction industry and real estate speculation. Mellys central
thesis is that, in their construction stages, these houses have turned their interior inside out, making
public their private space so that public scrutiny can verify and accept the social status acquired by
the project. Privileged residential areas inside Dakar such as Yoff and Parcelles Assaines are now
crammed with unfinished housing projects financed by migrants abroad. These houses make visible
the presence and agency of migrants in the urban, economic and social spaces of Senegal. They
have become a symbol of prestige and the materialization of the success achieved by migration.
They are a mirror image of the materialized ideas on success, manhood and social status. Through
these houses absent migrants claim their right to urban space, identity and acknowledgment from
their community, establishing the possibilities of an uncertain but possible future. A house, as a
prequel to a future family, becomes the means for a young male to be acknowledged as a grown
man.
However, success and manhood are not only attained by migrants because of the migratory
experience per se, or because they have greater economic resources that can be displayed publicly.

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The social imaginary of the successful migrant is based on the idea that the migrant has acquired
certain abilities and the knowledge of a global/western world, unknown to those who have never
migrated. Just as in financial speculation, where brokers are manipulators of social situations, tacit
knowledge, and corporeal strategies, all of which they do to extract profit from the market (Zaloom
2004: 368), migrants who are merchants of their own body and labour have a broader knowledge
that allows them social benefits. Regardless of their economic success, migrants have experience
and knowledge about the ways in which the outer world works. Thanks to this knowledge and
experience they are able to manipulate social and imaginary spaces, to take advantage of the
opportunities and gaps in the Senegalese system. As a result, migrants should not be seen as victims
of their circumstances, forced to look for greener pastures as they are often represented by the
mass media; they see themselves as entrepreneurs, who make risky investments with the certitude
of revenue (Melly 2008).
Following the 2008 economic recession and tightening of European borders, those young
males who could not afford to migrate began to adapt the mobility imaginary to other types of trade.
Playing a central role in the cultural repertoire of Senegalese youths, the migration scheme has
provided them with useful values and skills necessary for facing a competitive and global market,
and for taking advantage of new opportunities in Senegal. This phenomenon has allowed young
Senegalese men to move through the same conceptual and ideological spaces created by migration,
during a particular economic situation in both Senegal and the western world at large.
As this migratory cultural configuration can be used for and adapted to other types of social
action and enterprise, it is clear that it is not the spacetime movement but their motility through
those spaces that gives migrants such an advantage over non-migrants. From this perspective,
motility presents itself as capital and a resource for Senegalese youths (Kaufmann et al. 2004).
New types of mobility and uses of migration values: Second-hand clothing commerce
In a more symbolic than real domain, young merchants are imitating the success and social
imaginary created by and around migrants through clothing commerce. During my fieldwork,
commerce of second-hand clothing from China, Europe and the United States seemed to be the
main resource for some young men trying to access the economic and social space of migrants. The
movement of their merchandise6 through transnational spaces allows these young traders to be
bequeathed with the aura of motility, which increases their merchandise value and their own social

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status. In selling their merchandise, the young merchants try to blend in the reality of the
retournes. As described by Riccio, in Senegal its a question of dignity (jom) to try to catch up
with the ostentatious power of the migrant (2005: 111, original emphasis).
The way that clothing is consumed, used and sold allows us not only to observe the commercial and
economic aspect of these transnational networks of informal commerce, but also the complexity of
the cultural processes that construct and deconstruct identities (Tranberg Hansen 2004) within the
framework of a society where aspirations rely on mobile spaces, motility and mobile experience.
With clothing, in all of its phases, form and content are combined and intertwined in such a way
that individuals can establish their position in the world. The dressed body is conceived as a
battlefield where rights and social privileges are stated and assumed. On this battlefield it is possible
to grasp the way that youths understand Senegalese and global social structures in order to access
them, move through them and redefine themselves in order to have some kind of power over these.
The clothing business, like the building of houses, is an effective materialization and visualization
of success.
Moreover, second-hand clothing, as an imported commodity, offers a special exposure on
the interaction between the local and the West, and [], as dress, [it] mediates both individual and
collective identities and desires (Tranberg Hansen 2004: 346). Thanks to the wide variety of supply
of second-hand clothing on the streets of Dakar, young Senegalese can chose whatever is most
convenient and effective for portraying the image and practices that can transform their
relationships with the social and economic environment they live in and negotiate with. As Scheld
argues, Dakar is a fashion conscious city where dressing up to impress [] intimates that one has
connections to the Senegalese transnational communities in Italy and the US (2007: 117).
As a result, there are numerous social labels that young Dakarois use in order to organize
their social landscape. First, we find the venants or retournes, those migrants that have returned
from Europe or the United States with the latest fashion in clothing and electronics. The venants,
with or without money, enjoy an uncontested social status based upon their knowledge of the world
(Ludl 2008). As a young woman, Coumba, who has lived in Spain for the last twelve years, feels
that being a retourne has brought the privilege of wearing shorter skirts and high heels resulting
less social prejudice that this usually would cause. As far as her neighbours and family know, she
might be an elegant businesswoman in Europe; at least her clothes give that suggestion. There are
many young Dakarois who try to pass as venants, even making up stories of migration, disappearing

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from social life and reappearing with new merchandise (second-hand clothing or illegally imported
electronic goods) as a proof of the trip and their trade connections (Scheld 2007; Ludl 2008).
Youssou, a 25-year-old clothing vendor from Dakar, declared that he had travelled to the
latest catwalks in Italy, France and Spain, while showing pictures of a fictional trip to Turkey to
promote his clothing and to interview models. Although it was easy to tell that the pictures were
taken in the very store where we were at the moment, he explained with confidence the conflicts of
importing and dealing with designers. Even though everyone knows this is a lie and that he has
never travelled outside of Senegal, Youssou is a successful merchant who enjoys a wide reputation
and popularity due to his fashionable dress sense and his knowledge of the world; it does not matter
if what he says is true or not.
After the venants we find the boy towns, natives of Dakar who enjoy a high status because
of their stylish clothing and the possibility of being able to afford western brands of merchandise
even if these are not originals. Many taxis and car rapides have large decals on the windshields
reading boy towns, as a way of identifying with a group to which a taxi or car rapide driver would
not belong, as it is commonly said that people from outside Dakar will work in construction or as
drivers. Social prestige is linked to ones closeness to and understanding of the outer world,
particularly the West. Therefore, the coming towns, those who have emigrated from the rural areas
of Senegal to Dakar, are at the lower scale of the youth social order, being mostly recognized by
their use of traditional or outdated clothing (Scheld 2007; Ludl 2008).
There are many different styles of dress flooding the streets of Dakar; nevertheless,
American hip hop fashion, with its double T-shirts, oversize sweatshirts, stocking caps, baggy pants
and thick black nylon jackets, is on the rise mainly among men. As Tranberg Hansen notes,
[d]ress readily becomes a flash point of conflicting values, fuelling contest in historical encounters,
in interactions across class, between genders and generations, and in recent and economic
exchanges (2004: 372). Hence, western fashion has been constructed as a way to express
generational differences, independence and ones relationship with the modern and global world
(see Aardal 2010). In spite of the hot weather, these garments link Senegalese youth once again to a
world that understands black culture and black aspiration. The aesthetic and social values that come
with hip hop fashion are being adapted and interpreted by young Senegalese people as a way of
standing out and in order to demonstrate their potential of movement and their understanding of the
modern world. Notwithstanding the restrictions of the Senegalese economy, through fashion young
Senegalese are not desperate, vulnerable and marginal; they are black male members of a world

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community of young people fighting via their own means to achieve the standard of life of the selfmade man. Fashion gives them power and opens up opportunities for them in a growing market
inside of Senegal.
Beyond the revenues that clothing businesses might imply, these have acquired the same
logic and values that international migration had some years before. Based on the possibilities of
access, mobility and transnationalism, the second-hand clothing merchant can expand his agency
and realm of action in order to take advantage of gaps in his social and economic environment.
Even though through this kind of commerce the individual is not mobile per se (i.e., in the physical
and geographical sense), the clothing is coming from a mysterious and unknown foreign space,
allowing the merchant to present himself as someone with access to these mobile and unknown
spaces. He becomes a mediator between Senegalese reality and that other world where power
seems to originate. As a result, the merchant, like the migrant, is capable of linking both spaces, of
transforming them and of translating them into a space where Dakar society can act. As a facilitator
of such tools, he enables both others and himself to compete and become a global actor.
However, although the male participants in this fieldwork had found a loophole in the
second-hand clothing market through which they were able to contest accepted social pathways to
success and manhood, they did not wish to transform Senegalese gerontocratic and genderized
structures where young unmarried men had no place. What they wanted was to find a way into that
structure: a structure that they believed worked and was still current. As migrations cultural
configuration, the social imaginary of the successful migrant works as a way to preserve traditional
social structures that emphasizes the process of becoming a man through traditional paradigms.
Consequently, the economic advantages or profits of a returning migrant are mostly valued only if
they correspond to the way that Senegalese society regards itself and its social norms. These young
men firmly believed that after some years of successful business they would be able to marry,
maybe not as wealthy as migrants but with a satisfactory social status.
Motility and migration as a cultural configuration has penetrated Senegalese society, giving
youths a theoretical and cultural framework through which to understand, interpret and create
economic and social realities in accordance with a changing global market. The agency of young
Senegalese men has been central in adapting new practices that are novel enough to alter the social
order so that they can make the most of gaps in the system, yet constricted enough to still play out
inside traditional social structures. As a rapidly changing sector, these practices and values will
keep on evolving hand in hand with global transformations. It will be interesting for future research

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to identify the evolutions of masculinity, values of mobility and success that will be part of future
generations in Senegal. As for now, the cultural values and social practices created by women, the
diaspora and older migrants are also still a rich mine to explore.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr. Carlos Mondragn for his constant support and valuable advice during the
pursuit of my degree; and to CONACYT for the masters degree fellowship and travelling grant.

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Contributor details
Roco A. Castillo was born in Mxico City in 1986. She obtained a B.A. in History at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico in 2009, UNAM. Her degree thesis won the Caminos de la
Justicia award given by the Mexican Supreme Court, and was subsequently published by the same
institution. In 2012 she obtained a Masters degree in Asian and African Studies at El Colegio de
Mexico, where she pursued a thesis on the migratory phenomenon in Senegal from a cultural
perspective. She is currently enrolled at a Ph.D. programme in Anthropology at Centro de
Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologa Social (CIESAS)/Center for Research and
Higher Studies for Social Anthropology based in Mexico City, Mexico.
Contact:
Anthropology Department, CIESAS, Mexico City, Mexico.
E-mail: roziocast@gmail.com
Notes

1
2

The programme belongs to the Asian and African Studies Department at El Colegio de Mxico.
Universit Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar).

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Originally published in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 2015

These two girls already had Spanish passports, which gave them the opportunity of going back and
forth as they pleased. Although they provided many insights and were fundamental in helping my
understanding and interviewing of the young males, the research does not focus on them owing to
ethical concerns about their hesitation to participate.
4
Leopold Sdar Senghor was the first elected president and the first male role model of modern
Senegal. As hopes for the new government were high, Senghor, the academic/public administrator,
was seen as the new stereotype of success in modern Senegal (Zeilig and Ansell 2008: 39; Aardal
2010: 12). From that moment on, a growing number of young men enrolled in the university with
the certitude of future employment and social status. This new social and political structure set by
the government gave young men access to economic stability and the possibility of becoming a
grown man.
5
The Set Setal has usually been explained as a spontaneous and ephemeral movement that
responded to the discontent and neglect of urban infrastructure by politicians. According to Diouf,
young people were trying to create a new historical memory with the desire of breaking with those
who participated in the rise to power of the nationalist generation (1992: 41). Seeking power,
freedom and independence from their elders, in their cultural representations the young Senegalese
began to adopt symbols and heroes from the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960s in order to
adhere with and belong to a global community of active youths. Identification with North American
symbols, fashions and attitudes separated them from the more traditional French influence on the
Senegalese elite (Havard 2001; Aardal 2010).
6
Car tires are also a common merchandise travelling in other mobile spaces; however, they are not
a very visible activity as clothing is, and therefore do not fulfil wider social needs.

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