Facing Crisis: Gendered Narratives of Senegalese Migrants in Spain

This article presents narratives of the Senegalese migration project to the Basque Country in Spain, exploring two main ideas. First, the ways in which different structural and socio-cultural elements meet in global connections and play a part in the migration project’s (re)production are examined. Second, an attempt is put forth to understand how these same socio-cultural elements are present in the migrant’s defence, on both a discursive and a practical level, against Spanish legislation’s continuous attempts at ‘illegalising’ his presence in the country. By drawing on migrants’ own accounts of Senegalese gender roles, social networks and cultural tropes, I argue that it is the migrant’s own sociocultural capital that is used in his attempt to stay afloat in the crisis-ridden Spanish economy.