|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
A New Elite among Senegalese Mourides in Italian Public Space
| Panel |
14. New Modes of Sociality in Muslim Africa
|
| Paper ID | 282 |
| Author(s) |
Kaag, Mayke
|
| Paper |
No paper submitted
|
| Abstract | Senegalese migration to Italy is relatively recent, having only begun in the late 1980s. If in the early 1990s the Mourides in Italy were still largely characterized by closed ethnic and national affiliation (“We are Mourides and Senegalese”), a new educated elite is now increasingly taking more cosmopolitan positions (“We are Muslims and Mourides, and everybody can join us”). I analyze how this influences the Sufi order in public space in the case of a particular housing unit previously declared uninhabitable but which now houses around 300 Senegalese migrants in an otherwise well-to-do neighbourhood in northern Italy. This housing unit is a symbol of the history of Senegalese presence in Italy, and many Senegalese identify with it; for the new elite, in contrast, it mainly represents the (morally) condemnable sides of Senegalese migration, and they tend to distance themselves from it. With the planned rehousing of the unit’s inhabitants, the new Mouride elite have become privileged interlocutors of the Italian administration. The process of negotiation between different Senegalese and Italian parties and the eviction of housing unit’s residents shows how different understandings of Mouridism serve as a source of inspiration and authority for Senegalese actors in Italy. |
|