Belonging in the Senegal River Valley: A West African Perspective on Kinship and Integration

Following the 1989 Senegal-Mauritania conflict, 50,000 black Mauritanians were forcibly expelled into the neighbouring state of Senegal. The ethnic and kinship dynamics present in this conflict still impact refugees and migrants today. The varying degrees of ethnic social salience between the two countries have a strong impact on the integration experience of Mauritanian migrants and refugees residing in Senegal. This paper assesses how ethnic groups have experienced integration differently in Senegal and analyses what factors, such as ethnicity, language, and financial status, have influenced their sense of belonging within the Senegalese community. Starting with a history of the conflict and a background on kinship and ethnic research in the region, thematic analysis is performed on qualitative interviews conducted with Mauritanian migrants and refugees who currently reside in Senegal to understand the individual and contextual drivers of integration and belonging. Findings indicate that in the thirty years since the conflict, the main factors influencing integration in Senegal are kinship ties and their influence on language acquisition, disparities in discrimination, and government and administrative sway on refugee acceptance. This study has broad implications for the future of refugee policy in West Africa, as well as for the supposed universality of Western-centric integration frameworks. Scholars and policymakers alike can incorporate lessons about the experience of refugees from different backgrounds living in a neighbouring nation into future literature and recommendations.