Les migrantes ignorees du Haut-Senegal, 1900 - 1946

This work examines the invisibility of female migration in the historiography of French Sudan (1900-1946). It is an attempt to deconstruct the concept of "labor migration" to demonstrate how it contributed to a gender-blind description of African migration. The colonial analysis of migration took the maleness of the labor force for granted and assimilated women`s work to family labor. Women were mainly described as those left in rural areas, while men were absent migrants with wage-paid jobs in urban centers. Several case studies will reveal the misconception of these colonial and androcentric assumptions. It is actually the focus on male labor migration by both the colonial administration and African historical scholarship that has eluded the diversity of the migratory movements experienced by Upper Senegal at this time. These assumptions resulted in complex migration patterns being assimilated into a simplified pattern of labor migration, entailing a homogenization of views over both male and female African migrations. In order to make female migration visible again, it is important to interrogate the centrality of "labor migration" to this question and to abandon gender dichotomies, which fundamentally prevent an analysis of the mobility of African women.