François Manchuelle, Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997. xx + 371 pp. $44.95 cloth; $24.95 paper.

Abstract

François Manchuelle reverses some of the most venerable images associated with migrant labor in Africa and in the capitalist world generally. The book focuses on men from a small region in the interior of West Africa, near the Senegal-Mali border, who were among the first to enter into wage labor and who to this day constitute a disproportionate part of West African migrants to the urban centers of the region, as well as to Marseille, Paris, New York, and other world cities. Manchuelle did not find that Soninke were the victims of land loss, uprooted communities, impoverishment, excessive taxation, or coercion. Nor did he find that extensive male migration weakened the sense of attachment to the community of origin.