Imaginations vs Arrival

Most of my interlocutors did not know precisely what their contact person was doing for a living abroad. The information they got was mostly limited to knowing if there was work to do, or not. Therefore, many imagined something very different to what they would encounter in Argentina. The biggest surprise was to find their friends and relatives working in the streets.

What was the disjuncture between what they imagined and what they encountered? How did arriving affected their imaginaries about migration?

Shifting Imaginaries

Ibrahim travelled to Argentina in part because his elder brother was there. As presented in the previous chapter, he had a different idea of what he would do in La Plata. Although none of his aspirations of becoming a seamster or football player were a possibility, he proudly explained that the money was good back then, until 2015 when Argentinian currency was not as devalued as it is now. This way, when his brother showed him the potential money they could make by selling in the streets, he felt he made the right decision. This allowed him to fulfil one of the imagined migration’s core aspects: improving the household back in Senegal. Ibrahim explained that “there was no country better than Argentina” when he arrived, but since ex-President Mauricio Macri got elected, the ongoing devaluation of the peso accelerated even more. Today, the Argentinian currency has depreciated so much that his image of Argentina has shifted negatively, putting the migratory family project at stake. Moreover, the fewer remittances he can send would challenge the family’s imaginaries of him being a ‘successful’

migrant.

Not like on TV

Appadurai recalls that a “constitutive feature of modern subjectivity” is the effect of the interconnection between migration and media on “the work of imagination [emphasis in the original]” (1996:3). As we saw in the previous chapter, unlike most of his fellow nationals, Fallou’s previous experience as a street vendor in Morocco entitled him to be informed about the actual possibilities of work in Argentina; he knew what to expect working-wise. What he did not expect was that Argentina was so different from Europe. He stated,

I thought it was much prettier, it is beautiful, but I thought ... you saw how some houses look … that I see here ... I never thought there are here, the poor people that I see here. I never thought that myself, I also thought that is what I see on TV, like Europe, with snow, just that.

I conclude that Fallou imagined Argentina not to be a developing country because Argentina is not in Africa, it is not in Asia, and his migrant friends told him they were making more money than in Senegal. Argentina belonged to Fallou’s ‘imagined West’, a place he imagined

“like Europe”, as he saw on television, pretty, with no poor people and full of economic opportunities.

Manhood

Research on masculinities has shown overcoming difficulties is at the fore of people’s narratives. Porthman explains for the case of youngster Africans deciding to cross the Mediterranean by boat that “(...) accepting the dangers that surround migration matched the expected and desired images of being a complete man” (2018:9). At the same time, Glick Schiller & Salazar remind us to analyse regimes of mobility for a more encompassing understanding of migrants’ imaginaries. The following cases of Thierno and Moussa are examples of how cultural and structural factors played a role in shaping imaginaries.

The unexpected started soon for Thierno. He did not want to travel as clandestino -crossing borders irregularly-, so instead of five hundred, he paid three million CFA (close to five thousand euros) to a person who arranged his flight from Dakar to Buenos Aires with one stop in Madrid.

Thierno embarked with two other Senegalese men who also fixed their trip with the same actor.

While waiting for their connection in Spain, Thierno got a call from this person saying they needed to stop in Ecuador first. He was given instructions on what to say at the migratory control at the Quito airport because he was the only one of the three who spoke French. Thierno managed to convince the migratory officers that he and the other two Senegalese were just visiting Ecuador, and that way, they made it into the airport’s main hall. Thierno told me that they spotted a person holding a sign with their names on it. He went to talk to them and found that Ecuador was his last stop by plane. They had been scammed by the person who fixed their trip. They had paid more money precisely to cross borders by plane and not irregularly, but he and his companions had to reach Argentina as clandestinos after all. It took him eleven days to go from Quito to La Plata by bus and long walks, approximately 5700 kilometres. He told me that he had to be like a “warrior” because during his trip, he had to avoid police controls, the three of them got robbed, one of his companions got stabbed, they were forced to sleep outdoors, and shortly after arrival one of the Senegalese got sick and passed away. In Thierno's opinion, crossing the Mediterranean Sea in a raft might be as dangerous as his path from Ecuador to Argentina, but after all, “men have to deal with those kinds of things”, he said, evoking common ideas about masculinity and migration in Senegal (Porthman 2018).

The cultural practice of don’t ask-don’t tell is related to these imaginaries of being a man.

Thierno and Fallou are friends from back in Senegal, I knew that Fallou was the first of both to arrive in Argentina and also through Ecuador. I asked Thierno why his friend did not warn him about such an odyssey, and he reminded me the following, “As I told you before, in Senegal, if you travel, there is a culture that ... you can have a brother of the same father, same mother, and not saying anything to him, even less to a friend”, which means that he did not tell his friend either about his plans to migrate.

Moussa argued that he knew that he would arrive in Ecuador first, but never expected the whole trip to be that difficult. He complained that none of his fellow nationals warned him about it.

When I asked why no one told him, he explained that not everybody might experience the same adversity you suffered. It depends on luck and the person. Moussa added that some people might tell you only “it is hard”, and one might think, “He is a man like me, if he did it, I could do it too. It is a warrior thing, do you see?”. Although the difficulties were unexpected, Thierno and Moussa did imagine that migration would contribute to developing their masculinity. Thus,

their irregular cross-borders experience -enabled by restrictive regime mobilities- feed into the shared imaginaries about migration as a transition to manhood.

Stranded bodies, Mobile Imaginations

Salazar argues that when one is in motion, thoughts can be attached to a singular location (ibid).

The case of my interlocutors was the other way around, their bodies were stranded in a singular place while their imaginations were on the move “(...) recreating their imagined homeland”

(ibid).

Moustafa arrived believing that his elder brother was working in a store, but he was not.

Instead, he was working as a street vendor. Moustafa was very disappointed with the situation in Argentina. He did not like selling in the streets because he said it was too cold. On top of that, as with every Senegalese in La Plata, he faced many troubles with local authorities, which did not allow the Senegalese people to work, resulting in clashes and physical and verbal violence situations towards these migrants. He imagined it would be calmer than that and wanted to go back to Senegal, but he was stuck instead of moving forward.

Amari also thought that he would work in a store and earn a lot more than in Senegal. He used to sell bijouterie back in Africa, so once in Argentina, he started selling the same items but in the streets. He was disappointed by the precarious situation, but the biggest disillusion was that he could not make more money than what he was making in Senegal. He thought of going back, but just like Moustafa, he had no option but to keep trying.

Moussa imagined something different from what he encountered abroad as well. As I showed before, he arrived with the idea of Argentina being "better than Italy" and hoping to find some kind of office job. When he was informed that he had to start working as an ambulante he could not believe it. He deeply regretted having left Senegal, started to think that migration was a big mistake and wished to go back. He told me that he used to be very shy, too much for a street vendor. On the first day, Moussa went to work by the river in Ensenada. He was carrying a box filled with sunglasses and some sports caps. He spotted two lifeguards a few meters away from him. He thought they might want to buy some of his products, so he approached them. As soon as they saw him coming, they shouted: "No, no, we do not buy, we do not want anything!!!".

Moussa felt so ashamed that his legs went loose, he added, "(...) it hurt me. I sat down on a bench and thought, 'Why did I come here?'". Moussa imagined he would get a job that would

increase his social status and allow him to build a luxurious house, just like those he witnessed in Senegal built by the ‘migration money’. His shame, thus, comes from the paradoxical situation in which he found himself doing an activity that he would never do in Senegal because of its low social status. At the same time, he knows that his life abroad is imagined as a success by his friends and relatives.

The structural context of the Argentine Nation-state deprives Senegalese men of the fundamental civil right to access the formal labour market, causing a significant disjuncture between what they imagined and what they found: being stranded as street vendors in Argentina after all their physical and imaginative mobility (Salazar 2020:6).

I showed how my participants’ imaginations were informed by cultural dimensions, such as fulfilling family’s expectations, becoming a man or being ashamed of their paradoxical status.

At the same time, their representations were shaped by structural conditions, such as the way they crossed borders and the impossibility of accessing better jobs. Moreover, many felt disappointed with what they encountered in Argentina and wished to go back to Senegal. In the next section, I will present how these cultural and structural dimensions interplay with the ways in which they self-represent to significant others back in Senegal.