Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to address the stories of African women migrants. Based on two life stories, I intend to explore the ways in which these women activated networks of care at a distance, becoming central to their families and communities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to address the stories of African women migrants. Based on two life stories, I intend to explore the ways in which these women activated networks of care at a distance, becoming central to their families. I will present the trajectories of Maria and Clementine, both from Cape Verde, the first one having emigrated to France and the second to Senegal.

My intention is to discuss the women's migratory networks from an intersectional perspective, moving away from the logic of emigration for family reunification and emphasising the autonomous trajectories of women who open new networks and become central "nodes" in the mobility processes of other women. I'm approaching a literature that have drawn attention to the ways in which colonialism and nationalism in African nations have similarly worked to suppress women's voices in liberation movements and their role in supporting families. But are African women, as gendered and racialised subjects of Western colonialism and local movements, disempowered? Recent research has shown that they are not. Despite the countless racial, gender and labour inequalities imposed on them, many of these women occupy central positions in the circulation of migratory capital in their communities; they assume leadership positions in diasporic neighbourhoods and challenge the gender patterns of their societies.

From this perspective and using ethnographic data from their life stories, I intend to emphasise the place of these women in their family and community networks, and the continuities and discontinuities of migratory trajectories in a south-north and south-south direction.