Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the moral and symbolic capital that Sierra Leonean women deploy in order to build relations of patronage and gain influence in diaspora spaces. This capital enables them to become ‘big women’ – namely, self-sufficient women who are respected among peers for their achievements.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how Sierra Leonean female migrants achieve certain forms of power and influence within diaspora spaces. The concept of ‘big men’ developed in the literature has focused heavily on men’s performance of power in West African contexts – namely, how elder men secure their position by controlling youth labor and other economic and social assets. This approach leaves little space to analyses of how women build similar positions. Among Sierra Leonean women who live in Europe, the expression ‘big woman’ qualifies a woman who is able to stand ‘without a man’ economically and socially. She has established her own position in the host society, is self-sufficient and often lives alone. Yet, Sierra Leonean women also achieve and consolidate the status of ‘big woman’ in diaspora spaces by using strategies grounded in culturally-specific understandings of power. Relations of patronage, in this regard, appear critical to gaining influence and performing power: ‘helping’ others who have arrived more recently, for instance, is a way for creating long-term relations of indebtedness and conferring prestige to the ‘helper’. Yet, women also use a different type of moral and symbolic capital to build their image as patrons: ‘big women’ also act as protective figures of the community as a whole, whose presence and advice is sought for. Women thus appropriate a redeploy a specific imaginary of power within migration and reinterpret it in a gendered perspective. These strategies allow them to access a higher status and a position of influence among peers.