Paper Short Abstract:

The long history of small-scale rural to rural displacements in the greater post-slavery Sahel region, will be analysed to demonstrate how different temporalities and spatial opportunities refashion the narrative of displacement as a self-chosen versus forced reality.

Paper Abstract:

This paper focuses on a long history of small-scale rural to rural displacements in West Mali, reflecting similar dynamics in the greater Sahel region, namely displacements motivated by conflicting narratives about the legacies of (descent-based) slavery. In the post-slavery era of the 21st century, self- chosen displacements came about when (formerly) enslaved individuals and/or their families used post-abolition opportunities to carve out and establish their own constituencies, by ‘marooning’ and ‘emplacing’ themselves anew.

Currently, diasporic activism about the legacies of descent-based slavery, has sparked new forms of displacement and emplacement. When post-slavery conflicts over labour, land or marriage alliances get polarised, there is a long history of moving out of the villages in which social status limits the potential for social mobility. Such displacements usually reconfigure new forms of independence in terms of labour and property, that tend to be more difficult to refashion ‘back home’. While such refashioning does not always work out in terms of economic gains, socially speaking, the narratives of some tend to combine ideas of self-realisation and emplacement on places of arrival, notwithstanding strong elements of forced social exclusion in places of departure. Based on (a documentary movie consisting of) interviews with diaspora-based activists and those displaced due to their activism in Western Mali, the paper will demonstrate how different temporalities and spatial opportunities impact on the refashioning of the narrative of displacement as a self-chosen versus externally enforced reality and the different layers alongside this continuum.