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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how aspirations for a ‘good life’ take shape amid im/mobility, precarity, and religious norms among moto delivery drivers in Dakar, Senegal. It considers how adaptive dreams and relational labour sustain drivers through periods of waiting, stagnation, and uncertainty.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research with moto delivery drivers in Dakar, this paper examines how aspirations for a ‘good life’ are pursued from positions of social and economic marginality shaped by the demands of moto delivery work. For the Muslim men who work as moto delivery drivers, mobility is central to their livelihood yet deeply ambivalent: constant movement through the city sustains economic survival while simultaneously shaping a lifestyle that places them at odds with normative religious expectations. As a result, drivers occupy a position at the edges of Dakar’s religious and social order, where access to recognition and belonging cannot be taken for granted.

For moto delivery drivers, pursuing a ‘good life’ rarely takes the form of dramatic upward mobility. Instead, it involves ongoing forms of relational labour through which access to social recognition, moral standing, and future possibility is sustained, alongside the continual mediation and adjustment of aspirations. Because drivers’ lifestyles often unsettle normative expectations, their dreams must remain adaptive to precarious circumstances. Hopes of advancement thus coexist with periods of waiting, stagnation, and uncertainty, producing a prolonged condition of im/mobility that is endured rather than resolved. Broken or deferred dreams are not abandoned, but recalibrated into relationally grounded projects that keep alternative futures imaginable.

Drawing on Sufi-inflected ethical frameworks, the paper shows how adaptability, patience, and relational belonging enable these men to cope with disappointment while continuing to strive, contributing to anthropological debates on im/mobility, marginality, and the ‘good life’.