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Paper short abstract

This paper revisits the role of time in Mauss’s theory of the gift through ethnographic analysis of "sarice" gifts Senegalese migrants in France offer relatives in Senegal. These asymmetrical exchanges invite a reappraisal of how giving, receiving, and reciprocity unfold in contexts of inequality.

Paper long abstract

This paper revisits the role of time in Mauss’s theory of the gift through ethnographic analysis of sarice gifts that Senegalese migrants in France offer relatives in Senegal. A form of giving in which return gifts are not expected in any immediate or symmetrical sense, migrants’ gifts invite a reappraisal the Maussian triad of giving, receiving, and reciprocating in contexts of inequality. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dakar (since 2005) and with Senegalese in France (Lyon 2022–2025), I first analyze how gender, age, and kinship intersect with global inequalities in migration to structure flows of resources in transnational families. I argue that sarice – and migrants’ remittances more broadly – operate according to economic moralities of rank-based redistribution, in which migrants and non-migrants are understood to be fundamentally unequal. Rather than encouraging the receiver to reciprocate in kind, these gifts establish precedents that shape future expectations and requests (Graeber 2001). The paper then offers a reappraisal of Bourdieu’s (1990) theory on time and the gift, to argue that humiliation and domination result from failure to reciprocate “in time,” only in the context of moral expectations of “balanced” reciprocity (Sahlins 1972). Because the relationship that underpins sarice gifts is unambiguously assumed to be asymmetrical, the meaningful timescale for a return is not subject to calculation or may become relevant on the scale of a lifetime, conditioning individuals’ ability to become adults, migrants, or elders. Revisiting gift exchange through contemporary ethnography, the paper considers how enduring global inequalities reshape reciprocity and obligation.