Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic insights into associative debates between West-African migrants and young French of West-African descent, this communication analyses how the links to the country of origin become a stake of power and conflicts across generations of migrants.

Paper long abstract:

My Ph.D. thesis deals with the link between young West-African immigrant descendants in France and their "country of origin". More specifically, I analyse different modes of production of memory and identity discourses from and about immigrant descendants. This led me to conduct five ethnographic investigations in Paris. One of them consisted in observing meetings which gathered associations of West-African migrants and organizations of French of West-African descent, where they debated the links to the "homeland" and the possibility for the "second generation" to "take the helm" of their parents in the country of origin (by sending money to their families and funding collective projects for example).

To stress the importance in adopting an intergenerational frame in the migration studies, I propose to analyse the interactions within these meetings, firstly by paying attention to the eldest' "assignments" and "injunctions" addressed to the youngsters; secondly by describing how the French of West-African descent reacted to these discourses (accepting, opposing or transforming the migrants' requests); and thirdly by showing how these interactions led to the construction of a new "link to the homeland" that was deeply embedded in stakes of power and conflict in a postcolonial and minority context.