Paper short abstract:

This proposal deals with the different works ethics played by male migrants returning from Italy and facing reinsertion into Senegal. Looking at how the need to regain a remunerative activity in Senegal works allows exploring what is perceived tolerable or not in terms of self-autonomy.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution is based on an on-going fieldwork carried in Senegal, namely in Pikine and in Touba, with returnees from Italy. The fact of coming back living in Senegal constitutes a challenge due the difficulties those men undergone in finding an activity that can grant them an income in a context that is changed during their years of absence from the country.

Often the departing to Europe had constituted a moment of rupture and emancipation from apprenticeship, allowing the access to a relative autonomy (even if strictly structured by the racialized labour market in Italy) in the choice of which work do and how many hours do it.

By paying attention to the negotiation those men, come back to Senegal with little wealth or not wealth at all, have to do in order to find a "bearable" work, also in relation to the expectations of the other members of the household, are representations on social honourableness which are at stake.

The absence of sufficient capital to start an adequate entrepreneurial activity leads them to address themselves to the under-paid choice of subordinated labour, to street-selling or just to the "resting". It is actually what is undergoing at larger to lower-educated inhabitants of Senegalese cities but, by focusing in particular to the gaze of the ones forced to come back, we could better seize which work-related values are at stake.