Paper short abstract:

Despite the arrival of major foreign companies in Dakar, urban dwellers largely get by through informal, hustling and brokering activities. However, in their struggles for livelihood, the formal and the informal, local and global, rural and urban, legal and illegal, are all entangled.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, the Senegalese economy has become increasingly opened to investors. New resources have also been identified in the country’s soil. In this context, foreign companies and multinationals have flocked to Senegal for business. The arrival and bustling activity of these actors have raised much hope among urban dwellers that waged and informal employment would be available and thus that making a living would become easier.

Drawing on a detailed ethnography, this paper focuses on livelihood-making in Dakar and its relations with the increased presence of multinationals. Livelihoods in town nowadays are usually made through a daily frenzy. The struggle to get by contrasts starkly with the activities of these companies and the formal and well-paid jobs usually associated with them, and largely takes place at the margins of these firms. Making ends meet involves, for instance, a generalisation of so-called informal, hustling and brokering activities. Still, in this context, the formal and the informal, the local and the global, the rural and the urban, the legal and the illegal, are all entangled. This paper will address the connections emerging today between these categories.