Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dakar, this paper examines how young male professionals reappropriate the time between childhood and social adulthood - commonly depicted as a period of imposed waithood - as a period of intimate discovery and enjoyment, as they purposefully delay getting married.

Paper long abstract:

For young men, idealised marital trajectories have become increasingly difficult to accomplish in Dakar, Senegal, as they are unable to afford to marry and thus achieve social adulthood. Such research principally concerns poorer youth, for whom economic constraints represent an important obstacle in their daily lives.

For these young male professionals, however, economic status does not present a barrier to marriage. Contrastingly, they deploy diverse strategies to delay their marriages. This period, when they do not yet carry the responsibilities associated with being a social adult, thereby emerges as a positive temporal space in which youth create means to enjoy this liminal status and gain intimate experiences.

This paper investigates the strategies and practices through which such youth reappropriate the period of waithood. Through ethnographic analysis, it foregrounds their careful quests for intimate experimentation and respectability, as they must tread carefully to avoid shaming themselves and their kin. They prudently resist marital propositions from their kin, whilst simultaneously trying to prove to them that they are respectable young men, who take their social expectations seriously. Through these practices, youth try to balance their own desires for intimate discovery and enjoyment with the social expectations of their kin, for whom remaining respectable is paramount and integral to the young men’s future marital possibilities.

Through delaying marriage, a new image of male Senegalese youth emerges. Rather than being frustrated and constrained by economic hardship, these young men carefully and creatively use this liminal space for enjoyment and to gain intimate experiences.