Paper short abstract:

Adopting an inter-generational and transnational approach, this paper investigates the interrelation between post-slavery status ascription in the Gambia and how this is shaped by migrant status abroad, specifically in the context of illegalization among Gambian migrants in Angola.

Paper long abstract:

Adopting an inter-generational and transnational approach, this paper investigates the interrelation between societal and jural-political forms of categorization. It looks at the legacy of status ascription in rural Gambia, with a specific focus on post-slavery categorisation of people on the move. In the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, as slavery waned, a number of (free) immigrants settling in Soninke-speaking communities along the Gambia river were nevertheless classified and integrated as “slaves”. Their descendants have suffered from marginalization and stigmatisation as typically manifest in post-slavery societies in the Western Sahel. As members of these communities, regardless of their status, have emigrated to different countries across the world, their social ranking becomes entangled with other processes of categorization. In particular, the paper deals with how issues of illegalization in Angola during the mid-2010s played into status relations among Gambian and West African migrants. Angola’s stringent rules of entry and stay, together with active deportation policies and police violence, lead migrants to bracket off status categories in the name of solidarity among migrants. The paper investigates the ethic of strangerhood and alienation that fuels processes of categorisation and links them across space and time - through the generations and between locations.