“In His Eyes, I am Foreign to France”: Migration and Repatriation between France and Senegal, 1858–1911

Abstract

Abstract Between 1858 and 1913, well over one hundred individuals in France sought state-sponsored repatriation to Senegal. The materials required for this process reveal how French and African actors sought to manage intra-imperial mobility as the French Empire expanded during the second half of the nineteenth century. Repatriation began as an ad hoc process used to maintain familial and professional ties between France and outposts off the coast of Senegal, but by the 1890s, it became a more formalized system that tried to limit unregulated African migration to the metropole. Despite these changes, Senegalese applicants used repatriation across this period to manage their mobility and household positions in social landscapes upended by enslavement, emancipation, and colonial expansion. These repatriation files shed light on the social lives of African migrants in the nineteenth century and changing attitudes towards intra-imperial migration.