Books by Dinah Hannaford
Hiring domestic workers is a routine part of the expat development lifestyle. Whether working for... more Hiring domestic workers is a routine part of the expat development lifestyle. Whether working for the United Nations, governmental aid agencies, or NGOs such as Oxfam, Save the Children, or World Vision, expatriate aid workers in the developing world employ maids, nannies, security guards, gardeners and chauffeurs. Though nearly every expat aid worker in the developing world has local people working within the intimate sphere of their homes, these relationships are seldom, if ever, discussed in analyses of the development paradigm and its praxis. Aid and the Help addresses this major lacuna through an ethnographic analysis of the intersection of development work and domestic work. Examining the reproductive labor cheaply purchased by aid workers posted overseas opens the opportunity to assess the multiple ways that the ostensibly "giving" industry of development can be an extractive industry as well.
Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the w... more Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the ways that women are moving the needle on marital norms and practices, Opting Out reveals the conditions that make this widespread phenomenon possible in places where marriage has long been obligatory. Each chapter invites readers into the lives of particular women and the changing circumstances in which these lives unfold—sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always unexpectedly. Taken together, the essays in this volume prompt the following questions: Why is marriage so consistently disappointing for women? When the rewards of economic stability and the social status that marriage confers are troubled, does marriage offer women anything compelling at all? Across diverse geographic contexts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this book offers sensitive and powerful portrayals of women as they escape or reshape marriage into a more rewarding arrangement.
Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the w... more Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the ways that women are moving the needle on marital norms and practices, Opting Out reveals the conditions that make this widespread phenomenon possible in places where marriage has long been obligatory. Each chapter invites readers into the lives of particular women and the changing circumstances in which these lives unfold-sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always unexpectedly. Taken together, the essays in this volume prompt the following questions: Why is marriage so consistently disappointing for women? When the rewards of economic stability and the social status that marriage confers are troubled, does marriage offer women anything compelling at all? Across diverse geographic contexts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this book offers sensitive and powerful portrayals of women as they escape or reshape marriage into a more rewarding arrangement.
Marriage Without Borders is a multi-sited study of Senegalese migration and marriage that showcas... more Marriage Without Borders is a multi-sited study of Senegalese migration and marriage that showcases contemporary changes in kinship practices across the globe engendered by the neoliberal demand for mobility and flexibility. Based on ten years of ethnographic research in both Europe and Senegal, the book examines a particular social outcome of economic globalization: transnational marriages between Senegalese migrant men living in Europe and women at home in Senegal. These marriages have grown exponentially among the Senegalese, as economic and social possibilities within the country have steadily declined. More and more, building successful social lives within Senegal seems to require reaching outside the country, through either migration or marriage to a migrant. New kinds of affective connection, and disconnection, arise as Senegalese men and women reshape existing conceptions of spousal responsibility, filial duty, Islamic piety, and familial care.
Dinah Hannaford connects these Senegalese transnational marriages to the broader pattern of flexible kinship arrangements emerging across the global south, arguing that neoliberal globalization and its imperative for mobility extend deep into the family and the heart and stretch relationships across borders.
Papers by Dinah Hannaford
Frontiers, 2024
This article makes a case for analysis of romantic relationships during international education p... more This article makes a case for analysis of romantic relationships during international education programs. Study abroad programs promise cultural immersion and place students in settings where romantic relationships may be the most accessible way to achieve this immersion. Yet programs may fail to prepare students to navigate dating and romance during study abroad. We draw on participant observation and interviews with former study abroad participants, program staff, and host community members in Dakar, Senegal to examine how cross-cultural romances emerge in the study abroad setting. We argue that study abroad programs would benefit from explicit and sustained attention to gender relations, love, and intimacy in pre-departure orientations, upon arrival in host settings, and throughout the duration of the programs. We also contend that romantic relationships during study abroad merit sustained ethnographic inquiry to better understand how and why these relationships take place, how they afford opportunities for student learning, and how they shape perceptions of study abroad learners by the host community.
Journal of Anthropological Research, Jun 1, 2022
MONDI MIGRANTI, 2009
- Though the migratory experience offers opportunities for new kinds of practices, traditions, an... more - Though the migratory experience offers opportunities for new kinds of practices, traditions, and family dynamics to develop, it also often replicates patterns and codes of behavior that already exist in the mi-grant's home culture. Senegalese migrants residing in Italy, as in other parts of the diaspora, tend to send their children to be raised by relatives in Senegal. Their motives are various and sundry: some cite the economic benefits, others the desire for the inculcation of Sene-galese values and Wolof language, still others the reluctance to have their children grow up "spoiled" as they view Italian children. For these reasons and others, Senegalese parents rarely raise their chil-dren in Italy, opting instead to leave them behind with relatives in Senegal. Yet this practice among Senegalese parents long predates contemporary Senegalese migration to Europe. Instead it follows a longstanding custom of receiving young family members into the home that draws on the fundamental Senegalese value of teranga, of-ten translated inadequately as hospitality. Teranga turns on the idea that the mother who hosts a visitor ensures that her children will find help and welcome whenever they need it. Senegalese families are duty-bound to accept even distant relatives into their homes for short, long and undetermined periods of time without question. When em-ployment or scholastic opportunities are presumed to be better in a different part of Senegal in which a relative resides, Senegalese need not think twice about presenting themselves to those relatives with full assurance of being offered a place to stay. In the migrant context, this kind of teranga works both ways. Though migrants abroad must be ready to receive their relatives in the host country at a moment's notice, they may also send home their children to be reared without fear of imposition. Thus the concept of parent-ing from afar and children "left behind" among the Senegalese is by no means an outgrowth of contemporary migratory practices. Instead it reflects a core Senegal-ese value and extends a practice that long predates Senegal's migratory history. This paper will highlight how care arrangements for children are organized in this particular Senegalese context of teranga, and how children of migrants experience the separation from their parents.Keywords family dynamics, second generations, tradition, socialization processes
Gender, Work & Organization, 2019
This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development th... more This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development through the prism of domestic service for expat aid workers in developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amid aid workers and their domestic staff in Dakar, Senegal, I argue that access to affordable care work greatly enhances the lives of women who work overseas in development. The post-colonial underdevelopment and poverty that aid work addresses is paradoxically critical to the aid workers' own access to affordable care, family balance and the means to do their jobs. I put this insight into the larger scholarly conversation about domestic work and global inequality, including on the global care chain.
Africa, 2018
This article examines how African transnational relationships in the twenty-first century differ ... more This article examines how African transnational relationships in the twenty-first century differ from their manifestation in previous periods of mobility and long-distance intimacy. I argue that the possibilities for and expectations of immediate communication and co-presence facilitated by the current technological landscape distinguish this era from earlier ones and fundamentally alter the ways in which African migrants connect to those at home. Although time–space compression allows for the potential of new practices of virtual intimacy, it also creates an imperative of availability for migrants that is reinforced not only on micro- and meso-levels by families and communities but also on macro-levels by neoliberal state policies that target migrants as agents of development and providers of social services.
Marriage Without Borders, 2017
Africa Today, 2016
The impact of remittances to Senegal from overseas migrants is felt on a household, as well as a ... more The impact of remittances to Senegal from overseas migrants is felt on a household, as well as a national, level, in ways that go beyond the merely economic. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Senegal and in the Senegalese diaspora to explore the layers of meaning that permeate gifts and money sent from abroad. While remittance practices in transnational marriages—or marriages between Senegalese migrant men and their nonmigrant wives in Senegal—engage Senegalese ideals about husbands as economic providers, they reveal a complicated balance between economic and noneconomic acts of care between spouses in nontransnational marriages. In the absence of other opportunities for spouses to perform gestures of care and affection, these exchanges take on an intensified importance, which often leads to tension, miscommunication, and emotional stress.
African Studies Review, 2015
In Senegal, love, respect, and compatibility have historically figured into marital calculations,... more In Senegal, love, respect, and compatibility have historically figured into marital calculations, yet prospective husbands must also provide material support. After decades of stagnant economic growth, good providers are hard to find. In this article we examine two strategies that women employ in an attempt to achieve economic security: nonmarital sex and transnational marriage. Though recent anthropological literature proposes a global transition toward companionate marriage, evidence from Dakar suggests that Senegalese women are prioritizing short-term material gain over longer-term projects of social reproduction. Transnational marriage and nonmarital sexual relationships illuminate women's new strategies to stabilize their social positions in increasingly precarious times. Résumé: Au Sénégal, les maris potentiels doivent certes fournir un soutien matériel à leur épouse cependant amour, respect et compatibilité ont historiquement également figuré dans les calculs matrimoniaux. Après des décennies de stagnation de la croissance économique, les bons chefs de famille sont difficiles à trouver. Dans cet article, nous examinons deux stratégies que les femmes emploient pour tenter de parvenir à la sécurité économique : sexe hors mariage et mariage transnational. Bien que la récente littérature anthropologique propose une transition mondiale
South Central Review, 2020
Abstract:African migrants face unprecedented efforts by European interests to contain their mobil... more Abstract:African migrants face unprecedented efforts by European interests to contain their mobility. I detail how increasingly constricting channels of legal migration, the externalization of European borders into North Africa, and a restrictive and oppressive EU asylum system conspire to deprive mobile Africans of free movement not only to and within Europe, but the very moment that they begin moving within their own continent as well. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in West Africa and among West African migrants and asylum seekers in Europe, I argue that these containment efforts do not render African people immobile, but rather subject them to greater danger and exploitation.
Global Networks, 2014
Rapid advances in communication technology in the last 20 years have enabled migrants to sustain ... more Rapid advances in communication technology in the last 20 years have enabled migrants to sustain social and economic investment in multiple geographic locations, or, to be transnational. In this article, by analysing non-migrant Senegalese women's experiences in marriages with migrant Senegalese men, I critically engage in discussions about the role of technology in transnational family dynamics. In the intimate negotiations of transnational married life, these women feel profoundly ambivalent about the role of communication technologies in their lives. Instead of enabling ‘emotional closeness’, the virtual presence of their absent husbands frequently represents a spectre of suspicion, control and surveillance.
African Studies Review
Many edited volumes claim to fill an existing gap in the scholarly record, however small or obscu... more Many edited volumes claim to fill an existing gap in the scholarly record, however small or obscure such a gap may be. They claim value and significance in the act of pointing our attention where it has heretofore failed to land. Babacar M'Baye and Besi Brillian Muhonja's new collection of essays, Gender and Sexuality in Senegalese Societies: Critical Perspectives and Methods, addresses not only an understudied aspect of Senegalese social life, but also one that has been largely silenced and discredited as a field of study, namely the existence of alterative, fluid, and non-normative sexualities. This book is an example of how this kind of gap-filling can be not simply a worthwhile intellectual project, but also an important political act. The book features nine content chapters sandwiched between a short introduction by M'Baye and a brief conclusion by Muhonja. In his introduction, M'Baye laments the reluctance of Senegalese scholars to address homosexuality within the context of the country's heated political climate of violent and state-sponsored homophobia. This volume asserts the value and academic merit of research on alternative sexualities in Senegal and serves as an invitation to expand the field of sexuality studies in Senegal and across the African continent. The introduction announces the intention of addressing the full complexity of gender and sexuality in contemporary Senegal through a more thorough understanding of its history, literature, and culture. Indeed, the volume was clearly compiled with the goal of interdisciplinarity, with chapters from scholars of comparative literature, anthropology, sociology, and political science. This broad range is both a strength and a weakness of the book. Readers from a variety of different fields will find something useful or relevant to their interests; however, only a few of the essays speak to one another, and the chapters vary quite widely in their format, levels of sophistication, and depth of analysis. Several chapters feel like a distinct misfit with the overall tone of the volume, and indeed, are barely mentioned in the introduction and
South Central Review, 2020
Gender, Work and Organization, 2019
This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development th... more This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development through the prism of domestic service for expat aid workers in developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amid aid workers and their domestic staff in Dakar, Senegal, I argue that access to affordable care work greatly enhances the lives of women who work overseas in development. The postcolonial underdevelopment and poverty that aid work addresses is paradoxically critical to the aid workers' own access to affordable care, family balance and the means to do their jobs. I put this insight into the larger scholarly conversation about domestic work and global inequality, including on the Global Care Chain.
K E Y W O R D S domestic labour, gender, international development, migration
This article examines how African transnational relationships in the twenty-first century differ ... more This article examines how African transnational relationships in the twenty-first century differ from their manifestation in previous periods of mobility and long-distance intimacy. I argue that the possibilities for and expectations of imme- diate communication and co-presence facilitated by the current technological landscape distinguish this era from earlier ones and fundamentally alter the ways in which African migrants connect to those at home. Although time–space compression allows for the potential of new practices of virtual intimacy, it also creates an imperative of availability for migrants that is reinforced not only on micro- and meso-levels by families and communities but also on macro-levels by neoliberal state policies that target migrants as agents of development and providers of social services.
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Books by Dinah Hannaford
Dinah Hannaford connects these Senegalese transnational marriages to the broader pattern of flexible kinship arrangements emerging across the global south, arguing that neoliberal globalization and its imperative for mobility extend deep into the family and the heart and stretch relationships across borders.
Papers by Dinah Hannaford
K E Y W O R D S domestic labour, gender, international development, migration
Dinah Hannaford connects these Senegalese transnational marriages to the broader pattern of flexible kinship arrangements emerging across the global south, arguing that neoliberal globalization and its imperative for mobility extend deep into the family and the heart and stretch relationships across borders.
K E Y W O R D S domestic labour, gender, international development, migration
In Senegal, love, respect, and compatibility have historically figured into marital calculations, yet prospective husbands must also provide material support. After decades of stagnant economic growth, good providers are hard to find. In this article we examine two strategies that women employ in an attempt to achieve economic security: nonmarital sex and transnational marriage. Though recent anthropological literature proposes a global transition toward companionate marriage, evidence from Dakar suggests that Senegalese women are prioritizing short-term material gain over longer-term projects of social reproduction. Transnational marriage and nonmarital sexual relationships illuminate women’s new strategies to stabilize their social positions in increasingly precarious times.
Résumé:
Au Sénégal, les maris potentiels doivent certes fournir un soutien matériel à leur épouse cependant amour, respect et compatibilité ont historiquement également figuré dans les calculs matrimoniaux. Après des décennies de stagnation de la croissance économique, les bons chefs de famille sont difficiles à trouver. Dans cet article, nous examinons deux stratégies que les femmes emploient pour tenter de parvenir à la sécurité économique : sexe hors mariage et mariage transnational. Bien que la récente littérature anthropologique propose une transition mondiale vers le mariage de compagnie, des témoignages provenant de Dakar indique que les femmes sénégalaises privilégient les gains matériels à court terme par rapport aux projets de reproduction sociale à plus long terme. Le mariage transnational et les relations sexuelles hors mariage éclairent les nouvelles stratégies des femmes pour stabiliser leur position sociale à une époque de plus en plus précaire.