Residence Roma - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 217

orient cultural transformation in the direction of the migrant's social cooptation
within the host country's social system (sayad 1999).
senegalese transnationalism
The senegalese community in italy is made of approximately eighty thousand
people, a highly mobile, young wolof-speaking population that predominantly
comes from the center-western regions of the country and the banlieues (periph-
eries) of Dakar (Caritas/migrantes 2011; Riccio 2007, 2008; tall 2008).2 senega-
lese migrants are involved in social and economic activities that cross national
borders in a circulatory migration characterized by a “specific blend of dwelling
and moving” (Riccio 2004, 930). many of them keep links with the mourid sufi
brotherhood of senegal, an autochthonous religious group founded in the nine-
teenth century by the senegalese marabout Cheikh amadou bamba mbacké. al-
though highly dislocated in urban centers worldwide, the mourids' geography
is centered around the sacred city of touba, founded by the Cheikh amadou
bamba and considered the spatial and spiritual point of reference of their “sacred
geography” (Carter 1997, 61). The mourids' ritualization and sacralization of the
italian space (Riccio 2004) maintains as its center the sacred city of tuba, which
is constantly imagined as a point of reference distinct from the real geography of
settlement.
The religious networks play a very important organizational role for migrant
mourids (Riccio 2004). Their urban diaspora was spurred by a gradual abandon-
ment of the commercial production of groundnuts in senegal, introduced by the
french in the nineteenth century and which came to dominate the senegalese
economy during the colonial period. by incorporating themselves into the colo-
nial agricultural system, the mourids managed to preserve wolof rural values,
but renegotiated and reinvested in the institutional structure of french colonial-
ism (Diouf 2000). until the 1980s, the groundnut economy was still the major
source of income for the mourids (salzbrunn 2002). The lack of crop diversifi-
cation coupled with crop failures and prolonged drought in much of the sahel
region contributed to internal urban migrations, throughout the rest of africa,
as well as to the countries of europe, asia, and the americas (Carter 1997; Diouf
2000). in the 1990s, the implementation of structural adjustment programs in
west africa prompted the removal of taxes on imported goods. mourid traders
began to import electronic and computer products directly from southeast asian
countries. today, remissions from mourid migrants allow major social projects
in touba and elsewhere. in the eastern part of senegal, for instance, the electri-
fication of entire villages has been funded with remissions from senegalese im-
migrants living in Naples (salzbrunn 2002).
Ligeey (work) is both a social and spiritual value of the mourid brotherhood.
for many immigrants without a work permit in italy, ligeey means commerce
and trade. in the 1990s, their products were fake lacoste shirts, jeans, and fake