Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe

‘Voting with their feet’: Senegalese youth, clandestine boat migration, and the gendered politics of protest

Abstract This article explores the political, economic, racialized, and moral dimensions of clandestine boat migration from Senegal to the Canary Islands between 2006 and 2011. I begin with a critical interpretation of clandestine boat migrations as a form of gendered protest and as a strategic response to the perceived lack of economic opportunities for young Senegalese men. I continue with a critique of the overlapping and racialized geographies of the Canary Islands, which simultaneously represent a holiday respite for tourists and the promise of a new life for economic migrants. I conclude with a discussion of the utility of scholarship, such as this, which complicates the tidiness of area studies, illuminates the lived complexities of transnational studies, and paves the way for a more global African Diaspora Studies.

The difference that transnational and intersectional black feminisms make: a commentary on Tripp

In contemporary feminist theories, transnational and intersectional feminisms occupy contested territory. Feminist analyses that are situated exclusively within local and national domains and obscure the lived impact of globalizing economic and political forces also stand on shaky ground. In the following commentary, I will address Tripps nation-centered framing of difference feminisms in specific and relational geopolitical contexts. By resituating the authors analysis within ongoing debates in feminist theory about the effectiveness of transnational and intersectional black feminist analyses, I will unsettle the conceptual tidiness of her argument.