Exploring Senegalese Translocal Spaces. Reflections on Multi-sited Research

Through reflections on a study of Senegalese in Italy, I discuss the opportunities but also the difficulties of multi-sited ethnography in researching migration. After the presentation of the fieldwork and the various sites it comprised, I show how this research strategy facilitates a rich understanding of migrants’ every-day lives, but I stress also the importance to keep local depth despite moving from one site to another. In the conclusion, I consider the study of co-development projects that migrants conceive abroad to implement at home as a way to ground the study of transnationalism to specific local contexts and their institutions.