Rehearsing Transnational Citizenship: Senegalese Associations, Co-development and Simultaneous Inclusion

Relying on the case of the Senegalese in Italy, the paper addresses the following research challenge: may migrant associations’ activities and involvement in co-development projects be conducive to the transnationalization of citizenship? Together with the illustration of the process of diversification of Senegalese associational trajectories, I discuss the opportunities for codevelopment but also the difficulties encountered in its implementation in the place of migration and of origin. Those projects sometimes represent an opportunity to improve the social conditions back home together with the inclusion within the local receiving context. However, one witnesses ambivalences concerning this search of enhancement of migrants’ status and recognition at both ends of the migration experience. In this sense it constitutes a contingent and constant “rehearsal”, which cannot be captured by relying on a static and formal conception of citizenship.