New information and communication technologies (NICTs) are the modern tools (cable, satellite, the Internet, telematic applications) that facilitate the circulation of ideas and bring together data and people. This study attempts to shed light on the role of NICTs in the ‘long-distance relations’ between émigrés and their families in their country of origin. The ways in which these technologies are used and appropriated by émigrés are complex. In the specific context of this study, dealing with the places of origin of émigrés who have long lacked connection with the modern communications network, the phrase ‘new technologies’ may be disconcerting to the reader. Indeed, the landline telephone may be old and commonplace in Dakar, while it is just becoming known in M'Benguène, the village in the department of Kébémer that has just emerged from technological isolation, thanks to investments from its national émigrés in Italy. Thus, as Mucchielli (1998:9) observes, ‘the analysis of contexts and, consequently, of approaches at work in the communications realm, is therefore fundamental.’ Our field research was set in the central-west region of Senegal. The onset of chronic drought at the beginning of the 1970s seriously endangered peanut production, which represented the primary agricultural industry, and led to the mass departure of its inhabitants to Italy in the mid-1980s. This study analyses the appropriation of NICTs by the émigrés and the rationales it engenders, which, according to Mucchielli (1998:10), are ‘organisational rationales of power and knowledge and of hierarchical power, a cultural rationale of propriety, a cultural rationale of savoir-faire, psychosocial rationales of fear of the loss of prestige or control …’ As with any innovation, NICTs bring into question age-old beliefs and knowledge, long-established positions and well-established local structures.
How, then, do émigrés appropriate NICTs? What is the role of NICTs in eliminating the physical element in the financial transfers of émigrés and promoting the circulation of private capital? What is the role of migrants in the penetration of these technologies in villages that are, a priori, isolated? What are the social and economic implications of accessibility to NICTs? This study attempts to gain an understanding of how Senegalese émigrés and their families who remain behind are served by these new communications tools and how, in turn, these tools influence their lifestyles. Thus, the study is built around a consideration of this dialectic of passive and receptive use of NICTs, and their dynamic and active appropriation. By relying on the opportunities offered by NICTs, émigrés, thanks to their money and savoir-faire, are attempting to instill a new dynamic in their relations with families who remain in their country of origin. Thus, this study is focused squarely on the link between technological innovation and social changes, under the influence of one key actor: the émigré.
The methodology combined a macro approach (an inventory of local and national statistics on teledensity) and a micro approach (a qualitative analysis of changes brought about by NICTs at the local level). Collection of statistical data on telecommunications companies made it possible to construct a quantitative foundation on the rapid changes that the telephone has undergone in Senegal. It also made it possible to provide a status report on the telephone: number of subscribers and connections, changes in the nature and number of calls, the origin and destination of calls, etc. Qualitative surveys (focus groups, semi-structured interviews (SSI), interviews, structured surveys and participatory surveys were conducted. The study of long-distance relations between émigrés and their families in the homeland was carried out using a combination of qualitative and statistical data collection on the role of NICTs in the financial transfers of Senegalese émigrés through specialised entities. The analysis of certain reference sites visited frequently by émigrés rounded out this research. These sites represent extensions of Senegalese media in the host country.
Émigrés adopt NICTs & strengthen ‘long-distance relations’
As soon as émigrés manage to find work in the host country, they re-establish ties with their families back home. For this, the telephone is the most frequently used tool. Often, émigrés take collective responsibility for the charges of providing electricity and telephone service in their villages. They ensure access to a telephone line and pay the bills their families receive. Émigrés also bring back, during their vacations in their home country, various electronic products (cellular telephones, televisions and radios, camcorders), which help equip their homes with improved technology. They appropriate new communications tools by bringing them into their own environment. They use NICTs in a manner at odds with the nature of the technologies, i.e., they adapt them to their personal needs, which often are different from the original intended use of the technology. In practice, the ways in which NICTs are used flow from a complex process of appropriation, making an instrument – even one as personal as the cellular telephone – a communal instrument through which villages gain access to the wider world. The social function still remains the dominant factor in the process by which émigrés appropriate these technologies. The telephone expands the circle of interpersonal relations beyond national borders, eliminates the time delay in communications, and makes communication a dynamic and interactive process.
Fixed & cellular telephones & the exponential increase in teledensity
Between its creation as a national telecommunications monopoly in 1985 and the year 2001, the number of fixed lines operated by SONATEL (the national telecommunications company) grew by nearly 20% annually. This growth is particularly informative at the local level. The change in the number of landline telephone connections was particularly rapid in the region of Louga where the number of subscribers tripled in less than seven years, growing from 1,821 to 5,963. This was the result of émigrés building houses and equipping them with telephones, thereby providing telephone access for the family as a whole. Thus, the first investment of migrants is the telephone used to maintain relations with the family in their home country. This growth is all the more paradoxical for the fact that the regional economy has experienced structural difficulties related to the dependence of the local economy on peanut cultivation, which has been strongly affected by drought. The situation is similar in Kébémér where the number of fixed-telephone subscribers tripled between 1991 and 2001. SONATEL officials estimate that émigrés account for nearly 400 telephone lines (or half of the subscriptions) in Kébémer. It is as if the telephone were a means of extending the home space in the new country – and this among people for whom the family structure is ‘traditionally’ based on oral communication.
The cellular telephone, which developed rapidly in Senegal, represents a response to the mobility of Senegalese people and was rapidly integrated in a social milieu characterised by orality and illiteracy. By 2001 SONATEL had more than 200,000 mobile subscribers, while SENTEL (the number two provider of mobile telephone service) had nearly 50,000. Given that the price of the cellular telephone is still prohibitive for the vast majority of Senegalese, its rapid development may seem paradoxical. However, according to our survey of 100 persons with cellular telephones in rural settings, 97% received them free from a relative, with 95% of the donors being émigrés who left telephones behind at the end of vacations in Senegal. An analysis of the appropriation of the cellular telephone in two villages studied shows the complexity of its use by the population. These two villages, without fixed-telephone service, suffered from under-supply, despite their proximity to the city of Kébémer. The two individuals with cell phones (Khady Diagne and Sarakh Sène) were young people who, as of March 2000, possessed the only cellular telephones in their villages.
‘Alizé Khady Diagne’: the umbilical cord linking Gade Kébé with the rest of the world
Khady Diagne is a married émigré of approximately 30 years of age from the village of Gade Kébé in the Louga region. This village of just under 150 inhabitants, two kilometers from Kébémer (the administrative center of the department), has no landline telephone. In order to communicate with his wife, the husband, who emigrated to Italy, left her a portable telephone that he used during his last vacation back in Senegal. This represents the sole material link between the village and the outside world. This personal tool – the portable telephone of Khady Diagne – is known in the village by SONATEL's commercial name, ‘Alizé Khady Diagne.’ All of the inhabitants of this village adopted this single instrument of communication, which linked the village to the world beyond. The ‘Alizé de Khady Diagne’ fulfilled, among others, the following functions:
- 1.
as a reception point for domestic calls for all of the villagers. The Khady Diagne number functioned, in reality, as the common number for the community. Often, the owner of the telephone would give it to a child, who would then be responsible for taking it to the intended recipient of a call;
- 2.
as an instrument for disseminating information on family ceremonies. News of people living in the village (family events, death notices, administrative meetings) are communicated to Khady Diagne, who is responsible for calling the people involved;
- 3.
as a point of contact for village girls who work as domestics in the nearby city and need to communicate with their employers;
- 4.
as the intermediary for street merchants (known as banas banas merchants), who need to contact their clients and correspondents, or who need to know the status of the markets.
This example gives an idea of the transformative capacities of a personal communications tool, such as the cellular telephone, which can become a community instrument for relaying messages between the village and the outside world. An entire system of solidarity and a complete social structure are at the heart of this appropriation. Here, the cellular telephone, a personal tool par excellence, is shared among several people. Just as telecenters democratised access to the telephone by allowing all those with money to correspond with each other, the cellular telephone made it possible to extend the telephone to the most remote villages, which are not likely to benefit from programmes to extend service in the foreseeable future. The development of this type of telephone is facilitated by the relative speed of connection (compared to installing fixed telephone lines), the fact that subscribers, by using prepaid ‘Diamono’ cards, have no need to pay a bill, and the flexibility of use. There are, however, certain obstacles to its adoption: the cost of the phone, the fact that cellular networks are not present in all places, the high rates charged for cellular calls vs. fixed-telephone calls, phone theft, and the need to recharge the batteries in locations where electricity may not be available.
The cell phones of Sarakh Sène in Dawakh
In the village of Dawakh Gadiaga, where approximately 100 people live in ten households a short distance east of the city of Kébémer, the only cell phone, as of March 2000, belonged to Sarakh Sène, a 30-year-old man. The phone was offered to him by his brother who emigrated to South Africa and who was experiencing enormous problems contacting his family back in his native village. He provided the telephone for the village, where there was not yet any landline telephone service. Sarakh located, within the village, the area where access to the network would be best (near the standpipe and the mosque). Since the village had no electricity, Sarakh equipped his phone with two batteries. However, because of the frequency and length of calls from abroad, the battery's charge quickly became exhausted. Thus, every Monday, at Kébémer's weekly market, Sarakh would recharge his two phone batteries. He also had an automobile charger for the cell phone batteries and took advantage of the presence of a vehicle in the village (that of an NGO or of an individual) to recharge the batteries. The communal involvement in operating the cell phone allowed Sarakh to play a role in mediating between the village and the outside world. Through his intermediation, the NGO operating in the village would inform the population of upcoming meetings and activities. Thus, he served as the interface between the village and its members located abroad, or with those living in Touba and Dakar. As a result, he was propelled to the head of organisations of young people in the village – youth groups, the literacy committee, etc.
Based on these two examples, typical of other villages in central-west Senegal that have experienced strong emigration, one can see that the cellular telephone is producing new relationships and, at the same time, assuring cell phone owners a new social role. The fixed and cellular telephone contributed to the emergence of new venues for coordinating local development activities in the rural setting. How, then, are families affected by these new networks? New leaders are emerging, in spite of sectarian or traditional affiliations, whose role is linked primarily to mediating between the people and the outside world – a role that has allowed them to externalise capacities for sharing, communicating and negotiating. Places where telephones are located have become unprecedented opportunities for innovation, allowing one woman to become the primary point of attraction within the village of Gade Kébé. This woman demonstrated, in the handling of her portable telephone, the ability to interface between the village and the outside world – showing mediating qualities such as confidentiality, availability, altruism and solidarity. By projecting her capacities in the collective awareness, she systematically positioned herself as a leader, despite her youth and gender, gaining responsibility for directing other activities in the village and thus playing a role in social mediation.
In the rural environment, according to the results of our survey, people invoke the lack of telephone lines (38%), mobility (60%) and the desire to stand out (2%) as reasons for choosing the cellular telephone – a highly dynamic new technology. The telephone companies are offering new options and are lowering connection and communication costs, expanding network service as a result of both competition and technological advances. The cellular telephone is replacing fixed telephony in regions not yet served by the landline telephone and supplements the fixed telephone in well-off households, while increasingly competing with the fixed telephone among some poor families, who either give up their fixed phones or restrict themselves to using phones restricted to outgoing calls.
Television & camcorder: in tune with the social life
Television is a new communications tool in rural Senegal. The camcorder makes it possible to live in the adopted country without being completely cut off from social life in the country of origin. Festivals, family ceremonies and major television events are experienced by international migrants thanks to the video cassette. The success of audiovisual media is linked to their easy use in the community and the simplicity of the information (image and sound), which is easy to decode by all. Everything happens as if the traditional evenings that punctuate the cultural life of the villages were passing before one on the small screen.
The presence of television in the villages
While televisions are common, the development of television in the villages is slowed somewhat by the absence of electricity and by poor reception. Émigrés are increasingly providing their families with television sets that operate on solar energy, as is true in the village of MBenguène. In other villages that lack electricity (direct current or solar), such as Gade Kébé, television sets are powered by automobile batteries. In general, only a few homes are equipped with television sets and television viewing is done collectively. The women are responsible for turning on the television sets. Television is watched selectively – first, to preserve the solar batteries, and second, because a degree of organisation is needed to take the television set out to the courtyard, plug it in, and provide mats and chairs for the viewers. With only programmes on the national channel available, programmes are watched parsimoniously. The programmes chosen in Mbenguène, for example, are the Tuesday dramas in Wolof, the Thursday evening Islamic broadcasts, the Friday television series, and Saturday programmes of local music or traditional songs.
According to the adults in the village, television is primarily for young people and women. The penetration of a modern communications tool in a traditional arena governed by longstanding control mechanisms has an undeniable cultural impact. Television changes the modalities and timing of village night life. The return of émigrés coincides with festive night-time events during which videocassettes and music are enjoyed late into the night. Certain traditional activities (cultural gatherings, songs, funeral gatherings) are increasingly forgotten. And while the content of television programmes gives the village exposure to the outside world, it does little to replace the role of traditional games and evening gatherings in the education of the young people. At the same time, the camcorder allows migrants to produce material consistent with their needs and makes it possible for them to participate in the social life of their villages.
The camcorder: making up for the lack of images
The camcorder is a communications tool par excellence, making up for the lack of images shared between émigrés and their families. It provides images that neither the telephone, e-mail nor letter writing offers. Innumerable émigrés have come to know their future spouses through cassettes viewed collectively in Brescia or Brooklyn. Video cassettes of family ceremonies in Senegal function as audio-visual matchmakers. A break is occurring in the marriage strategies and traditional procedures for finding partners, with physical aesthetics taking on a more determining role than kinship links. These audiovisual encounters are followed and supplemented by the telephone. This phenomenon is gaining currency with the proliferation of portable telephones, which provide the opportunity for intimate conversation. Video cassettes expand the field for encounters and reinforce exogamous relationships for people who often have a limited circle of acquaintances in the host country – acquaintances made through the daily routine of commuting and work – and whose vacations in their country of origin are often too brief for encounters outside the circle of family and/or neighborhood acquaintances. Émigrés who are unrelated often watch videos in groups in the host country. Sectarian links, professional relationships or mere opportunity may bring together émigrés in the same apartment. The video promotes an extension of the types of relationships and expands the circle of acquaintance.
Some migrants buy camcorders for their families so that all important events can be filmed: religious events, family ceremonies, etc. The video is more a communications tool than an instrument for storing information. In the adopted country, the video is a tool for connecting the émigré with the family milieu. Thus, one can hardly imagine a marriage of an émigré, even in remote villages, that is not filmed. It is reported that an émigré whose marriage cassette was damaged before he had a chance to see it financed a new ceremony so that he could have his own cassette. In the suburbs of Dakar and in the villages in the country's interior, centers specialising in the reporting of family ceremonies – using sophisticated cameras and post-production techniques that add sub-titles – are springing up. Thus, the video serves as a sort of live iconographic memento.
In the host country, video cassettes make it possible to keep abreast of local television programmes. Indeed, major broadcasts are transported the next day on the first flight bound for Italy or the United States. Major television events in Senegal (wrestling matches, political debates, broadcasts of traditional events, excerpts and Tuesday dramas in Wolof) are sometimes seen on video cassette by émigrés with only a slight delay. Cassettes are sold on New York City's 116th Street for $10, at the Lyon train station for 100 French francs, and in Brescia two days later. Folkloric troupes specialising in the production of made-for-television movies on video sell their products abroad to émigrés, who often see cassettes that are not sold to national television until long after they have been disseminated abroad. For émigrés, videos function much like local television, personalising and harnessing the television image which, until then, had been a monopoly of the powerful.
Radio: an old technology with new advances
Radio has existed in Senegal since the time of communal receivers. However, with the arrival of FM in the villages at the beginning of the 1990s, radio experienced a renewed life. By the same token, émigrés in Italy listening to radio stations broadcasting from Senegal (thanks to digital receivers) is certainly a new phenomenon. FM radio and interactivity brought about by the telephone provide a new venue for dialogue between listeners. People feel a sense of solidarity from these radio stations and have the sense that they are participating in the broadcasts. All in all, the marriage of the telephone and the radio provides a link between mass information and interpersonal information, constituting a new space for sociability adopted by those excluded from the normal circulation of ideas in order to make themselves heard.
The WorldSpace system, founded in 1990, allows for live reception of satellite audio programmes from portable radios. Three geostationary satellites, put into orbit at 35,000 km above the equator, provide reception of programmes with high-quality sound and ease of use. ‘Afristar’ was launched into orbit in 1998, ‘Asiastar’ in 2000, and ‘Ameristar’ in 2001. Digital receivers cost 120,000 CFA francs in 2001. With WorldSpace, émigrés are able to listen, live by satellite, to local FM radio stations (Wal Fadjri, Sud FM, 7FM, Radio Sénégal International) from their adopted country (Wal Fadjri, 27 June 2000). Announcements and news releases on deaths, political debates, along with local information, are heard live by émigrés who, using the telephone, participate in an exchange of opinions. With the development of the WorldSpace digital receiver, émigrés are able to systematically participate, by telephone, in FM radio broadcasts. With the telephone, radio is no longer merely an instrument for providing information, but is also a tool for communication, i.e., for establishing an interactive and dynamic process of information exchange and communication. Émigrés have begun to create venues for dialogue in their host countries in order to preserve identity and create Senegalese ‘islands’ within their adopted country. With this real-time interactivity, émigrés are participating directly in broadcasts. Indeed, long before the development of WorldSpace, émigrés had attempted to secure radio air time in their host countries.
Illusions & glimmers of internet penetration in émigré communities
Access to the Internet in rural Senegal is still limited. Although émigrés have been instrumental in securing telephone connections for their families at home, they are only vaguely familiar with the internet and have been unable to facilitate access to the Internet in the same way. While most émigrés are from rural regions and are either illiterate or have very little education, the Internet is viewed as a tool for intellectuals, an essentially urban Dakar phenomenon. Connection to the Internet was not yet available in the region studied. However, the ease with which émigrés can access the Internet in their host country suggests that this tool will come to be used extensively by émigrés. Those with access to the Internet in the United States, where WorldSpace is not yet available, spend long hours online reading newspapers and listening to radio stations. It seems that émigrés are using the Internet when they lack access to audiovisual media. The Internet is therefore used in place of radio and television. And while a certain category of émigrés has taken to using e-mail to exchange personal messages, internet communication between between émigrés and their families is limited by the lack of connectivity in Senegal, even though there are some initial signs of improved penetration by the world wide web. Nonetheless, the benchmark site, Homeview, as well as Webtv, are viewed as having real potential.
The appropriation of NICTs by émigrés is facilitated by the high degree of compatibility with systems of oral communication. Émigrés make their own use of NICTs. The adoption of similar technological innovations is a function of the skill of the users. While no real skill is required for the telephone, the same is not true of the fax, since the sending of documents involves knowing how to read. Senegal has entered the information society or, more precisely, the network society. This is true, at times, even for remote villages or NGOs, with émigrés providing their families with access to NICTs to maintain regular contact despite geographic separation. Old communications tools, such as the radio, rely on new advances that facilitate their accessibility as well as their connection with other information technologies. Radio offers an opportunity for freedom and for citizen participation, while the Internet generates social links and provides an opportunity for those escaping territorial control. This makes it possible to leap political borders and ensure continuing émigré contact with their home countries. Similarly, émigré familiarity with the Internet can be a determining factor in the creation of virtual communities in host countries. People appropriate NICTs according to their own logic, by integrating them into their lived experiences and internalising them. This contributes to changing their organisational methods, as well as expanding their relationship with the outside world. Thus for the Mouride diaspora, as Guèye shows elsewhere in this Issue, the Internet is a means for gaining exposure and of rebuilding solidarity. Nonetheless, the Internet in Senegal represents more a potential resource: many villages live essentially from financial resources sent by those who have emigrated, and with the development of NICTs, funds sent from abroad arrive more quickly.
Toward the globalisation of capital
The desire to earn money is at the core of migration. A large portion of the money accumulated is sent to the country of origin. The residence status of the émigré in the adopted country plays a role in the frequency of transfers, with illegal or unofficial immigrants making frequent and major transfers of money in order to prepare for the extreme eventuality of expulsion. Work status in the adopted country determines the transfers, with merchants who have easier access to informal channels sending money back more often than other migrants. Certain family events increase the transfers by émigrés: the birth of a child, the marriage of someone close to them, illness among family members, etc. The start of the school year, religious festivals and holidays (the Touba Magal, Maouloud, the end of Ramadan, Tabaski) are times of increased transfers. This variation in the pace of transfers contributes to an increase in types of transfers. The impact of NICTs in financial transfers translates into an increase in the methods for moving funds and in the amount of money moving between host country and homeland. Beyond their contribution to the country's balance of payments, financial flows sent by migrants raise the standard of living of households and contribute to the emergence of an entrepreneurial sector and to the development of rapid, transnational circulation of capital.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, the classic transfers (money orders, postal orders) have been used less and less by Senegalese émigrés, given the relatively long delivery times and delays in payment associated with these methods. Since the 1990s, new methods of transferring funds have been instituted to mitigate these constraints. These new methods, based on the use of NICTs, include new and much faster formal methods of transfer, such as Money Gram and Western Union. They also involve less formal methods, which help support social networks and inject major amounts of money directly into household budgets and local investments. Telephone, fax and telematic transfers have led to new, non-physical means of financial circulation and a diversification of mechanisms for conveying money. Émigrés are able to make major amounts of money available to recipients through a simple phone call. Rudimentary at the start, these systems of transfer are being modernised as a result of NICTs and are becoming true financial products which, through an ongoing process of improvement, may give rise to new instruments adapted to the financial habits of émigrés and merchants.
‘Virtual’ transfer of funds
Commercial networks and migrant networks are juxtaposed. To merchants, the collection of money from émigrés provides very short-term loans, which are invested in the purchase of handbags and shoes in Italy, electronic equipment and cosmetics in New York, and articles of clothing in France. Merchants acting as couriers can earn significant sums by dabbling in variations in exchange rates before delivering the money to the recipients. Independent of these earnings, the merchant increases his capacity for supply and can rapidly repay the amounts collected, particularly since he is acting as both a wholesaler and retailer. Thus, the amounts entrusted to him are a sort of loan that he uses to stock merchandise, and which he repays upon his return after having sold his products. For this type of transfer, the telephone is merely an instrument for control or to inform the recipient. However, with the increasingly widespread links between merchants and émigrés, this technology is key to the transfer process. A telephone call is sufficient to make specified amounts of money available to correspondents. With the development of NICTs, the émigré can put himself in the more favorable position of creditor by requesting by phone that the expenses of his family be taken care of, while not repaying the merchant until his next visit to the adopted country. In such a case, it is the merchant who provides a bridge loan for the émigré's expenses.
Funds are made available based on the financial viability of the merchant. At the instruction of migrants who have already paid them an amount of money in the adopted country, merchants request their correspondents in Dakar, by phone, to pay out to the party specified by the émigré, the corresponding amount of money. The withdrawal of the money is carried out in Dakar shops: souks in Sandaga, stores that sell spare parts, telecentres, etc. Locations for making withdrawals are proliferating in certain settlements in the country's interior – primarily in Touba (see also Guèye, this volume) – with accounts settled upon returning to the country. However, adjustments in expenses and money entrusted to the merchant are made periodically via the telephone; thus, the telephone functions as an accounting instrument.
Migrants make transfers without actual movement of financial flows. This system consists of orders for expenses, made by telephone. The émigré, from his adopted country, requests a merchant to provide his family with food products. The accounting is made upon the return of the migrant, who honors all expenses incurred during his absence. This type of transfer, which presupposes frequent and regular returns to Senegal on the part of the émigré, as well as his having established himself in the business community, makes it possible for the émigré to control the family budget. The émigré pays a merchant in New York, who takes responsibility for providing, through an intermediary in Dakar, the products needed to sustain the family. With such a procedure, no transfer of money is made to Senegal. One example of a migrant with access to this type of transaction is Mr. Ndiaye, who lives in Italy and established himself in the business community, prior to his departure, in his uncle's food-import business. Financed and assisted by his uncle, he left for Italy at the age of 18. He built a house in the Parcelles Assainies section and stays in Senegal from November to March every year. The only breadwinner in his household, which consists of his wife, her mother and three brothers and sisters, he paradoxically makes no financial transfers. It is in one of the wholesale shops of his uncle, managed by one of his cousins, that the migrant's wife obtains everything she needs during the absence of her husband; the latter brings back cars for sale, and uses the proceeds to settle the debts and expenses incurred by his wife. He benefits doubly from the sale of the automobiles, since this also allows him to defray the cost of their shipment.
The migrant can also leave significant amounts of money with the merchant for the subsistence needs of his family. The merchant becomes the de facto manager of the émigré's assets. The money, as hard currency, is enhanced even more by émigrés making very short-term investments, primarily in vehicles, spare parts, or secondhand electronic equipment, rather than using the funds for a direct transfer. Moreover, a rapid increase in this type of commerce can be seen, financed by the transfers of émigrés who control these sectors and are able to obtain these articles in the adopted country.
The creation, by émigrés and merchants, of original instruments for transferring funds is governed by an organisational approach that entirely avoids the constraints and administrative complications of official transfers. Émigrés, in coordination with merchants, have developed a complex system of advancing and clearing funds, and of social control, supported by the telephone.
Kara international exchange: the informal transfer of funds
One highly developed, and now much imitated example of this is the Kara International Exchange. This was initiated in 1991 by a Senegalese émigré, who was working as an assistant at a wholesale merchant on New York's Broadway, much of whose business was with foreign clients and involved negotiating preferential exchange rates with local banks. This gave him ideas for new methods of assisting émigrés to repatriate their money. His family, his extensive network of merchant contacts both in New York and in Dakar, where he had previously worked in the Sandaga market, and the Mouride Brotherhood, in which he was an active member, helped to create the social and commercial bonds and the trust which would enable his ideas to work.
The migrant who wishes to transfer money using Kara goes to the modest Broadway apartment that serves as its office, warehouse and counter. Migrants do not have to fill out forms or sign documents, and they need not identify themselves. It is sufficient for them to indicate the amount to be sent. After receiving the funds, the Kara New York employee enters on the computer – his only work tool – the references provided by the client. On the printout given to the client are the complete names and addresses of the sender, the recipient, the amount sent, in short, the various items of information given by the migrant. The date of the transaction and the amount sent are also given on the receipt, which can serve as verification, in the exceptional event of a claim, for the client in New York. For the Kara Dakar correspondent, it can also be a means of identifying the recipient.
After the turning over of the money to be transferred and payment of the relevant commission, the Kara New York office requests, by fax, that the Dakar agency remit the amount deposited by the migrant to his correspondent. The recipient of the transfer is informed by the migrant at his own expense. This is a strategy for limiting the costs of operation by Kara New York, which recently installed a telecentre in its Broadway offices to reduce the transfer time.
The speed and simplicity of the transfer transaction are the main reasons migrants give for choosing this institution. They need not be able to read or write in order to make a transfer. Most of the clients are merchants. The security of the transfers by fax is guaranteed by the social relationship between Kara and the merchants. The payment orders requested of the Dakar agency, and made by fax, carry the number of the sending fax. The authenticity of the fax is recognised by a secret encoding system for the writing of payment orders in numeric form. The payment orders are handled only by Kara. The sender, at most, is given a receipt, while the recipient receives notice to go and withdraw a particular sum of money and simply has to identify him or her self. Any doubt Kara has about the authenticity of the fax is verified by a telephone call to the Kara New York office. Transfer times are short. Generally, a transfer made by a migrant in New York before 10 a.m. local time can be received by the migrant's correspondent around 3 p.m. local time. Were it not for the time difference (Sandaga is bustling at noon while New York is just beginning to stir), the transfer would be nearly instantaneous.
The compensation between Kara New York and the Dakar correspondent is made using the money deposited by merchants who are preparing to go to New York. In order to avoid carrying large sums of money and having trouble with Senegalese customs, these merchants deposit their money with the Dakar correspondent at Kara Sandaga, who uses it to pay the recipients amounts ‘sent’ by migrants from New York. Kara acts as a bank with a system of tacit compensation, without physically transferring money.
NICTs provide formal transfers with security and speed, the essential factors that make them profitable. By relying on the postal network, formal transfers have increased the accessibility of regions served extensively by the postal service. NICTs improve the productivity, speed, security and flexibility of informal transfers, while making use of oral communication. This is the basis of the trust and the concept on which the system of transfer relies. A simple telephone message can make available to correspondents thousands of miles away, in real time, major sums of money. As Bougnoux (1998:110) states, ‘there is an overlap between financial agents and those handling information.’ Castells (1998:8) also observes, quite correctly, that ‘the possibility of communicating, without time delays, with any point on the globe promotes the rapid movement of capital’. NICTs are also a means of monitoring transfers and economic investments. Correspondents can keep accounts, émigrés can monitor the fulfillment of obligations and of set time frames. This is what Castells (1999: 430) calls ‘communities of resistance that defend their space, their places, against an unfamiliar dynamic: the characteristic flows that determine social dominance in the information age.’
Conversely, NICTs also lead to increasingly individualised financial relationships between the international migrant and his village. We are witnessing an end to group transfers carried out by a person delegated by émigrés living in the same area. This is provoking an unraveling of community-based investments in the areas of origin, and the redirecting of expatriate investment toward the cities. The bonds of common identity based on common village origin are being blurred by greater accessibility to NICTs. The impossibility of maintaining frequent relationships with one's village of origin led migrants to set up, in their adopted countries, ‘miniature villages’ where news from their homeland is collected, along with collective strategies for transferring financial resources and making investments in the village. As a result, NICTs have produced social restructuring in the places of origin.
NICTs and interdependence between local economies and the economies of destination countries: ‘when Lombardy (northern Italy) sneezes, Ndiambour (central-northern Senegal) catches cold’.
With the tendency among migrants to make regular return visits to Senegal once they are established in their host countries, we are witnessing the emergence of business partnerships involving residents of both Senegal and the host countries of Senegalese émigrés. The latter are setting up ‘bipolar’ enterprises with one foot in Italy, say, and the other in Dakar or Touba. These hybrid enterprises are established on the basis of family networks, but are underpinned by high-quality communications technologies and relationships built on ad hoc, opportunistic arrangements. This reconfiguration of systems of connection between social entities and technological instruments is not in any way contradictory to those elements that serve as protectors of identity – the sect, the family, etc. Thus, a consolidation of partnerships is occurring between émigrés and economic agents in their host countries, through a merging of social networks and commercial networks, all due to NICTs. Émigrés are building a ‘bipolar’ form of commerce using these resources, encompassing a vast network of financial flows.
The émigré entrepreneurial sector is based on partnership and, thus, on negotiation and dialogue. NICTs facilitate oral modes of forming contracts in the informal sector, where writing is more for legal/contractual purposes than as a form of communication.
Transfers have contributed, by relying on NICTs, to a new globalisation of finance for commerce. A survey of some 13 enterprises selling automobile parts and motorcycles, purchased primarily in Italy, revealed that the use of the telephone and fax is essential in handling their activities; these technologies have opened up new markets and better control of local markets. Above all, however, these agents have been able to find sources of financing and other forms of backing outside of banks and the State. In the automobile-parts sector – a preferred area of investment for émigrés – NICTs have facilitated the establishment of partnerships with Italian automobile scrap yards for vehicles no longer in use in Europe. Merchants fax lists of parts to be loaded in their containers, accompanied by requests that bills of lading or shipping invoices for the containers are sent in a timely manner, so that they can initiate customs clearance and transit, and thus reduce warehousing charges at the port in Dakar. This form of entrepreneurship, involving the straddling of two countries, requires an intensification of exchanges of information, leading to a strengthening of interpersonal relationships and confirming Castells' view (1998: 21) that ‘[e]conomies everywhere are becoming interdependent and thus are introducing a new form of relationship between the economy, the State and society, in a flexible system.’
NICTs & social restructuring within the migratory system
NICTs foster the creation of long-distance interpersonal relationships and are part of a new process of exchange. Opportunities for social management are appearing, even for émigrés staying in their adopted country. They have access to a mechanism for real-time family decision-making. NICTs are breaking down barriers and challenging assumptions regarding temporal and spatial frameworks.
Family institutions and social organisations are a couple of examples that are useful in examining the impact of NICTs on individuals and society. These technologies are accelerating the process of social change. Their accessibility, even for groups which, until now, have participated little in decision-making mechanisms, provide new power. Relationships of dependence become relationships of exchange. There is a renewal of local awareness and a strengthening of the feeling of belonging. This rebalancing of roles guarantees vulnerable social segments of the population access to information and to decision making. These groups have a firmer grasp of the use of the telephone than do older people. This creates a reversal of roles, given the fact that the technology is dependent on resources from migrants. NICTs promote a new form of social mobilisation of nationals from a region beyond national borders. Linking local challenges to the broader world context is another means of joining the global community. Places of communication are becoming new places for social negotiation. With NICTs, a transformation of private spaces to public spaces is occurring. In the public squares of popular neighborhoods and in certain villages, where bedrooms are used as offices or as living rooms, the placement of the telephone can elicit or revive numerous conflicts. In Wolof households, management of common family assets is, theoretically, the domain of the ‘senior’ wife. However, some young émigrés have a tendency to install telephones in their wives' rooms, thereby by-passing the management role of their mothers or aunts. The émigré, knowing that, during his stay, he is the person most frequently called, is instinctively inclined to install the telephone in his wife's room. However, this poses problems of accessibility for male adults and for elderly individuals.
Now, these groups can NICTs are making it possible for traditionally excluded rural groups such as women and young people to have a voice and even participate in decision-making. However, unequal access to NICTs could lead to instability in society. The sharing and collective use of existing lines is producing dependent relationships. As early émigrés, who were from some of the most disadvantaged families and groups, were the first to provide their families with telephones, this has enhanced their status in society. They can no longer be excluded from the opportunities to access information and the arena of decision-making. Furthermore, by entrusting the management of the telephone and of the cellular telephone to their sisters and wives, émigrés contribute to the latter's empowerment, and give them an entrée into the public sphere. Given that they spend more time at home than men do, they are more likely to receive incoming telephone calls and become, in this way, repositories of information. They are also active in administering local associations, thereby enhancing their powers of influence even further. NICTs help to consolidate their place as agents of social change and give them a sense of political awareness. Group strategies solidify inter-personal links and lead to a reordering of women's relations with other groups. However, this poses problems, for it challenges traditional conceptions of the balance of power between the sexes, and presages a renegotiation of gender roles, both within the family and in the wider society.This has led to interpersonal and inter-group conflicts.
NICTs make it possible for émigrés to control domestic space. Managing such a sphere involves the power of financial resources, and makes it possible to direct spending, give orders, deal with conflicts – all matters that the migrant can now do by telephone on an almost daily basis. What is presently occurring is a globalisation of family management. The social connection is no longer a set of innate or established statutory relationships, but rather the result of social interactions constructed in the complex mesh of a multitude of networks, including those linked to NICTs, driven by interested players bringing to bear an approach involving negotiation and exchange, rather than one of exclusion and hoarding. New technologies facilitate the reestablishing of communal links. The use of the telephone in the rural setting shows the true complexity of how the telephone is handled, in relation to previous modes of organising and managing information.
Traditionally, the local dissemination of information is governed by rules rooted in the local structure. Sensitive news is transmitted to the village chief, who makes a determination as to the appropriateness of disseminating it more widely, and as to those to be informed. Felicitous news, such as family ceremonies, falls under the responsibility of the griot (or village elder) who, depending on the target audience, presents the news in an agreeable and lively manner. This is also a matter of reestablishing age-old links. Private news is delivered word for word to the recipient by a messenger. Increasingly individualised access to the telephone will make it difficult to perpetuate these strategies for organising and controlling information locally. Are things moving toward conflict or toward better relationships between actors? Are we not witnessing new forms of inequality between those with access to NICTs and those excluded from such access? In post-colonial Africa, cities are made up of different diasporas and of different flows of migrants, linked to the globalised flow of capital and information.
NICTs & informal globalisation
International migrations are driven by complex spatial/geographic factors. NICTs function as a domestic challenge and an instrument of globalisation of family relationships. Inter-personal exchange and communication on the family-unit level are based on the neighborhood or on geographic proximity. In this regard, there are exchanges of money and goods. With NICTs, the exchanges go beyond the material realm, encompassing ideas and involving an increasingly distant outside world. The dialectic of the ‘here’ and the ‘elsewhere’ is called into question by the simultaneity and everyday nature of exchanges between émigrés and their places of origin. What is occurring is a globalisation of the domestic realm from the bottom up. Proximity – until now a means of exerting social control – has been superceded by a ‘virtual’ proximity that relies on oral communication and financial relationships. In certain villages in the Louga region, the Italian cities of Florence, Pescara and Rimini are more widely known (even by the elderly) than cities in Senegal.
NICTs shorten the distances and strengthen the significance of urban spaces within the rural environment. Migrants straddle the local and the global, mobility and identity, the altruistic and the profitable. These technologies foster a reinvention of the social bond. The traditional methods of relaying information are being short-circuited by new mechanisms such as the rural telephone and the cell phone. Griots, disseminators of domestic information on family ceremonies and village gatherings, are receiving competition from those who possess the local NICT devices. There is a hoarding phenomenon that occurs and that contributes to widening the gap between those who have acquired these technologies and those who have not. With NICTs, the social link no longer depends on spatial proximity – producing in turn a breakdown of space-based identity, a strengthening of bonds of other kinds and a shrinking of distance. These technologies facilitate the dissemination and segmentation of information and expand the number of depositories. Until recently, ceremonial information was overseen by the griots, who took charge of it and disseminated it through their own channels; this type of information is now disseminated via the telephone. In villages where information comes by means of telephone wires, through an intermediary in possession of a telephone, the griot usually takes responsibility for redistributing it in the squares. This role, which has disappeared in the city, is still intact in the village, where teledensity is still low. Thus, social status and age-old roles are changing and being questioned, while new networks are being promoted by NICTs, which have become the key to the emergence of a new model for information sharing. Those with the necessary tools for disseminating information become the depositories of information.
With the advent of the GSM, SONATEL is developing cellular service in rural areas where the landline telephone network does not yet exist. In June 2000, only 646 villages out of a total of 16,000 in Senegal were equipped with telecentres. The cellular telephone can open up rural towns not yet served by the landline telephone network to the outside world. NICTs are being developed in regions where there is strong demand for access to information and in which there is competition between social and family environments, on the one hand, and modern, outside influences on the other. New technologies are breaking down spatial barriers. However, one cannot yet speak of openness to the outside world, given the condition of the roads and the obsolescence of the rural transportation system. The unit cost of linking subscribers to the telephone network is ten times more expensive in rural than in urban areas. For commercial reasons, SONATEL is not making investments of this type unless it is certain that they will be profitable. Installation of the telephone in isolated regions is dependent on the existence of a certain number of pending requests. In this respect, the financial well-being of émigrés creates an increasing number of connection requests, thus making investment by the telephone companies feasible.
NICTs promote the resurgence of local powers, due to the consolidation of individual initiatives. Relationships among villagers scattered throughout the world strengthen the role of local powers at play within the village. Thus, the village reaches beyond physical limitations. We are witnessing the establishment of direct links between local and global networks, staking out a new form of globalisation. One can see the forming of relationships with increasingly distant environments as a result of NICTs.
In regions with strong emigration, one sees the paradox of a village in which the strongest links are to Italy, where the largest proportion of its departed offspring live. Thus, there is an expansion of the village's opportunities for exchange and a questioning of the classic foundations of relationships. The social and economic life of the village unit has been broken into several interconnected pieces by NICTs. Social networks are energised by technical networks. Distance is no longer a constraint in itself, and access to communications networks makes it possible to integrate social networks. This is all the more relevant when émigrés living in the same village tend to emigrate to the same city abroad. The village of M'Benguène is not a distinct entity, but rather part of a complex system of multiple residences (village, nearby town, places abroad, Touba) interconnected by NICTs. In the village and the outside world, bonds dominate distance, time dominates space. The world abroad is a limiting concept, because émigrés consider their nationals to be full members of the community, whom they are obligated to keep informed of the life of the village, down to the most trivial details. Since they often cannot attend village ceremonies, émigrés participate in them by underwriting the associated financial costs. Absence, they say, means being present but unable to do anything.
Analysing the types of telephone relationships between the village of M'Benguène and the outside world is a complex task. The importance of phone connections between the village and the outside world lies in social, administrative and economic factors. Prior to the existence of the telephone, relationships were limited and depended on people physically moving from one place to another. With NICTs, the roles of mediating with the outside world are reversed. Financial relationships are geared exclusively to Italy or to nearby villages, with the social dynamic based on kinship. In contrast, relations with Touba encompass the full range of religious and economic relationships. Only the village of Diawar and the city of Kébémer are geographically close to the village. The perception of relationships for the villagers is based more on the ease of relations than on geographic proximity. We are witnessing an opening up of the village to greater opportunities for accumulation. Émigrés, then, are intermediaries for the collection of resources. Is not this creation of transnational spaces outside the limits of national borders a type of globalisation from the bottom up, one that is being advanced more rapidly by communities more than by states? It constitutes globalisation that is occurring bit by bit, through a process of hybridisation, one step at a time, through open, flexible social networks. New types of relationships are being established, new exchanges of information with increasingly distant places are taking place, along with financial transactions beyond borders and without the intervention of the State. NICTs allow émigrés to bypass the national level with its bureaucratic constraints or its deficiencies in terms of mobilising financial resources suited to the needs of the people. Those entities that seek to embody a collective identity (family, sect, merchant) appropriate NICTs to escape the control of the State. The installation of the telephone in the rural environment of Louga is changing the rules for handling information and the local mechanisms for communication. There is a strengthening of the role of young people and women, expansion of the circle of social relationships, implementation of links with distant places, a range of interests arising out of the use of the telephone by different actors.
The impact of NICTs on family relationships and on power structures is all the more complex given the fact that all those involved have an interest in it. Those in possession of information differentiate themselves from and oppose the classical elites, to whom this role traditionally belonged. This fragmentation between the modern and the traditional leads to: the multiplicity of decision-making poles within the rural setting; the diversification and break-down of sources of leadership; and the tentative beginning of a process of democratising social functions.
Conclusion
Is not the migratory system a set of cities interconnected by networks, of relationships based on NICTs, financial movements and a complex of representations? New technologies allow the migrant to connect ‘pieces’ of family distributed among different political and economic spaces. The categories of time tend, in the context of NICTs, to replace those of space, which have for a long time ordered relationships, forms of bonding and modes of sociability. The development of new technologies involves an extension and diversification of information flows, a process of overcoming the permanence of space, a mechanism for negating political territories – in short, a form of globalisation.
NICTs have fostered easy and rapid access to information, partnership and entrepreneurship, mobilising of funds and socialisation. We are seeing the emergence of new and more open leaders, formerly excluded, who are more receptive to change and less inclined to practice exclusion. Leadership linked to the appropriation of NICTs brings things into focus more than it controls, links more than it excludes, exchanges more than it monopolises, is acquired more than it is inherited or gifted. Thus, NICTs are a factor in achieving progress, a source of power that encourages people to access that power, a powerful element of social innovation. Actors deploy various strategies in the context of current change linked to these technological resources: new positions, attitudes and alliances, new compromises and conflicts. There is occurring a hybridisation of different types of human, relational and economic resources providing migrants or their intermediaries a new role, based not on hoarding of information but rather on its dissemination and sharing. Those accessing NICTs include a range of social identities: those who hold power and those who serve as power brokers. Thus, NICTs are factors instrumental in social integration, powerful levers for social rebalancing and for strengthening local spaces within a globalised system. Intense social mobilisation is occurring, one that is characterised by the invention of new roles and the effective transfer of roles belonging, until now, to a particular segment of the population. This transfer involves conflicts, an intensification or even a tacit sharing of roles by a segmentation of social channels. The cellular telephone makes it possible to circumvent the initiating role of the State, to short-circuit the role of local authorities and increase the participation of the people in equipping their localities.
The appropriation of NICTs necessarily engenders micro-relationships of power with a destabilising effect on the classical order, and with the power to structure a new order. The emergence of new venues for managing information poses the problem of the future role of the griot and the impact of the disappearance of this role in the distribution of castes. Who can imagine a griot who does not provide information? The collective appropriation of NICTs is winning out over State appropriation of these technologies. Thus, it produces a new approach to community development that implies solidarity and negotiation. This new form of articulation of the local and the global, the individual and the communal, the economic and the social produces endogenous innovations, allowing Africa to secure its place in the globalisation process. This form of globalisation does not mean the end of territories, let alone the disappearance of regions with their specific characteristics; on the contrary, it is part of a dynamic of revitalising relationships, bringing them into a broader circle of relationships. This globalisation by NICTs is a process of negation of distance and multipolarisation of spaces, of stretches of space easily linked in real time. New technologies call into question the dichotomy between center and periphery, formal and informal, modern and traditional, causing a tangle of relationships, economies and spaces, and a reinterpretation of time.