This article examines the ways in which childhood and youth experiences of living in polygynous households shape the aspirations of middle-class Muslim Senegalese women to companionate marriage. Increasingly, such aspirations are fulfilled through marriage with European men. In contrast to an enduring popular discourse according to which women live happily with polygyny throughout the Senegambian region, this article shows how some middle-class women's choice to "marry out" is explicitly linked to family narratives and personal experiences of suffering. In a context in which many of these women face strong familial opposition to marriage with non-Muslim European men, this article suggests that the women's narratives provide moral legitimacy to their "alternative" choices.Résumé: Cet article examine comment et de quelles manières les expériences des enfants et des jeunes qui vivent dans des ménages polygames, façonnent les aspirations des femmes sénégalaises musulmanes de la classe moyenne au mariage de compagnonnage. De plus en plus, de telles aspirations sont satisfaites par le mariage avec des hommes européens. Contrairement à un discours populaire qui perdure

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French colonialism resulted in the inclusion of large numbers of West Africans into French educational institutions. Furthermore, the Senegambian region has a long history of inter-marriage with French citizens. This paper draws on this history to explore the interplay between migration, education and binational marriage over several generations of West African students, with a particular focus on Senegal. Students from Francophone countries continue to seek educational opportunities in France, but in recent years they have been increasingly affected by the tightening up of immigration policies. In this context, this paper suggests that marriage to a French spouse often plays an important role in the fulfilment of educational projects, and that this role is contingent on issues of gender and class. At times however, tensions between marriage in France and social expectations back home end up compromising education altogether.

This article looks at three generations of choreographic performers in urban Senegal to examine the creative ways in which people develop their bodily skills, not only for the pleasure of innovation, but also to ‘make their way into the world’. In so doing, they produce new social spaces and engage with a multiplicity of existing ones. I suggest that this multiple engagement characterizes contemporary urban Africa, where social mobility is conceived of as multiplying the possibilities of building a decent life in spite of economic hardship. In West Africa, this is in continuity with a long history of social mobility achieved through travel and the acquisition of new skills. Through a multiple engagement with different genres, performers also experiment with new ways of producing choreographic work. At every juncture, the social spaces thus produced either intensify or reduce the connections with global spaces already laid out by previous generations.

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