Juggling with Moving Sexual Norms: Senegalese Women’s Attempts to Make Their Way Through Migration

Abstract

Women’s sexual behaviour is the mirror of larger social dynamics that cross-cut migration and the crux where individual agency and social constraints come face to face. This article examines how, among Senegalese migrants in Marseille, the representations of feminine sexual conduct have varied over time, reflecting changes in the community’s social composition and in the religious layout of the city. On the other hand, it shows that women’s representations of marital and non-marital sex vary enormously according to their education, caste, geographic origin and age, influencing the different ways they juggle with changing social norms in order to make their way through migration.