The Homeland Is the Arena: Religion, transnationalism, and the integration of Senegalese immigrants in America

Abstract

The book draws on Kane's research on Senegalese immigrants in New York conducted over the past decade. The claim that ‘the homeland is the arena’ is the translation of a Wolof saying used by these immigrants to emphasize that, despite their difficult circumstances, what matters most is perception of their social status in Senegal itself. Kane implicitly problematizes this claim by taking ‘a broad approach to transnationalism to describe the practices of Senegalese immigrants who are simultaneously seeking to integrate American society and making a major socioeconomic and political impact on their homeland’ (p. 8). Kane focuses on the role of religion as this is a ‘neglected aspect’ (p. 8) in research on such processes in the US although, surprisingly, nowhere does he cite JoAnn D'Alisera's (2004) book An Imagined Geography, a study of Sierra Leonean Muslims in Washington, DC that clearly resonates with his work. Still, the book starts promisingly in its ‘Prologue’, really an introductory chapter that sets the theoretical and geographical scene: ‘transnationalism’ is presented as a complex and contested concept, and the contours of Islam in the US are discussed well. Kane is also honest about his methods and their limitations, not least the bias that comes from working on immigrants who involve themselves in associational and community life, rather than those who choose not to do so. From there on, however, he gets bogged down at times. Chapter 1, on Sufism in Senegal, is dense with detail familiar to scholars of the country but some of it unnecessary here. The next three chapters form a section on ‘Integrating American Society’. Chapter 2 gives an engaging account of the changing geographies of settlement, economic activity, and worship among the Senegalese community in New York, considering how social structures and behaviours from the homeland are or are not reproduced – although this is again quite descriptive and opportunities to analyse ‘transnationalism’ in this context are missed. Similarly, chapters 3 and 4 contain much description of associations in which Senegalese immigrants are involved but, by taking these associations as the locus of study rather than immigrants themselves, Kane does not bring out the messiness of associational life (which he acknowledges) as strongly as he might. Also unhelpful, arguably, is too much categorization: types of association (Sufi, secular, national, hometown); types of migrant and marabout; and whether the immigrants live in ‘enclaves’ or not. While recognizing to some extent the problems these categories have in capturing more dynamic and overlapping realities, Kane does not fully address this fluidity, partly because at this stage in the book the reader has yet to see the situation from the ground. There is little sense of how the immigrants themselves, as real people rather than as associational actors, experience their own situations, with few direct quotes or life histories appearing until later.