par Lo Sardo, Sébastien
Référence Urban anthropology and studies of cultural systems and world economic development, 42, 3-4, page (305-331)
Publication Publié, 2013
Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : The Hausa, spreading from their homelands in the Sahel, have shaped a vast diaspora of trade-oriented communities throughout West Africa and, more recently, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Since the late 1990s, Hausa networks have spread toward Brussels (the core of Europe and the home of its political institutions) or, more accurately, toward a gritty, derelict neighborhood of the western part of the city. This area is an international hub for an intense, and somewhat opaque, car trade to West Africa. While wealthy entrepreneurs organize the trade from Niger and Nigeria, some Hausa economic migrants are permanently settled in Brussels and gravitate, with various successes, around the car trade, its garages and warehouses. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography conducted in both Belgium and southern Niger, this article explores the personal trajectories of these migrants. It aims to highlight how their livelihoods are both permitted and constrained by urban transformations in Brussels, European immigration policies and the structures of Hausa long-distance trade. It also examines how Hausa migrants are creating, through flows of money, gifts and information, a transnational space of practice and experience that lies not here nor there but at the very intersection of Hausaland and Europe. © 2013 The Institute, Inc.