Faculty Advisor: Fernando Riosmena
Research Interests
My dissertation research explores how Senegalese migrants living in the United States take part in development activities in Senegal and the United States. In particular, I am investigating how migrants’ translocal identities shape and direct their development efforts. To better understand this process, I focus on the interplay between the contexts of reception, migrants’ interactions with religious organizations, international development organizations, and the Senegalese state, and how migrants utilize their translocal identities. It is my hope that this work will further show the intricacies of migrant-led development: what migrants are asked to do, how they enact agency in these processes, and what place and scale-based structural constraints and opportunities they maneuver through to do so, especially in a post-9/11 and post-recession United States. Additionally, it is my goal that the results of this research be useful to the migrant communities with which I work as well as those who work to make these processes equitable.