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This article sheds light on the “deuxième portion du contingent” [literally, “the second portion of the contingent”], a form of forced labour analogous to military service used in colonial Senegal. It focuses on the labour camp, understood as a kind of ordinary confinement with disciplinary goals. The main objective of the system was to maintain the social order and to instil the value of hard work in the “natives”. Nonetheless, recruits to the deuxième portion reacted in different ways to their living and working conditions. They called for their rights and their dignity to be respected, gradually pushing colonial authorities to reform and abolish this form of forced labour in the 1950s.