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Based on fieldwork conducted in Marseille, Dubai, Hong-Kong, and Guangzhou, the purpose is to shed light on the figure of the African female shopkeeper, migrant or traveller, to bring some answers about the bonds woven between spatial mobility and feminine emancipation. Do these long-distance female storekeepers foresee the possibility of evading or rejecting some family, marital or statutory constraints and of winning both in economic and personal autonomy through distancing themselves from their society of origin, or do they see it as a detour today necessary to consolidate the family fortune as a whole?