Gonzales, Giulia
Being Young Kel Tamasheq and Looking for a Job in Bamako. Autonomy, Interdependence, and Mobility
- 2025.
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This analysis develops from the discourses of some young Kel Tamasheq (aka Tuareg, a “traditionally” nomadic pastoral society) about the urban job market of Bamako, their intergenerational relationships, and their emotions about their situation. My argument brings together the concepts of autonomy and interdependence, the first being intended to trace the subjective dimension of freedom, while the second expresses its collective dimension. In this context, mobility highlights a type of agency that resides in the power to decide by oneself whether and how to move. These young men, whom I met in Mali between 2017 and 2021 during ethnographic fieldwork, show an awareness of their structural conditions, especially within intergenerational relations, from which emerge three red threads that structure my reasoning: frustration, the experience of abandonment, and the lack of hope.