In 2010, Senegal celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its independence from French colonial rule, drawing the attention of scholars and policy circles to the country's experience in nation building and globalization. Particularly fascinating is the massive labor migration that began immediately after Senegal became independent. From Tokyo to Melbourne, from Turin to Buenos Aires, from to Paris to New York, 300,000 Senegalese immigrants integrated into their host society and significantly impacted the development of their homeland.
Ousmane Kane focuses on the growing and increasingly visible community of Senegalese immigrants in New York. He offers a critical examination of the community's transnational experience, with particular emphasis on the crucial role played by religion, especially Islam, in the organization of the community in the United States. Scholars have written extensively on immigrants from Latin America and Asia, but very little on Africans, particularly those who have come from French-speaking countries to the United States. By studying the numerous aspects - ethnic, occupational, gender, generational, socioeconomic, political, and, most significant, religious - of the experience of the Senegalese migrant community in New York, and by linking discussion of the homeland to experience in the host community, Kane breaks new ground in the debate about postcolonial Senegal, Muslim globalization, and diaspora studies in the United States.