This article is based on lengthy interviews with migrants from Senegal and Mali who have settled in Bordeaux, Angers and Paris from various geographic, cultural, ethnic backgrounds and socio-professional situations.
Instead of questioning the link between Β« food and migration Β» in the usual way by focusing on migrants food Β« adaptation Β» in the country where they have settled, we chose to study what happens when they go back to their country of origin. Far from demonstrating the existence of an Β« original African food culture Β», this article rather highlights the permanent processes of food culturation taking place among both migrant and sedentary groups, while taking into account the structural constraints existing at national and global levels.
Both Malian and Senegalese migrations reveal tactics used to produce alternately identity and otherness in a globalised context, but also according to different local situations. The reflexion underneath is based on a wider collective research project 2 led since about the social construction of a balanced diet, while taking into account various factors such as inter-ethnic relations besides age, gender, moment in life, social status, etc.
We are going to deliver here findings and questionings of a fieldwork carried out since in France, Senegal and Mali. This is centred on the foodways of several Senegalese and Malians along various migratory patterns permanent migration, temporary migration for vacations, as well as settling back for retirement in the country of origin, etc.
It seemed relevant for us to think differently contacts between food systems byshifting our glance to countries of departure, following in this Abdel Malek Sayad. This is what we propose here. Far from taking up the position of Herskovits or Frazier who only view culture by linking it to its Β« original Β» 4 system, we rather follow Roger Bastide who rejects this static and Manichean vision, favouring a more complex reality, where there cohabit discontinuity in continuity and continuity in discontinuity.
