Forming Popular Geographies in a West African Borderland

In the borderlands of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea, late 19^th century boundary-drawing radically altered the region’s dynamics, though not in the way European colonial governments hoped. Rather than drawing lines between different colonies, borders brought people together in unexpected ways – socially, religiously, economically, and politically. Through their mobility, borderlanders created “popular geographies” misaligned with colonial boundaries, but which served as centers of their own worlds. They moved across boundaries to avoid colonial taxes, forced labor and military conscription campaigns, or to express their displeasure with the policies of specific governments. They increasingly moved for Qur’anic education and founded new Islamic towns outside of colonial control. Additionally, cross-border mobility was a crucial tool for informal trade and seasonal migrant laborer. Lastly, the abolition of slavery led many to move away from the places they had been oppressed. On the whole, these forms of mobility led to new forms of belonging and space-/place-making in the borderlands of West Africa, creating popular geographies at odds with colonial conceptions of space. By focusing on people’s lived geographies rather than colonial ideas of boundary-crossing, this paper seeks to de-center the state in discussions of borderlands.