Abstract
As anthropologist Renato Rosaldo has written, ‘No analysis of human action is complete unless it attends to people’s own notions of what they are doing.’ Unfortunately, research in the area of immigration has often neglected this dimension of study. This essay seeks to demonstrate how the use of the oral life-history of the immigrants themselves is one means by which this gap may begin to be filled. Through a study of the movement of Senegalese men to Bari, Italy, the analysis focuses attention on cultural aspects of international migration which have been overlooked.