The national contexts in which co-development processes take place

socio-economic level. Some important information is now provided about each of them.

Senegal

Constitutionally, Senegal is a secular Republic with a presidency. It gained its independency from colonial French rule in 1960, which was followed by four decades under the rule of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s political party (the Socialist Party). After Senghor, from 1981 to 2000 the second president was Abdou Diouf.

The change occurred when Abdoulaye Wade and his Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) ended Abdou Diouf’s presidency in 2000. Later on, in 2012, Senegal held presidential elections amid a contested process. Finally, in March 2012, Macky Sall from the party Alliance for the Republic won the second round of the presidential election. Later on in that year, in July, the legislative elections were held. The fieldwork for this research took place during the summer of 2012, and, therefore, the feeling of change (and, for some, the hope brought by it) was still very fresh. The next presidential election is due to be held in 2019.

Located in West Africa, Senegal became an important migratory crossroad from its independence in 1960 (Ceschi and Mezzetti, 2014; Lessault and Flahaux, 2013). In balance, it was a host country before it became a country of emigration from the early 1980s with the former colonial power France as the main attractor. Between 1960-1980 Senegalese emigrants in France were primarily employed in industry, the French automotive industry recruiting heavily in the Senegal River Valley, in the region of Tambacounda and Casamance (they were basically people from Soninke, but also Toucouleurs and Manjack ethnic groups) (Lessault and Flahaux, 2013, p.

61). According to the analysis of the literature realised in the context of the MAFE project,¹³ following the oil crisis of 1973 and increasingly tougher migration control policies in France, by the beginning of the 1990s Senegalese emigrants in Europe started going to two new destinations (to Italy, first, and in the mid 90s, to Spain)

13 The Migrations between Africa and Europe Project started in 2005 with the objective of collecting and analysing data on migration between Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. They produced open datasets: http://mafeproject.site.ined.fr/en/ [Last accessed /July/2016]

(Beauchemin et al., 2014; Lessault and Flahaux, 2013, p. 62). Nevertheless, those dealing with migration demography and migration flows signal problems in consistency and lack of systematised historical data (Flahaux and De Haas, 2016;

Lessault and Flahaux, 2013). As a result of this, the number of recorded Senegalese emigrants fluctuates. Fall (2014) states that the number of those living abroad, often named modou-modou,¹⁴ is estimated between a range of around 600.000 and 2 or 3 million people, which for him proves the challenge of systematising and bringing this type of data up to date (Fall, 2014).

Regarding the international community, Senegal is generally depicted as a ‘reliable’

regime by Western countries, occupying, for instance, a place as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2016-17. Multilaterally, it also has a special relationship with the EU, which can be illustrated by the arrangements of the African, Caribbean and Pacific region and the EU (known as ACP-EU) Partnership Agreement that replaced the Lomé conventions, also known as the ‘Cotonou Agreement’, signed in 2000 and revised every five years. This agreement plans cooperation between the EU and partner countries in development, political and economic and trade areas. It is also the framework for funding instruments such as the European Development Fund.

At a bilateral level, it is worth highlighting Senegal’s close relationship with France due to their common colonial past. The bond with the Spanish central government, as the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation reports, has been far less intense (Oficina de Información Diplomática, 2016). The connections have increased since the summer of 2006, when there was an in-flow of 30.000 people with irregular status accessing the Canary Islands, which was called the ‘Cayuco crisis’ (Oficina de Información Diplomática, 2016). Consequently, the link between Spain and Senegal

14 Modou-modou derives from the Wolof language, and is an abbreviation of Mamadou-Mamadou.

Together with other groups such as baol-baol (coming from the Baol region, in Northern Senegal), the expression initially identified those people from rural areas, from Wolof ethnic group and the Mourid brotherhood, ¨who only know how to trade but nevertheless manage to earn enough money abroad and come back showing off new houses, clothes, big weddings and the symbols of success¨ (Riccio, 2005, p. 105). In the beginning it was used with pejorative purposes, but it has ended up by being positively applied to all emigrants, regardless of their ethnic or territorial belonging (Fall, 2014; Riccio, 2005).

Fall also recalls that the first people undertaking labour migration (that is Halpulaar and Soninke, ethnic groups known as ‘people form the valley’), ‘were called Francenabè because of their migratory inclination towards France’ (Fall, 2014, p. 22).

has been strongly influenced since then by migration and control of national borders.

In fact, Spain adopted its first ‘Plan África’ in 2006 for the 2006-2008 period. The second plan, for the period 2009-2012, had the goal of encouraging cooperation between Spain and some African countries to regulate migration flows and combat human trafficking. For some authors, ‘Plan África’ hides the instrumentalisation of the ODA for security and control purposes by the Spanish central government (Kabbanji, 2013, p. 421). It can also be framed within the EU’s evolution under the so-called Global Approach towards a more appealing migration and nexus paradigm that can make third countries more willing to collaborate on border controls and readmission agreements (Kabbanji, 2013, p. 417).

Catalonia within Spain

Spain transformed from an emigrant country to an immigration country in the 1980s.

Nevertheless, this transformation intensified in the 2000s. In that period, according to national statistics,¹⁵ the foreign-born population in Spain never ceased to increase between 1998 (38.8 million total population in Spain, where 1.7 foreign born) and 2012 (40.5 million total population in Spain, 6.7 foreign born). However, it peaked between 2000 and 2009, when the foreign-born population quadrupled from 1.47 million to 6.46 million. During that period of time, Spain was the country receiving the most immigrants in the European Union, and the second among members of the OECD (Arango, 2016, p. 3). A main driver of the immigration in-flows was economic growth between 1995-2007, at rates above the EU average, particularly in sectors with high indexes of lower skill occupations such as construction (López-Sala, 2013, p. 40).

Catalonia followed similar trends. Thus, demographically the region of Catalonia experienced a sharp rise in foreigner population during the 2000s: while in 2000 the 2,90% over the total population registered in Catalan municipalities had a foreign nationality (the total population in Catalonia was 6.261.999 in 2000). In 2005 there were 11,42% of foreign nationals among the population or over 6.995.206 total residents. In 2010 the share of people of foreign nationality reached its highest point of the period (15,95%). After 2010, the foreign population has had a decreasing

15 Data from Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE, database, www.ine.es [access October 12, 2016]

tendency that may change from 2017 onwards. In 2017, 13,78% of the total population municipally registered were foreign nationals.¹⁶

To quickly contextualise the country migration-related policy-making at an international level, it is worth considering that in 2014 Spain ranked number 11 out of 38 countries in the combined Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). However, the country scored lower in the indexes related to health, political participation and access to nationality and antidiscrimination.¹⁷

1.3.3 Senegalese migrants in Catalonia: not very large collective,