Painting between the lines: the Cape Verdean community of Colonial Dakar, 1920-1945

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Periodical article

Title:	Painting between the lines: the Cape Verdean community of Colonial Dakar, 1920-1945
Author:	Petrocelli, Rachel M.
Year:	2016
Periodical:	Canadian Journal of African Studies (ISSN 0008-3968)
Volume:	50
Issue:	2
Pages:	149-168
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Cape Verde Senegal
Subjects:	immigrants identity capitals colonial history
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2015.1100545
Abstract:	From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, immigrants from Cape Verde to Dakar, Senegal, colonial capital of French West Africa, became a small but important community in terms of significance in both the urban economy and the colonial framework of race and identity. They occupied important labor niches valuable to the colonizer such as painting and domestic work and attached those fields to a unique identity to which only they belonged. Able to capitalize on the ambiguity inherent to colonial race and identity policies, Cape Verdeans bridged categories common to state policies, particularly 'foreign' and 'native', in ways not adequately captured by the concept of intermediaries often employed in examinations of immigrant populations to West Africa. Their insertion in Dakar reveals the permeability of such colonial concepts as well as the opportunities immigrants made in town. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]