La Sociale: Welfare and Emergence in Twenty-first century Senegal

In 2013, newly elected President Macky Sall introduced the *bourse familiale* (family grant) cash transfer and *Couverture Maladie Universelle* (CMU), the Senegalese version of universal health coverage, as two *grands projets* at the heart of Senegal’s new development plan, the *Plan Sénégal Émergent*. While social security linked to formal employment dates back to the post-war years, these projects sit among recent efforts across the global south to extend social protection, or welfare, to those who had previously not had access to it. In Senegal, it is an agenda that sits within a broader politics of emergence that has arisen across Africa during the same period, one that is marked by a strong discourse which seeks to break with structural adjustment and neoliberal minimalism with a return to state planning and investment. This thesis takes ‘negotiated statehood’ as an analytical and critical starting point to examine the vernacularisation of these policies on the ground, and in doing so seeks to move beyond narratives of success and failure. It draws on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with recipients living in a small informal settlement in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, as well as those seeking to help them (politicians, development workers, other wealthy individuals) and those involved in the implementation of the policies. Consideration of the kinds of moral obligations that might underpin emergent forms of social protection has been central to debate on it, and the first chapters engage with the anthropology of politics and scholarship on African politics which challenge more static and culturalist, sometimes malign, conceptions of distribution. The ethnography attends to the assertion and cultivation of, and support for, morally good politics to demonstrate how legitimate distribution is highly contested. The thesis then zooms in on each of the *grands projets* in turn. A chapter on the *bourse familiale* examines how the cash transfer is drawn into idioms of subsistence which frustrates more ambitious developmentalist and rights-based approaches. By attending to how a kind of social contract emerges in this way, the ethnography supports calls for the reconsideration of the place of charity in the twenty-first century. The final chapter centres on early efforts to fund the establishment of universal health coverage through the establishment of community-based health insurance. In a context where promised government subsidies are lacking, alternative forms of support are sought out. With a particular focus on patronage and partnership, this chapter draws on the concept of improvisation to argue that what might appear to be very minimal gestures of support and material investment serve to maintain a sense of hope and potential in CMU, one however that is fragile and potentially unsustainable. The thesis concludes by reflecting on how *la sociale* articulates with a political and economic context increasingly shaped by the cost-of-living crisis that has emerged in recent years.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Wood, Anna

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Englund, Harri

• Senegal
• welfare

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ebcda955-fa6c-4e58-9178-615408a071cb/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111002

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/372060