“The Móodu-móodu (Émigré) Deserves a Decent Burial Too”: Senegalese Migrants and the Politics of Repatriation during COVID-19.

Senegalese abroad invest in solidarity networks that ensure their deceased compatriots are repatriated. Whether through secular or religious initiatives, these efforts reflect a general expectation that one needs to be buried at “home,” “near one’s kin,” and preoccupations with burial following certain rites. In March 2020, however, the Senegalese government halted repatriations of corpses as a COVID-19 prevention measure. The decision sparked huge controversy, leading to the creation of a collective for the repatriation of coronavirus victims, which unsuccessfully sued the government. Based on media analysis and ethnographic fieldwork among Senegalese in Brazil between October 2019 and June 2021, this paper argues that the temporary ban on repatriation of corpses and the stigmatization, at the beginning of the pandemic, of the Senegalese émigrés accused of bringing home “a foreign disease,” lay bare a deeper crisis in the social contract between Senegal and its diasporas. This crisis is epitomized by the gradual loss of prestige of the figure of the émigré and has forced the latter to grapple with the complexity of living where one does not wish to be buried. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]