Imprisonment and Citizenship in Senegal, 1917–1946: The Case of the Originaires

This paper examines the incarceration of the Originaires in colonial Senegal to illuminate how imprisonment had shaped or altered their French citizenship rights in prisons. Among the prison population in colonial Senegal were some Originaires, the residents of the Four Communes who were granted French citizenship rights as early as 1833, a status that remained ambiguous until 1916 when a new law made them full-pledged French citizens. But the colonial government restrictions on access to full French citizenship rights in the Four Communes compelled the Originaires to mobilize to defend those rights. Their struggle found a breeding ground in the colonial prisons where some Originaire prisoners made two types of claims: to equality with European prisoners based on notions of birthright citizenship and cultural claims to being a different category of prisoners that deserved differential treatment compared to “natives.” By building their requests for equal admission to the European regime around the violation of their citizenship rights, this study will demonstrate that Originaire prisoners made arguments that tied their claims-making specifically to race and status without losing sight of the cultural differences between themselves and “native” prisoners, all in the context of a racially segregated prison world.