This article briefly describes the Soninke labor migration, and interprets it as a means of diversifying risk in a context of missing insurance and credit markets. Historical and anthropological studies on this ethnic group are briefly surveyed, and suggest that it is not only the well-being of...

This paper reviews some of the microeconomic evidence concerning migration and remittances in Africa. After a brief survey of the literature, it draws some lessons from two surveys performed in the Senegal River valley in Mali and in Senegal. The paper makes two main points. First, migration...