Contexts and choices: Tuareg begging in west African cities

In “Contexts and choices: Tuareg begging in west African cities,” our focus is on migrant Tuareg people who are in alms soliciting in cities of West Africa, away from their own natural spaces.

The question we sought an answer to, was whether Tuareg begging, in the manner in which it is done, implicitly or otherwise, draws from their erstwhile nomadic life, history and identity.

For individuals, and for the group, one may hypothesize on how the decision to become beggars was made, on whether there is a folk lore into which they may have been socialized towards begging in the specific way they do it.

We posit that, challenges of the climate, wider relations with other inhabitants of the Sahel and the Sahara, the way the Tuareg people have always lived in terms of social order and organization, informed their decision to resort to begging as their sole means of livelihood, and their specific way of begging, when they moved away from their natural spaces.