Whereas most studies of migration focus on movement, this book examines the experience of staying put. It looks at young men living in a Soninke-speaking village in Gambia who, although eager to travel abroad for money and experience, settle as farmers, heads of families, businessmen, civic activists, or, alternatively, as unemployed, demoted youth. Those who stay do so not only because of financial and legal limitations, but also because of pressures to maintain family and social bases in the Gambia valley. 'Stayers' thus enable migrants to migrate, while ensuring the activities and values attached to rural life are passed on to the future generations.

Its empirical and theoretical treatment of immobility and sedentariness as neglected aspects in migration and mobility studies. No book-length work dedicated to immobility exists as yet. Unique in the analytical extent to which immobility and migration are shown to be intertwined and pervade agrarian life. Offers novel takes on classic anthropological debates about social reproduction and peasant communities in the context of globalization and migrant transnationalism. Focuses on rural youth, on their transition to adulthood and on their role in regenerating the traditional social order.

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