Negotiating the memory of Fulbe hierarchy among mobile elite women

This chapter explores the ways in which the social background of migrants and their families inform their agency, identity and behaviour. It considers more specifically the extent to which the ascribed positions in the social hierarchy of Malian Fulbe society are an important means of identification for two migrant women. How did they transfer their ascribed rural elite status to the urban contexts to which they have migrated and what social remittances do they use? When people move, their memories travel too and new (geographical) places demand an active evaluation of the roles and behaviour people were socialized in. This article focuses on the conscious negotiations of the memory of hierarchy by two elite Malian women to demonstrate how the past co-shapes the present. Remembering and ideas about power distribution are constitutive elements in a person's motives and identity, and in human agency more generally.