Transatlantic Resonances of European Border Externalization
Since the creation of the Schengen Area in 1995, European countries have invested significant resources in policing their borders and curbing immigration from Africa and, more recently, Asia. This has led to the development of various border management instruments and the signing of several cooperation agreements with non-member states of the European Union (EU). The most significant of those instruments was the establishment of the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex) in October 2004 (FRONTEX, n.d.). The agency was replaced in September 2016 by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also called Frontex. Individual European countries also invested in preventing undocumented immigrants from reaching their borders. For instance, when a shipwreck on the island of Lampedusa killed over 100 migrants, Italy launched Operation Mare Nostrum (the ancient Roman name for the Mediterranean) in October 2013, a search and rescue operation that assisted over 100,000 migrants. However, the cost (9 million euros a month) and criticism from other European countries such as the UK, which argued that rescue operations created “an unintended ‘pull factor’ for migrants,” led Italy to abandon the sea rescue mission (Davies and Neslen 2014). Instead, the EU invested in Operation Triton, which focused on border surveillance, thereby leaving much of the burden of sea rescue to NGOs or “sub-contracted” to non-European countries.
Europe increasingly relies on third countries to act as its border enforcers. The main instrument that makes this possible is the European Union Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF for Africa), implemented in three regions (North Africa, the Sahel and Lake Chad, and the Horn of Africa), with programs in 26 countries to address “The root causes of instability, forced displacement and irregular migration” (EUTF 2025). For example, EUTF data shows that the European Union spent €234 million between 2015 and 2021 to support Morocco on migration (Ibid). Projects funded through the scheme aim to strengthen border management and support voluntary returns, among other goals. In Senegal, EU efforts to limit migration have focused on supporting local agriculture and small businesses, facilitating the economic reintegration of return migrants, and preventing migrant boats from departing. The EUTF spent €164 million on these efforts between 2015 and 2023, according to an EU-funded Altai Consulting report (Altai Consulting 2024). In November 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain’s Foreign Minister had traveled to Dakar to discuss sending Spanish forces to help reduce the surge of West African migrants to its territories, especially the Canary Islands (Reuters 2020). What happens to prospective migrants who are deterred by, or are unable to reach Europe because of, EU border-surveillance policies? What are the impacts of EU externalization in Africa and beyond?
Several scholars have examined Europe’s border externalization and emphasized its devastating consequences. Some highlight the coloniality of EU states’ reliance on third countries to serve as “border guards” and of the EU border regime as a whole (Danewid 2021; Hahonou and Olsen 2021), as well as the complicity of humanitarian organizations helping sustain it (Hagan 2024). Other scholars have even problematized the idea of a European border externalization, warning against assuming a unified strategy. Gazzotti et al. (2023) note, for instance, that while most EU member countries may agree on the need to keep “unwanted migrants” away, Northern European countries have often shown little interest in investing in border management (Gazzotti et al. 2023, 71). This lack of solidarity even among EU members has only put more migrants' lives at risk as European nations and third countries engage in what Freier, Micinski, and Tsourapas describe as refugee commodification, i.e., “the transformation of forcibly displaced populations (and their hosting) into commodities subject to negotiation and trade in the marketplace” (2021, 2). In addition to the humanitarian crisis European border externalization has created in North Africa and across the Sahel, the presence of Black migrants has spurred debates about anti-black racism in the region. These discussions emphasize the legacies of slavery in Muslim societies and European colonialism (Arrouche 2026; El Hamel 2012), the region’s avoidance of race (El Hamel 2002; Gross-Wyrtzen 2023), and whether analyses of race and racism in North Africa import U.S. American categories (Aidi 2025). European border externalization also has transatlantic repercussions.
The concept of resonance is useful for examining the effects of European immigration policies in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. In her study of Japanese chindon-ya, ethnomusicologist Marié Abe defines resonance as the “historical, affective, acoustic, and political effects of a particular sound” (Abe 2018, 4). Within this framework, one can examine the resonances of European border policies to assess their affective and political effects across the Atlantic. Just as European colonial expansion helped shape the modern world, contemporary EU migration management is reshaping immigrant communities in Brazil and across Latin America. This article demonstrates how Frontex has transformed traditional Sufi networks between Morocco and Senegal, as prospective migrants to Europe increasingly redirect their aspirations toward Brazil.
Image 1: West African Tijanis at the 3rd edition of the Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani Sherif Day in São Paulo, Brazil, on March 15, 2019. Photo courtesy of the author.Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic engagement with Senegalese immigrants in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, I trace the formation of the Senegalese Tijani community in Brazil. Rather than focusing on the humanitarian challenges that emerged when undocumented West African immigrants began traveling to Brazil after 2010, I examine how followers of the Tijaniyya Sufi order established new forms of religious and social life in their host country. In particular, I show how Tijani commemorations and ritual activities generated new forms of religious encounter and intra-Muslim engagement while also bringing the history of Islam into Brazil's public sphere, particularly among Afro-Brazilians and in broader discussions of the nation's history. Chief among these are the Mawlid (a holiday in observance of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in some Muslim communities) and the annual Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani Sherif Day, a commemoration unique to Senegalese Tijanis in the diaspora that celebrates the teachings of Abū al-ʿAbbās Ahmad ibn Muḥammad al-Tijānī, commonly known as Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani (1737-1815), founder of the Tijaniyya Sufi order (Wright 2005). Senegalese Tijani religious life in Brazil also illustrates evolving relationships between Sufi leaders and their disciples.
The Making of an African Tijani Community in Brazil
The Tijaniyya is the largest Sufi order in Senegal, with about 50% of Senegalese Muslims being Tijani. The order is organized around multiple autonomous branches, each with its own specific historical and geographical trajectory. The Tall family carries on the legacy of the 19th-century scholar and resistance fighter El Hadji Umar Tall (1797–1864), maintaining strong spiritual and political influence, especially since its establishment in Dakar, which Seydou Nourou Tall (1862–1980) consolidated. The Sy family of Tivaouane, founded by El Hadji Malick Sy (1855–1922), is the largest branch in the country by membership and brings together millions of followers each year for the Mawlid. Internationally, the Niasse family of Kaolack, established in Medina Baye by El Hadji Abdoulaye Niasse (1844–1922) and his son Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (1900–1975), exerts a global influence throughout West Africa and the U.S. Other centers distinguished themselves through their quest for autonomy. This is the case of the Seck family of Thiénaba (near Dakar), founded in 1882 by Amari Ndack Seck (1830–1899), and the family of Médina Gounass, established in Upper Casamance, Southern Senegal, by Thierno Mamadou Seydou Ba (1898–1980) and famous for its large annual Daaka gathering (Glovsky 2021). Most families of Tijani brotherhoods justify their legitimacy by tracing their spiritual, if not biological, lineage to Fez, Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, and his descendants.
All roads lead to Rome. For Senegalese Tijani migrants, all roads pass through Morocco, as their past and present migration patterns show. Abdoulaye Kane writes that, in the 1990s, Tijani leaders of the Medina Gounass branch built structures to sustain religious identity in the diaspora and connections between Senegalese migrants. These ties are maintained through transnational religious circuits linking Medina Gounass in Southern Senegal, Mantes-la-Jolie in France, and Fez, Morocco, the latter serving as the key spiritual hub (Kane 2026). Pulaar-speaking religious leaders, notably Thierno Mansour Baro, established annual group pilgrimages (ziyāras) to the mausoleum of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani in Fez to seek spiritual blessings (baraka) and divine intervention for the challenges migrants face in France, including legal uncertainties and social integration. These journeys fostered strong emotional and communal bonds and reinforced Tijani group identity in Europe (Kane 2026, 18). Migrants who took part in these pilgrimages would bring relatives presents not only from Europe but also from Fez, a sacred city many followers dream of visiting. Over time, these circuits have enabled the Senegalese Tijaniyya diaspora to preserve their religious identity, adapt to new environments, and create a sense of belonging that transcends national borders. The connection to Fez thus sustains both spiritual and economic ties that anchor the Tijani community across Senegal, Morocco, and France (Ibid., 9).
However, restrictive migration policies in Europe have made it almost impossible for most young Tijanis to emulate their counterparts in Mantes-la-Jolie. These policies have forced many West African migrants to seek alternatives to Europe. One such new destination for Senegalese youth is Brazil. Brazil’s economic boom during President Lula's first two terms (2003–2010) and its subsequent hosting of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the 2016 Olympic Games, attracted many Senegalese migrant workers (Heil 2017). These mega-events and the rise of the Brazilian agroindustry created job opportunities that drew workers from across Latin America and Muslim migrants worldwide. Many migrants would first travel to Ecuador, where they did not need an entry visa. From Ecuador, they were then channeled to Brazil. Until 2016, this was the primary route for undocumented Senegalese in Brazil (Record TV 2014). The numerically largest group would fly to Ecuador and then travel to Brazil, the Amazon rainforest. This was possible because Ecuador maintained an open-border policy. However, Brazil's diplomatic pressures led Ecuador to require visas for Senegalese travelers in November of 2016 (República del Ecuador 2015). Data from various Brazilian state agencies indicate that the number of Senegalese in the country jumped from less than 500 in 2003 to over 8,486 in 2018 (CONARE 2016; OBMigra 2019). Through ethnographic engagements with Senegalese migrant organizations across Brazil, I estimated the number of Senegalese migrants to be around 13,000 by January 2019. Among these newcomers are many Tijanis who work as street vendors in major cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, or in halal meat factories in Rio Grande do Sul and other parts of Southern Brazil, where they join Bangladeshi Muslim migrants and other Senegalese Sufis (Bressan 2018).
The ritual activities of Tijani disciples, namely the waẓīfa, in Brazil raise important questions about the history of Islam and Brazil and the legacies of enslaved Africans in the nation. The most well-attended waẓīfa among Tijanis in Brazil occurs during a weekly congregational meeting on Fridays called Haḍratu al-jumʿa. This waẓīfa begins shortly after the third prayer of the day, Aṣr. A waẓīfa follows a precise sequence of sacred invocations. It begins with the full form of Istighfar (Astaghfirullāh al-‘Aẓīm alladhī lā ilāha illā huwa al-Ḥayy al-Qayyūm, wa atūbu ilayhi), a formula for asking for forgiveness recited 30 times. Then, Tijani congregants chant the famous Ṣalāt al-Fātiḥi (the Prayer of the Opener) in unison. They repeat the chant 50 times to a choral melody unique to Senegal’s cultural and spiritual heritage. The liturgy continues with the proclamation of divine oneness through the tahlil (La ilaha illallah), chanted 100 times, before culminating with the Jawharat al-Kamal (The Pearl of Perfection), recited 12 times. This final invocation holds special solemnity in Senegal, as tradition teaches that the spirits of the Prophet Muhammad and Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, who composed the verses in praise of the Prophet, physically attend the prayer circle beginning with its seventh repetition. Depending on the Tijani branch, optional Sufi poems enrich the ritual's main structure, often before the official start or immediately after the final invocations. Disciples affiliated with El Hadji Malick Sy’s school in Tivaouane regularly sing excerpts from his own liturgical poems, such as the Jazuru al-Qulūb (The Weaning of the Hearts), a poem about Sufi ethics and purification of hearts. Among the Niass branch in Kaolack and Medina Baye, the followers favor the mystical poems of Shaykh Ibrahima Niass, drawn largely from his Diwan, a text dedicated to love and praise of the Prophet. In the everyday practice of the Tijaniyya in Brazil, these differences, which can take the form of competition and claims of spiritual superiority of one branch over others in the homeland (Diouf 2019; ACREDAC 2019), are seldom perceptible. This harmony among diasporan Tijani disciples is most visible during frequent visits by Tijani leaders to their disciples in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, home to the country's largest Senegalese communities (Image 2).
São Paulo is the New Fez
Rather than replacing Fez, São Paulo functions as a diasporic sacred hub. Like Fez for earlier generations of Senegalese Tijani migrants, São Paulo offers a site where disciples encounter religious authorities, access baraka through personal contact with spiritual descendants of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, renew social ties, and cultivate a shared Tijani identity. Sacred centers are therefore not fixed geographically but can be reproduced through mobility, ritual practice, and transnational religious networks. In this sense, São Paulo has become a new node within the global Tijani landscape. Immigration status and physical distance (due to cost) mean that Tijani communities in Brazil cannot travel to Fez as their counterparts in Mantes-la-Jolie do. Young Tijani migrants who have settled in Brazil have found spiritual centers in São Paulo, where they celebrate the Mawlid and meet fellow disciples from other cities across Brazil. These transformations have been supported by regular visits from Senegalese Tijani leaders who travel to Brazil to lead rituals and pray for disciples facing uncertainty because of their undocumented status. When Brazil issued a decree (Portaria Nº10, 12-5-2019) for mass regularization specifically targeting Senegalese migrants in 2019 (Brazil 2019), many in the Tijani community and other Senegalese Sufi groups saw this as the outcome of the Shaykh’s prayers.
Shaykh Abib Sy, grandson of the founder of the Tivaouane branch of the Tijaniyya, El Hadji Malick Sy, has been the community's most influential leader in Brazil. He travels to Brazil annually to preside over the official ceremony of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani Sherif Day, which the community started in 2017. The 2019 edition of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani Sherif Day offers a clear example of the transnational and multicultural encounters among Muslim migrants in São Paulo. Tijani migrants travel from across the world to Brazil for the event. This includes nationals of Ghana and Nigeria, where the Niass branch spread through the work of Senegalese scholar Shaykh Ibrahim Niass. While Senegalese migrants in Europe organized pilgrimages to Morocco, Shaykh Abib Sy’s visit introduced a new Fez, where Tijani migrants gather to attend his lecture and seek the baraka associated with the order's founder.
El Hadj Ousseynou Niasse, the grandson of Shaykh Ibrahim Niass, is another important religious figure and a regular visitor to Tijanis in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. That same week, Shaykh Ousseynou Niasse gave the Friday prayer sermon and led prayer at the Bilal Al Habashi mosque in Anhangabaú Park, downtown São Paulo, on November 8, 2019. Named after the Prophet's most famous Black companion, the Bilal mosque is led by a Ghanaian scholar who trained in Saudi Arabia before moving to Brazil. Its proximity to Brás and other downtown shopping centers, where many African immigrants work, makes the mosque a hub for African immigrants, who often make up the majority of congregants. After leading the prayer in São Paulo, El Hadj Ousseynou traveled to Rio de Janeiro, where he led multiple waẓīfa sessions and several private lectures. Image 2 shows Tijani disciples at a November 9, 2019 waẓīfa session he led at Espaço Savano, a shopping center a Tijani businesswoman founded in the neighborhood of Flamengo before the COVID-19 pandemic led to its closure in 2021. Like Shaykh Abib Sy, El Hadj Ousseynou Niasse's visit brought all Tijani disciples together.
Image 2: Tijani disciples meet for a waẓīfa session during Serigne Ousseynou Niasse's visit on November 9, 2019. Photo courtesy of the author.Present at the waẓīfa led by the Niasse branch of the Tijaniyya were followers of the Sy branch. Looking at the congregants' clothing, one can notice a disciple wearing a T-shirt that signals his attendance at the “3rd edition of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani Sherif Day, held on March 24, 2019, in São Paulo, and presided over by Serigne Abib Sy.” The T-shirt also spells out the motto of the religious organization, or dahira, to which the disciple belongs. The motto, in Wolof and written in non-standard (French-based spelling), reads:
Sunu diiné [our religion]
Sunu tarixa [our Sufi brotherhood]
Sunu metié [our job]
Sunu dahira [our religious association]
Sunu Tivaouane [the holy city of Tivaouane, the capital of the Sy branch of the Tijaniyya]
This visual note illustrates the central role of religious organizations in the lives of Senegalese Sufi migrants. The dahira serves not only as a sacred space where migrants build solidarity that enables economic success, but also as a daily reminder to cultivate ethical lives, focus on work, and pursue religious knowledge and spiritual development at the personal and community levels.
The Mawlid celebration is the most significant event in the Tijani ritual calendar. It commemorates the Prophet's birthday on the 12th of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, the third month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Among the Sy branch, the Mawlid celebration begins with the “burd” during the first ten consecutive nights of the month. This is a deeply spiritual and communal period during which Tijanis recite and analyze one chapter each night of the famous Qasîdat al-Burda (Poem of the Mantle), an ode to the Prophet written in the 13th century by the Egyptian Sufi poet Al-Busiri. Each night, masters lead chants, invocations, and exegesis sessions in which they impart moral lessons inspired by the Prophet's life. Following this period, disciples celebrate Mawlid, also known in Senegal as Gamou, on the 12th night of Rabīʿ al-Awwal. The Mawlid celebration, especially the burd by Senegalese Tijanis in Brazil, is highly symbolic because of Islam's history in the country.
Enslaved Africans formed Brazil's first Muslim communities. These communities comprised individuals from various ethnic groups, such as the Hausas, Mandinkas, and Yorubas, who were often caught up in Fulani Jihād (Barcia 2013). Lovejoy’s analysis of shipping records indicates Central Sudan as a major origin of Muslims in Brazil (Lovejoy 1994), even though other scholars list the Yorubas as the major ethnic group of enslaved Africans in 19th-century Brazil (Akande 2016). These Muslims were involved in several uprisings in Brazil. The most significant of those uprisings took place in 1835 and is commonly known as the Malê slave revolt of 1835, the subject of the pioneering work of João José Reis (João José Reis 1993). Amulets made with Islamic numerology and magical squares, manuscripts containing Quranic verses, and other documents in African languages written in the Arabic script called Ajami all form a tapestry of sources attesting to the kinds of knowledge that circulated among enslaved Africans in Brazil and the intellectual traditions to which they might be traced back (Reichert 1970). Nikolay Dobronravin’s work on surviving manuscripts produced by enslaved and freed Black Muslims in 19th-century Brazil challenges the notion that their writings were limited to talismans, or "mandingas." His analysis of the documents that survived the 1835 Malê Revolt reveals a high degree of religious and literary erudition linked to West African and Maghrebi intellectual traditions. One such prayer document, which contained a discovered verse from Qaṣīdat al-Burda, was likely written by a Bahian enslaved person named Domingos, of “Haussa ethnicity” (Dobronravin 2016, 194).
In chanting the Burda during Mawlid celebrations in Brazil, Senegalese Tijani migrants are bringing back to the country a tradition that enslaved Africans may have established. Tijani migrants' religious life contributes to growing interest in Islam among Afro-descendants and to renewed engagement with the religious legacy of the Malês. While there is yet no historical evidence to affirm that the Malês belonged to a specific Sufi order, public expressions of religiosity by Tijanis and other African migrants in Brazil help bring Islam into the Brazilian public sphere.
Conclusion: The Future of the Tijani Community in Brazil
The impacts of Frontex policies resonate far beyond Europe and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2010, Brazil has received a significant number of African immigrants who have attempted to migrate to Europe. This interplay underscores not only the interconnectedness of migration patterns but also the urgent need for a compassionate, human-centered approach to migration that addresses the root causes of displacement. Tijani Sufis in Europe made pilgrimages to Fez to visit the tomb of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, the order's founder. High travel costs between Latin America and other parts of Africa, along with legal status, have made the trip almost impossible for many in Brazil. West African Tijani Sufis, most of whom were former prospective migrants to Europe, have found new homes in Brazil, where disciples imagine new sacred hubs in which co-disciples cultivate solidarity, reinforce group identity, and sustain transnational religious networks. São Paulo is an important site of such new sacred hubs where Sufi leaders from Senegal travel frequently to meet disciples.
The reverberations of European border policies have led to a diversification in the makeup of Muslim Brazil as Tijanis and West African Muslims move to the country. In Brazil, these newcomers join established Muslim communities from Lusophone African countries and the Middle East. Encounters among these diverse Muslim communities are largely marked by solidarity and intercultural exchange. However, frictions due to doctrinal differences do emerge, as in all parts of the Muslim world. The main source of public commentary regarding the Tijanis is the Mawlid, which Salafis see as a bidʿa, sinful innovation.
On November 15, 2019, I attended Friday prayer at Masjid El Nur in Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. That day, the Imam, a Mozambican who received his Islamic education in Saudi Arabia, centered his sermon on the Mawlid. He delivered a long exposé on why Islam became “complete” before the passing of the Prophet and why Mawlid celebrations are bidʿa, quoting ḥadīth 3017 of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, among other sources. He concluded that the Mawlid was “a hypocritical show of love, similar to Dia dos Namorados [Valentine's Day in Brazil on June 12], when people offer chocolate to their partners.” Emphasizing the expression of love for the Prophet, he added, “What about the rest of the year?” Having spent the night prior at the Mawlid celebration with many of the Tijanis I saw at the mosque, I asked Ousmane, a Senegalese Sufi, what he thought about the sermon; he replied: “The Mawlid has been the subject of the last three ḫuṭab [Sing: ḫuṭba, sermon]. He is entitled to his opinion.” Shortly afterward, I learned that the Senegalese community began gathering at the Murid community's house in Niteroi for Jummah and Eid prayers. As the Senegalese Tijanis continue to grow, building a mosque appears to be the next milestone in the Senegalese Sufi migrants' space-making in Southeast Brazil.
Acknowledgment
This research for this article was supported by a 2019 International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) from the Social Science Research Council, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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