Du "jamonoy twist" au "jamonoy xoslu": le basculement dans la précarité de ménages de la classe moyenne à Dakar

Our research, drawing on qualitative data collected in 2002 in two Dakar neighbourhoods, studies the way in which middle class households fell into a precarious state. It shows that poverty reveals itself both through the degradation of living quarters and through changes in daily lives in areas such as food, health, and transport. Besides the adoption of new consumers' habits, the growing presence of women in the labour force constitutes for households a strategy of adaptation to new living conditions. The study also shows that young middle class people have been more particularly affected by this precariousness to which they reacted with both "camouflage" strategies and a transverse solidarity within their peer groups.