Harlem’s “Little Senegal” has recently become an epicenter for a new wave of mostly young, male West African migrants, who are simultaneously finding community and challenges as well as coming to terms with the harsh realities of living in New York City.
The new arrivals, who are mostly in their late teens and 20s, are a conspicuous fixture on West 116th Street, where they often congregate. They speak in their native Wolof, which is commonplace in Senegal, and are typically seen toting insulated food-delivery backpacks on their e-bikes.
Some of them said they shelter in mosques and churches located nearby as well as in the Bronx and Westchester. They reassemble in the early morning, when a line forms outside the Senegalese Association of America’s office, near St. Nicholas Avenue, where they go for help completing asylum applications.
“I always heard that 116th Street was ‘Little Senegal,’” said Ibrahim Mbengue, a 26-year-old Senegalese migrant, as he waited on a recent day. “That’s why I came here.”
Although the city’s “migrant crisis” began nearly two years ago with an influx of Venezuelans and other Latin Americans who were bused north after crossing the southern border, the number of migrants from West African nations like Senegal, Guinea and Mauritania has tripled in the last year alone and garnered worldwide attention.
Other New York City communities are hosting newly arrived migrants from West Africa. Here, suitcases in tow, new migrants cook a meal on the street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Although Harlem’s West African community, which has deep roots in the neighborhood, has embraced the newcomers, there are signs of strain and ambivalence over the migrants according to community leaders, expats and the migrants themselves. And a city bureaucracy that critics say falls short of the newcomers’ basic needs further amplifies the concerns.
Local nonprofits, including the…
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