[Physical handicapped, economic practices and matrimonial strategies in Senegal]

Social relations around the handicapped are generally presented in terms of economic dependence and social inadaptation. This point of view leads to give greater importance, especially in Africa, to studying the way in which group and society help the physically or mentally ill. Actually, this approach does not give a complete account about the real situation of the handicapped in social relations of production and reproduction. From a series of in-depth interviews conducted in handicapped families of the suburbs of Dakar, two aspects are analyzed: the economic role of the handicapped, through the circulation of the product of his begging in his household or through the exploitation of his work as apprentice in a workshop; and his value on the marriage market, where invalid persons are given without dowry if they are women, and must pay a much more important amount if they are men. The social situation of the handicapped thus is not only a matter of assistance or charity, but as well of strategies that the handicapped and above all his circle implement in order to take advantage of the stigma or on the contrary try to erase it.