Adventures in Infrastructure: Making anAfrican Hub inParis

Based on ethnographic research at one of the largest transit hubs in the world— P aris's G are du N ord railway station—this article examines how the practices of West A frican migrants transform the F rench urban environment. I argue that migrants create social ties outside of kin and village networks by rerouting and combining the channels of two types of infrastructures: F rench transportation systems and W est A frican systems of exchange and obligation. While this infrastructural practice relies on a shared cultural repertoire, it also helps create new channels that circumvent the pathways for social becoming prescribed by either the F rench state or their home communities. The G are du N ord as a social environment shapes these practices but is also reshaped by them, a process I illuminate by examining how the station becomes an A frican hub: not an enclave of “ L ittle A frica” but rather a node of communication and exchange. This process sheds light on how strategies for creating relations across difference and through infrastructure form transnational communities in urban spaces. [ W est A frica, P aris, migration, railway, transnationalism]