Urbanization has been one of the most profound developments of the 20th century in West Africa. In spite of rapid urban growth throughout the region, most West African urban migrants do not sever their ties to their rural sending communities. They send remittances to their relatives, join village-based urban associations, and host rural kin during visits to the city. The vast movement of people between cities and villages and the development of local institutions that bridge multiple locations defy attempts to address rural and urban Africa as conceptually distinct.

Based on more than three years of rural and urban ethnographic research, Longing for Exile is a study of the ways urbanization has become deeply embedded in the social, cultural, and economic life of a Senegalese community whose members occupy both rural and urban locations. Michael Lambert describes in vivid detail aspects of urban life and the experiences of villagers in their encounters with the city, their efforts to get jobs, spouses, and urban goods. While recognizing the economic importance of urban migration, Lambert argues that urban migration has had much more far-reaching implications. Migration has become emblematic of community affiliation and experience, and it has sparked the creation of new social formations, thoroughly transforming intimate areas of African life such as gender relations and marriage strategies.