This article is about an association of Senegalese mothers who joined together to ‘fight clandestine migration’ after they lost many of their children who were attempting to migrate to Spain by boat in 2006. The article examines the gendered and generational dimensions of this community mobilisation, focusing on the motives and decisive factors behind the activism or non-engagement of the migrants’ parents and spouses. It demonstrates that the intersectionality of power relations (such as gender, age, economic status and matrimonial status) determined both the engagement or nonengagement of the migrants’ parents and spouses, and their respective roles and experiences of the migration.