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| 1 |
ID:
188533
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| Summary/Abstract |
As recent work in border studies has argued, EU-border externalisation is often achieved by exporting technocratic management templates and advanced surveillance technologies, prompting scholars to adopt the lens of biopolitics in studying borderwork. Outside of Europe, however, the paucity of resources and vastness of spaces mean that indigenous forms of agency continue to be a key factor of border governance. Focusing on everyday practices illuminated by ethnographic fieldwork, this article investigates EU border externalisation’s encounter with the Sahelian context. It argues that state and non-state actors form, deform and perform borders by extracting and capturing the material (economic) and immaterial (cognitive) resources that pass through liminal spaces. These dynamics shape a biopolitical economy of border control in which features of exceptionality, sovereignty and politics seem less compelling that those pertaining to the sphere of ordinary, hybridity and economy.
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| 2 |
ID:
188097
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| Summary/Abstract |
While jihadism appears to be on the rise in Africa, the explanations of violent extremist groups’ capacity to foment jihadi insurgencies and mobilize recruits remain poorly understood. Recent studies have challenged the assumption that the rise of jihadism in Africa is the result of poor governance in areas of limited state reach, highlighting instead the significance of the (perception of) abuses perpetrated by state authorities. Looking at collective action and its structural determinants, it is rather state action—and not the lack thereof—that best explains the capacity of mobilization of jihadi insurgencies in African borderlands. In order to test this theory in a least-likely case, the article explores the genealogy and evolution of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), mobilizing extensive qualitative evidence. Borrowing the analytical framework from civil war studies, it argues that the contentious political dynamics observed in Niger’s borderlands amount to a case of symmetric non-conventional warfare, where abuses perpetrated by state proxies trigger an escalation of homegrown terrorism. It therefore supplies a further specification of the theories investigating the complex interplay between the processes of jihadi mobilization/rebel governance and the practices of counter-terrorism in weak states.
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| 3 |
ID:
178527
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the Sahara-Sahel, artisanal gold mining is booming. Fragile Sahelian states arguably provide a most likely case for the ‘resource conflict’ theory to hold, yet ‘resource capture’ can also underpin informal governance schemes through which the co-optation of non-state actors ushers in (hybrid) state-building. While the diversity of empirical cases lends credibility to both theories, the dialectic of proximity and distance – both social and spatial – helps make sense of the different modalities of artisanal gold mining governance in the region. In the Sahelian core of regional states, artisanal gold mining has supported regime empowerment; in the Sahara, it has helped assuage pre-existing tensions; in the Tibesti, it has led to militarisation and conflict.
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| 4 |
ID:
158479
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| Summary/Abstract |
In recent years, Niger has gained prominence as a hub for the smuggling of migrants from West Africa to North Africa and Europe. Urged on by European concerns, Niamey has adopted repressive measures to contain such migrations in the region. These, however, have largely failed, and have yielded unintended and unexpected results, which challenge policy predictions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the article suggests that contradictory security imperatives have brought about the de facto regularisation of human smuggling. As a result, protection rackets sponsored by the state through patronage networks have severely limited the impact of externally sponsored measures to counteract irregular migration.
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| 5 |
ID:
158925
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| Summary/Abstract |
By analysing Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, this article argues that ascriptions to international jihadist brands are linked to local movements’ political economy and geopolitical imaginaries, and, therefore, driven more by contingent strategic considerations rather than by ideological motives. Consequently, three sets of evidence are discussed, by drawing also on fieldwork conducted in Mali and Niger from 2013 to 2016: the discourses of these actors; their political economies; their use of political violence. In conclusion, we analyse the ‘territorialised-deterritorialised cleavage’ and argue that this has greater heuristic value to understand African ‘jihadisms’ than existing categorisations of political violence.
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