Abstract
The chapter explores how the entanglements between immorality, informality, and illegality contribute to the governance of the trans-Saharan migration. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in 2015 and 2016, the chapter focuses on the case of Niger, which is deemed as a major cross-road of migration flows toward North Africa and Europe. By doing so, it addresses a significant research gap, given the numerous reports addressing migration routes from, but not to, North Africa. The first part of the chapter accounts for the rise of the informal practices of cross-Saharan smuggling in Niger and situates them vis-à-vis the social norms, political struggles, and legal frameworks prevailing locally. It discusses how foreign, and namely European, agencies are currently promoting an increasing illegalization of trans-Saharan human mobility, while showing less concern for other traffics, such as that of drugs. The chapter then argues that the connivance of Nigerien authorities foils this emerging legal dispositif. The organization and protection rackets of migratory flows nourish the patronage networks upon which Nigerien regime relies; furthermore, it increases the safety of migratory patterns, albeit illegal. From this perspective, the chapter explores the contradictions and opportunities resulting from the intersection of different informal networks of power at different levels and responding to different normative orders.
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Notes
- 1.
Chandler (2013) argues that the scholarly community still lacks a serious theory of resistance. He rightly traces this reification of resistance to Foucault’s much-quoted statement on the imbrication of power and resistance. Foucault, however, does very little to justify this view or to provide some rational foundations for it. The priority of resistance is simply assumed. James Scott (1984) has discussed at length this epistemological problem, and his overall work and methodological approach testifies a pragmatic way to partly overcome the deadlocks arising from it.
- 2.
This view is also endorsed by the tenants of the Paris School of Critical Security Studies, who emphasize the need to investigate the genealogy of a field of practices (Bigo 2011). This emphasis also helps to clarify the differences of Bourdieusian approaches (including the one in the Paris School of Critical Security Studies) with structuralism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with actor-network theory, which underscores instead the simultaneity and ephemerality of assemblages.
- 3.
According to some sources, the very name of the Tuaregs would stem from the Arabic term t-r-k, for example, “left, abandoned, forgotten”—implicitly by God in the Desert—because the Tuaregs are seen as speaking an imperfect Arabic and therefore as lacking an appropriate understanding of the Qur’an (Kohl 2014). Similarly, the name of one of the largest Tebu settlements in the Sahara—Kufrah, in southern Libya—would come from the Arabic word Kuffar, the illicit, the haram, because of the little-orthodox smuggling practices which had been taking place there (Scheele 2014).
- 4.
Interview with Tuareg leader in Niamey, September 2015.
- 5.
Focus groups carried with Nigerien youth, Region of Tahoua, May 2016.
- 6.
Information confirmed in an interview with a former Nigerian minister in Niamey, September 2015.
- 7.
Information confirmed in phone interviews with resource persons (an Arab from Timbuktu and a former Tuareg migrant to Libya) from north Mali, February 2017.
- 8.
The nature of the causal relationship between smuggling networks and diasporas remains unclear. Both Kohl (2013) and Molenaar (2017) tend to agree that cross-border smuggling developed along pre-existing migratory routes built on cross-border family links. From a genealogical perspective, however, the contrary seems more persuasive: existing trading routes have favored the spreading of families and the consolidation of cross-border diasporas which, in turn, have represented a crucial infrastructure to facilitate subsequent migratory flows. Scheele’s (2012) observations of analogous dynamics across the Mali-Algeria borderland contribute to corroborating the latter view.
- 9.
Interview with a researcher from United Nations Organisation on Drug and Crime (UNODC) in Dakar, December 2014.
- 10.
Information confirmed in interviews with a European counter-terrorism expert and a Nigerien security officer in Niamey, September and October 2015.
- 11.
Information confirmed in several interviews with former rebel leaders, former Minister, current prosecutor carried out in Niamey, in September and October 2015.
- 12.
Information confirmed in interviews with former rebel leaders conducted in Niamey, September 2015.
- 13.
Interview with the National Commission for the Collection and Control of Illicit Weapons of Niger, in Niamey, October 2015.
- 14.
Information confirmed in several interviews with policymakers, criminal prosecutors, and security experts in Niger, carried out in Niamey in September and October 2015.
- 15.
This observation challenges the widely held view that it is only after the end of the Gaddafi regime that Libya became the Eldorado of human smuggling. One should point out that from the late 1990s, and following the imposition of the UN sanctions, Gaddafi turned to the African continent and encouraged a policy of open doors vis-à-vis sub-Saharan migrants, who were then granted visa-free access to Libya. This policy stimulated substantial patterns of circular migration and allowed networks of human smugglers to establish fruitful working relationships with law enforcement and border officers in the region (Kohl 2013; El Kamouni-Janssen 2017).
- 16.
Interview with the Nigerien civil society leader in Niamey, September 2015.
- 17.
Interview with a Nigerian security expert in Niamey, September 2015.
- 18.
Interview with a Nigerien political activist from the north, Niamey, September 2015.
- 19.
Interview with a representative of the local civil society in Niamey, September 2015.
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Raineri, L. (2019). Cross-Border Smuggling in North Niger: The Morality of the Informal and the Construction of a Hybrid Order. In: Polese, A., Russo, A., Strazzari, F. (eds) Governance Beyond the Law. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05039-9_12
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