When Borders Swallow up Territories, or the Subversion of Space and Mobility in the Sahara

Borders within the Sahara desert have undergone profound changes recently. This article highlights the major trends in the political, institutional, legal, and material transformations of the Saharan border regime, through the lens of human migration. It aims to explain what acts as a border on a regional scale. Grounded in critical theory, it sheds light on the various forms of power and violence that produce and arise from these borders. Four main dynamics are discussed: the internalization of externalized border and migration policies; the outsourcing of borderwork; the materiality of borders; and the violence at and on borders. Based on twenty years of engagement with the region, the article shows that fixed, continuous lines limiting national territories (linear borders) are in the process of solidifying, of materializing in space, while being interconnected with fixed control points within these territories (pixelated borders) and with zones of potential and intermittent mobile control (areal borders), turning the Sahara into a border in its entirety. Within this space, where the border has swallowed up the territory, people on the move lose control of their mobility as they are stopped, turned away, interned, or diverted. The desert becomes a place of containment, with its own rules stretching out in time and space, and the experience of being controlled, of becoming a suspect, a stranger, or a culprit, can happen anywhere, at any time, as can the experience of violence or death.