Geography

The focuse of my fieldwork shifted from Sub-Saharan central Africa to Lebanon during the period 2002-2006. This country was approached by studying one of its peripheral areas: the Bekka valley. This rural and impoverished region is for the most part overall abandoned by the State. It has only recently been integrated into the national territory. Its role in the Lebanon's contemporary geography is modest compared to the Beirut region which constitutes the Lebanese heartland in a historical, political, economic and demographic sense. However, the Syrian occupation (1976-2005) and Hezbollah's bases reveal Bekka's strategic importance.
This article examines how this border area has experienced transformations of its landscape, urban areas and economy (agro-industrial revival, growth of transit economy) and questions whether there are in fact been elicited substantial development process. The main theatre of the civil war (1975-1990) was Beirut, which promoted banking and trade activities and the expansion of illegal agriculture (cannabis) in the Bekka valley. The investments by Lebanese emigrants and the increasing liberalisation of the economy have provoked dynamic economic and real estate growth after the end of the war.
At the very least, this region is a ‘border space’  insofar as it is a high stakes area and it is a location of both illegal and contested actions, and a location of confrontations between Lebanese political parties, between foreign powers and between the Syrian and Lebanese authorities. Because of these strategic and political factors, there is a proliferation of uncoordinated small development projects.

"This book is drawn from my Ph. D. Thesis. It analyzes the growth of cross-border trade and trafficking in Central Africa (Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, Central African Republic) since the 1980's in a context of poverty, ongoing social and economic recession and dysfunctional state structures.
It is based on qualitative methods including interviews with traders, haulers and people working at the borders. It studies nature of flows, examines their spatial consequences (market creation) and profiles the variety of actors who develop strategies of avoidance, especially for managing risks.
My research discusses the idea of African states' decay and the fragility of national boundaries created by European colonization. For many authors, transnational informal flows and smuggling represent a threat to the State and a contestation of current national territories. The study of the internal structure of border areas, whose central poles are village-markets, reveals that such those border spaces are not autonomous nor new alternative territories. The border zones are evanescent spatial constructions because the road access to the borders evolve with time and the border markets are ephemeral. National identities often get stronger in border zones which are not administrated by a transnational political authority. Cities located in the inner territory (provincial or national capitals) take advantage of crossborder trade in the sense that they are mediators, centers of consumption and, they are above all the locations where profits from trade are reinvested. The increasing trade on borders  doesn't imply a de-territorialization process but at the contrary, they consolidate the integraty and the unity of national territories. African populations manipulate socio-economic differentials between states and this game signifies the acceptance and the acknowledgment of boundaries rather than their criticism or refusal.
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L’objet de cet article est d’étudier l’évolution du concept de frontière, traditionnellement définie comme un ligne bordant l’espace de souveraineté d’un Etat. Aujourd’hui démultipliée et délocalisée, la frontière d’Etat change en termes de matérialisation et de signification en raison des bouleversements dans le domaine des transports, de la privatisation des Etats et du renforcement d’autres frontières (supranationales et intérieures). En dépit de ces changements, on observe le maintien des cadres spatiaux légués par la colonisation et l’absence de territoire alternatif susceptible de les saper ou de les remplacer, en particulier dans les zones frontalières animées par le commerce ou secouées par des troubles politico-militaires. Les espaces d’Etat connaissent moins une déstructuration qu’une recomposition interne, en écho à la refonte de l’Etat africain.

his paper emerges from fieldwork in South Morocco and a collaborative reflection with a political scientist about the increasing social protest movements in the country's small and mid-size cities, especially over the course of the last decade. The cases of two small towns located in peripheral areas invite us to investigate social upheaval in territorial margins (isolated mountain enclaves, hinterland and border towns) and the relationship between the central State and peripheral areas. Sidi Ifni is located on the border of contested Western Sahara and Bouarfa is near the Algerian border.
The article examines, in a context of political liberalization, the heterogeneous makeup of social movements, whose leaders often come from citizens' associations. It focuses also on the interaction between social mobilizations and national development policies: first, these policies favour some regions and places over others; second, militants’ discourses and protest actions reveal the use of local historical myths and the instrumentalization of nationalist belonging; third, the State has responded to the social and economic demands through an administrative reorganization, creating new territorial units.
The central State has been confronted with tribal dissidence (siba) over many centuries and its strategy of managing social turbulences continues to combine both repression and granting of privileges (job creation, free water, gifts of land...). This form of management permits the State to maintain control over the national territory and the protest movements by creating tensions between activists. The social protests in small and mid-size cities are focused on local, material and pragmatic demands and their political impact is limited.

Depuis la fin des années quatre-vingt, une zone transforestière Tchad-République centrafricaine-Cameroun se dessine, polarisée par le marché camerounais de Mbaiboum. Très cosmopolite, ce dernier assure la diffusion des marchandises de provenance nigériane et camerounaise vers la RCA, le Tchad et le Soudan. L'essor récent du marché tient à sa situation de carrefour, à la politique commerciale menée par l'Etat camerounais et, surtout, à l'amélioration des infrastructures de communication. La gestion du marché est assurée d'une main de fer par le Chef peul local, le lamido de Rey Bouda. Compliqué par l'enchevêtrement de plusieurs types de frontières, le fonctionnement de la zone transfrontalière est entravé par les agissements des coupeurs de route et demeure placé sous le sceau de l'incertitude.