For decades, mobility between the Sahel and northern Africa was mostly irregular, but not clandestine. Most of the border crossings were supervised and (illegally) taxed by border police; everyone knew who did what with whom, and Saharan drivers were not thought of as smugglers of people. Starting in the early 2000s, European countries intervened, considering all trans-Saharan movements as a first step on a journey toward Europe, thus encouraging national authorities to stop them. This led to the tightening of border controls across northwest Africa. This article shows how the resulting criminalization of travel to and through the Sahara has led to the development of specialized passenger transport as a clandestine activity, resulting in an increase in the human and financial costs of those journeys. Thus, smugglers, as a particular category of actors, appear as directly manufactured by the migration policies that were drafted to control them.

The war that took place in Libya

Résumé L’axe transsaharien Agadez-Dirkou-Sebha est devenu depuis quelques années le théâtre d’importants mouvements migratoires régionaux et intercontinentaux. Ces circulations humaines, illégales pour la plupart, sont animées par des réseaux migratoires au sein desquels agissent divers groupes d’acteurs publics et privés. L’organisation de ces groupes et les relations qui les lient renseignent sur l’évolution de leurs logiques et montrent comment l’État et ses agents tendent à ne plus différencier le licite de l’illicite.