Vieux réseaux et nouvelles circulations entre les deux rives du Sahara

Abstract

Le Sahara contemporain conserve une image persistante de périphérie, exploitée et plus ou moins bien intégrée aux États-Nations. C'est la conséquence de trois décennies de tensions, guerres et cloisonnements qu' ont connus les huit États riverains. Pourtant, le Sahara est historiquement un espace de circulation parcouru hier par les caravanes commerciales, aujourd'hui par des migrants et des flux de marchandises de plus en plus intenses. Un espace migratoire se construit dans la proximité par la densité et l'épaisseur historique des liens établis par les populations vivant dans le Sahara central notamment Touareg, Toubous, Maures et commerçants arabes du Sahel. La conjoncture actuelle, marquée par une réduction de l'émigration en direction de l'Europe, tend à faire du Sahara un espace d'immigration par défaut et de transit vers le Maghreb littoral et l'Europe pour les ressortissants d'Afrique noire. Les effets spatiaux de ces nouvelles circulations sont considérables dans le Sahara central, si longtemps enclavé et en crise, notamment avec la croissance rapide des villes et l'émergence d'une économie de transit.

Migration between prohibitionism and the perpetuation of illegal labour

“…Mahdi Mabrouk (2003) said at the Conference of the Tunisian League of Human Rights that, in the world of those who are forced into illegal immigration by fascist European prohibitionism, we can find young people who all aspire to freedom-a freedom they sing about in rai, rap or neo-blues, a music that can now be heard on the road to rich countries, and on the Turkish, Libyan and Maghreb coasts (see Boubakri, 2003aBoubakri, , 2003bMabrouk & Rouis, 2003;Pliez, 2002aPliez, , 2002bPliez, , 2003Palidda, 2004: Chapter 4.5, 2005, Chapter 3.2). Perhaps without realising it, it is these young people with their twenty-first-century songs of emancipation who contribute to the movement against globalised liberalism and against any sort of war, for the fundamental rights of all human beings.…”

Policing the Desert: The IOM in Libya Beyond War and Peace

“…In any case, racist violence against blacks preceded the conflict and existed for a long time independently of accusations of military collaboration. Hence, in 2000, several hundreds of blacks were wounded or killed in racist riots in Tripoli, and several thousand officially left the country (Pliez :37). Even before the war, this kind of violence was a common occurrence, and the IOM and other international organization's sudden interest in it—after not raising these issues during many years of cooperation with the Libyan regime—hence needs further explanation.…”

Migration from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe: Past Developments, Current Status and Future Potentials

“…Disappointed by the perceived lack of support from his fellow Arab countries, Gaddafi embarked upon a radical reorientation of Libyan foreign policy towards sub-Saharan African countries (Hamood 2006), positioning himself as an African leader by developing a policy of creating alliances with and offering substantial development aid to them. In this context of pan-African foreign policy, Libya started to encourage sub-Saharan Africans to work in Libya (Hamood 2006;Pliez 2002). In the early 1990s, most migrants came from Libya's neighbours, Sudan, Chad and Niger, which subsequently developed into transit countries for migrants from a much wider array of sub-Saharan countries (Bredeloup & Pliez 2005).…”