Paper details

Paper authors	TCHILOUTA Rhoumour
In panel on	“Humanitarian borders” between care and control
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Drawing on several months of field research, this paper analyses the border management practices that emerged in Niger in the aftermath of the 2015 migration crisis. Under the guise of humanitarian border management, a wide range of international actors, with agendas that combine humanitarian and security concerns, are scouring Niger's territory to develop and experiment new border control and surveillance devices. Community-based border management, promoted by IOM, is one such device. It consists of the creation of border prevention committees and the organization of full-scale awareness campaigns to restore trust between border communities and the defense and security forces. This engagement consists of recruiting informants ( mostly local community leaders) within these communities who are trained and equipped with communication devices to denounce suspicious incidents or activities at the border to the security forces.

Given such practices, the aim of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, to highlight the extent to which border populations have turned from objects of surveillance into agents of surveillance. Secondly, to show how, under the guise of humanitarian border management, these organizations are participating in the emergence of a dangerous 'citizen-detective' figure, continuously on guard for any suspicious movements at the border.

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