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Accepted Paper:
Making Virtual Property in Western Sahara: Finance and place-making from exile
Randi Irwin
(University of Newcastle, Australia)
This paper explores how Saharawi government officials have worked to actively construct a Saharawi territory and sovereignty in a way that enables the future state’s property to be used in the meantime via resource contracts that offer opportunities to construct place and economic possibility.
Paper long abstract:
In the absence of clear territorial rights and the formal recognition of sovereignty in Western Sahara, the Saharawi state appears to be a government absent a physical state, and yet prepared for the possibility that it might one day exercise its craft. The state-in-exile governs from the refugee camps, but does not have full access to, or control over, its territory and resources. However, the state-in-exile may have more control over its territory than is immediately recognized. This paper explores how Saharawi government officials have worked to actively construct a Saharawi territory and sovereignty in a way that enables the future state’s property to be used in the meantime. While the conflict over Western Sahara’s future is commonly referred to as a stalemate, this paper explores how Saharawi natural resource contracts have been used as a preparatory tool for the assertion of sovereignty and how they also offer present-day opportunities to create future property. The Saharawi Republic has developed two different ways of utilizing resources and generating property: deferred contracts and currently actionable exploration agreements. The two forms offer present and future economic opportunities and mark out parcels of public and private property – at each instance remaking and asserting particular forms of place. This paper traces the implementation of the two forms of contracts (deferred and currently actionable) in order to consider how their different temporal orientations necessitate new legal and financial regulations, while constructing place and property as new possibilities for the state and its citizens in exile.