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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the heuristic scope of the sanitary closure of borders in West Africa, using the case of Togo. It questions the state management practices and the daily functioning of actors at the border through the notions of "official borders" and "popular borders".

Paper long abstract:

The closure of borders was imposed on all countries as one of the spatial containment strategies of COVID-19. Stimulated by the health emergency more than by a real sovereign will to close, this refrontization has been implemented in various ways depending on the national context and has imposed choices for a better allocation and optimal management of available resources. Beyond the operational difficulties, these choices provide information on the representations and practices of borders that are likely to enrich the scientific corpus. How does the pandemic reshape the relationship between the State and its territory? Therefore, the objective of this paper is to examine the heuristic scope of the sanitary closure of borders in West Africa, based on the case of Togo, through a six-month ethnographic survey conducted in seven border posts in Togo between September 2020 and March 2021. More specifically, the purpose is to question state management practices and the daily functioning of actors at the border based on the notions of "official borders", which local terminology opposes to "popular borders". These notions reflect a spatial changes of controls and forms of mobility according to the actors' representations of time and space.

Keywords: COVID-19, border, official borders, popular borders, West Africa, Togo