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- Convenors:
-
Silvia Danielak
(MIT)
Mohamadou Abdoul (GIZ - Support to African Union Border Programme)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- BS004
- Start time:
- 1 July, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Urban settlements in African borderlands illustrate the ambiguity between control and facilitation of mobility, between integration and separation. This panel addresses the, sometimes conflictual, interactions and their management in the cross-border urban, and rural-urban, setting along the border.
Long Abstract:
Border zones in Africa are often marginalized areas, neglected by the State with regards to infrastructure and services. Simultaneously though, border zones create an idiosyncratic activity and entrepreneurism that often puts the border at the center of vivid trade and exchange, creating a cross-border culture and identity, and a viable Lebensraum. Cross-border conurbations across Africa evolve from this entrepreneurial spirit and are shaped by the very institution of the boundary, and the shared experience as well as the asymmetries it creates. Border towns experience growth due to attractive economic options facilitated by regional trade regimes, while at the same time facing constraints due to arduous border management. The latter is motivated by security concerns and seeks to widen the gap between the two sides of the boundary, illustrated in broad buffer zones, patrols, checkpoints and queues that organize the crowds of quotidian migrants. Border towns find themselves required to strike a balance between facilitating mobility on the one hand and controlling and impeding illicit movements on the other hand. Paired with rising inequalities and tensions around the border, border towns regularly become witnesses of conflict and tensions. In this panel, we would like to explore how different layers of conflict, between facilitation and control of mobility, managing socio-economic differences in the context of urban density, interact. What challenges do border towns face and how are they and can be managed? What kind of cross-border urban planning is required? How does the urban interact with the rural in the borderlands?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This presentation will explore the lives of independent migrant children and youth from Zimbabwe in both border towns, Beitbridge and Musina, and the spaces between them.
Paper long abstract:
The Zimbabwean - South African border facilitates a fruitful ground for illegal transfer and mobility of goods and persons. Towns on both sides of the border - Beitbridge and Musina, have been attracting unaccompanied Zimbabwean children and teenagers in their search for sustainable lives, as poverty and unemployment continue to spread in their country. With no formal jobs, this underdeveloped border area can hardly be viewed as a center of attraction for young people, yet while many of them leave this area in the search of greener pastures, others find rare opportunities and advantages in the life this space provides.
This presentation will explore the lives of independent migrant children and youth from Zimbabwe through spatial lenses, or rather explore the two border towns and the spaces between them through the ways they accommodate Zimbabwean children and youth. It will provide a view on independent children and youth and the spaces in which they live in, in relations to former experiences of child and youth mobility. It will shed light on the ways young people view their spaces, and the ways this current setting continues, reshapes, reaffirms and at times contradicts, former conceptualization of Zimbabwean youth's mobility.
Paper short abstract:
La frontière en favorisant des interactions rurales-urbaines amène à repenser la planification urbaine dans une perspective transfrontalière. Cet article montre le rôle moteur de la ville dans l’animation de l’espace mettant en évidence la nécessité d’asseoir des stratégies transfrontalières de gouvernance.
Paper long abstract:
En Sénégambie, comme dans le reste de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, les villes frontalières sont au centre d'importants échanges transfrontaliers, à travers des flux à la fois licites et illicites, tirant profit de l'existence de fortes disparités frontalières (monnaie, fiscalité, offre de produits, différentiel de prix, etc). Ces échanges se nourrissent également, depuis plus d'une dizaine d'années, de l'urbanisation en cours dans la totalité des villes frontalières sénégambiennes et d'un réel dynamisme démographique de nombreux bourgs ruraux. L'augmentation de la demande urbaine se traduit par l'intensification des échanges urbains-ruraux tandis que la transformation des modes de vie alimentaire des ruraux entraine un recours de plus en plus accru aux produits des marchés urbains ; les interactions rurales-urbaines s'intensifient dès lors. En Sénégambie, de nombreuses zones transfrontalières illustrent cette situation où la ville, grâce à ses services, marchés, équipements sociaux et son poids démographique constitue un élément moteur. Farafenni, Brikama, Basse, Bansang (en Gambie) et Nioro, Vélingara, Diaobé (au Sénégal) exercent une forte polarisation sur leur hinterland rural tout en recevant des produits et avantages de ce dernier (prêt de terre, produits agricoles, etc).
Ainsi, cette communication part de l'hypothèse que la frontière en favorisant des interactions rurales-urbaines amène à repenser la gouvernance et la planification urbaine dans une perspective transfrontalière. Elle met en évidence le rôle moteur des villes frontalières dans l'animation spatiale et en conséquence la nécessité pour les acteurs territoriaux d'asseoir des stratégies transfrontalière de gouvernance.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on two sets of twin cities (Goma/Gisenyi and Bukavu/Cyangugu) straddling the border between what are today Rwanda and the DRC. The paper demonstrates that similar issues challenging border towns today were already apparent during the colonial period.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on two sets of twin cities (Goma/Gisenyi and Bukavu/Cyangugu) straddling the border between what are today Rwanda and the DRC, and is based on oral and archival data. It argues that these cities and their rural hinterlands became a conurban 'transboundary' space during the colonial period and demonstrates that challenges border towns today face today were already apparent during the colonial period.
The paper does so by emphasising the importance of 'asymmetry'. It was the asymmetrical relationships between Goma/Gisenyi and Bukavu/Cyangugu, caused by their location in the Belgian Congo (colony) on the one hand, and Rwanda (mandated area) on the other, which created economic opportunities and the emergence of an urban 'transboundary' sphere. In turn, 'borderlanders' mobilized the opportunities available in this 'transboundary' space to their own benefit. Around Lake Kivu, the large presence of Europeans in urban centres straddling the border created opportunities for trade, the exportation of smallholder produce, and for labour.
The intense mobility between these twin cities, and especially the way the colonial administration dealt with it, reveals the contradictions in governing 'transboundary' urban contexts. Whilst colonial states needed rural-urban and cross-border mobility to provide labour and to cater to the needs of European consumption (e.g. for urban construction or household labour for Europeans), this intense mobility was at the same time also at odds with the colonial desire to curtail and control African mobility (e.g. urban pass laws). This study thus adds to our understanding of the historical challenges border towns face.