Contribution short abstract

This research examines how desalination reshapes territories, justice, and subjectivities in postcolonial Djerba, a tourism- and heritage-driven island, showing how infrastructural “decoupling” produces new inequalities and forms of governance.

Contribution long abstract

My research examines how water infrastructures reshape territories, justice, and subjectivities in Djerba, Tunisia. In this tourism- and heritage-driven island marked by chronic drinking water scarcity, a state-led desalination plant is promoted as a “decoupling” techno-fix. Set within a postcolonial context, it reflects enduring patterns of uneven development and external dependency.

Building on political ecology and the political geography of infrastructure, the paper foregrounds infrastructures as agentic rather than neutral technical responses to scarcity. It asks: How does desalination redistribute water access, costs, and risks? Whose knowledges and practices are recognised or marginalised? And who gains voice and authority in water decision-making?

Using a qualitative case-study design, the research combines semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, examined through a water justice lens that connects recognition, redistribution, and participation, and is further sharpened by insights from micropolitical ecologies.

By situating Djerba within broader debates on islands as laboratories of infrastructural experimentation in postcolonial contexts, the paper contributes to theorising hydrosocial territories in insular settings and to critical discussions on non-conventional water, privatization, and the enduring asymmetries that shape water governance in North Africa.