A Spatial Theory of Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

Lance Hadley | BIG Research Reports | #57

The state as a territorially homogenous container for sovereign power is typically utilized as a conceptual frame of analysis in intrastate conflict. However, observations of the territorial distribution of conflict in post-colonial weak states suggest geographic clustering in borderland territories. Especially in the Sub-Saharan African context, borders, despite the permeability and the arbitrariness appear to be a strategic territorial resource for alternative agents of sovereignty. While recent quantitative exploratory scholarship has suggested the significance of peripheral borderlands to intrastate war, little discussion has attempted to develop a formal theoretical framework (Buhaug 2010; Buhaug and Rød 2006; Buhaug and Lujala 2005) Combining a decade of empirical conflict observations from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) with an adaptation of Kenneth Boulding’s Loss of Strength Gradient (Boulding 1962), this paper attempts to develop a qualitative framework of state power that accounts for the spatial distribution of civil conflicts within states; or, why state power is often challenged in Africa’s borderlands. Select case comparisons are employed to explore this framework and suggest that borderlands in weak states are often spatially located where alternative sites of power can opportunistically challenge state sovereignty. Exploring the strategic importance of borderland areas, this paper seeks to elevate the discursively marginalized territory of state peripheries to the priority of developing states and the international development and security community.

Lance Hadley

Determinants of Civil Conflict in Africa: Borders as Political Resources

Lance Hadley | BIG Research Reports | #58

Contemporary spatial research on civil conflict in Africa has largely focused on borders and the state periphery as spaces of limited political and economic opportunity. These studies largely adopt approaches that present borderland citizens as operating in structurally desolate spaces of poor governance, economic opportunity and political inclusion. While spatial analyses are permitting unprecedented focus on borderland structures, causal mechanisms that explain how the geographic opportunities present from nearby international borders inform strategies of rebellion remain undeveloped. To explore this, this paper repositions the socio-economic processes in the borderlands as the central unit of analysis. In particular, this paper conceptualizes international borders as a political resource that is exploited by borderland groups to access unregulated ‘in’ and ‘out-flows’ of strategic capacity. This access to alternative strategic capacities is hypothesized to provide the opportunity for border citizens to challenge structural grievances and attempt alternative (if unlawful) governance structures within the borderlands. Lastly, this paper concludes with a spatial theory of conflict specific to Africa’s borderlands whereby relative distances from the state capital, in combination with weak state capacity, creates sites of competing power structures and ultimately violent civil conflict.

Lance Hadley

BIG_Review 5.2

The new issue of Borders in Globalization Review is published! You’ll find cutting-edge research in border studies, extensive policy analyses, border artwork, film reviews, and book reviews. We hope you enjoy it!

Leading the issue are two innovative research articles. First, Berfin Nur Osso integrates critical analysis of European Union migration policy with artistic expressions of refugees and other migrants on the move, featuring their narratives and their paintings. Then, for our French readers, Abdoulaye Ngom presents a case study of a Senegalese family arranging for one of their sons to undertake a precarious journey to Europe, chronicling the complexity of the dilemmas and trajectories they face.

Our readership has expanded to include policy makers in various border management organizations, customs and immigration, and border regions world-wide. So in this issue’s policy section, you’ll find policy papers from South Africa, Italy, Zimbabwe, Moldova, and Australia that reflect this newly expanded scope. We are grateful for the important contributions of Jean Luc Erero, Paola Malaspina, Rwatida Mafurutu, Mihail Secu, and Jamie Ferrill and Allanah O’Hanlon. If you are reading BIG_Review and work in a border organization, your policy research is of interest to us. Do contact us—this indeed is a call for papers! This opportunity has been made possible thanks to the support of the World Customs Organization and Korea Customs.

The new issue is also rich with artwork engaging with the contradictions of borders. In the Chief Editor’s Choice Portfolio, featured on the cover, artist Laurent Reynès shares an innovative sculpture of border lines, conceptualizing the connections and hardships they engender. The work is the product of civil society collaboration with students from the University of Strasbourg, at the Center of Excellence’s 2023 Castle-talks on Narratives on Borders in Europe. In our poetry section, readers will find six poems grappling with borders, four poems by European poet Loris Ferri and two by Canadian Chad Norman. We then present a bold project of activism and artwork, the Navire Avenir, or, the Vessel of the Future, a campaign to conceptualize and actualize an appropriate life-saving response to the crisis of migrants lost at sea, brought to you by the Collectif du Navire Avenir.

Once again, our issue closes with two film and two book reviews. Sinem Arslan and Murat Çemrek recap recent cinema that dramatizes life struggles against closed borders in Turkey and Palestine respectively. Finally, Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly and Victor Konrad review recent academic publications in border studies.

Print editions are now available for purchase, and electronic copies are available for free online in Creative Commons open-access licensing. We hope you not only enjoy BIG_Review but share it as well!

CFGS Global Talk — Whatever happened to our borderless world? An anarchist rethinking of the ‘open borders’ debate

with Dr. Nick Megoran (Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Global Studies and Borders in Globalization, University of Victoria) | Victoria, BC & Zoom | November 8, 2023

In Person: CFGS C168 (Sedgewick building, University of Victoria) or Zoom. The meeting will take place from 10:30am to 12pm PST. Register in advance for this meeting here. Registration is free but required.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, some writers declared that humanity was on the verge of a ‘borderless world.’ Yet three decades later, the world is more fenced and bordered than ever. In response, many scholars and activists have restated the moral and political case for ‘Open Borders.’ How persuasive are these arguments, and do they help us think through what better borderlands might look like? This talk will draw on anarchist traditions in political theology, as well as the author’s own research in various borderlands, to open a broader discussion of borders in the world today.

Dr. Nick Megoran is a Professor of Political Geography at Newcastle University, England. His research considers what it means to value human life in sites as diverse as international borderlands and the neoliberal workplace. He has studied the Uzbek-Kyrgyz and Danish-German borderlands for nearly three decades, and is interested in how critical geopolitical theory and African-American political theology can help us think through how borders can become places in which human life thrives. His publications include Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Pittsburgh, 2017) and Big Questions in An Age of Global Crises (Wipf & Stock, 2022).

#22 BIG Podcast – “Nepal-India Border, Minorities and Cross-Border Networks”

featuring Kalpana Jha, Analyst and Researcher at the University of Victoria, BIG Graduate Student Fellow (PhD)

Country of 27 million inhabitants, in the Himalayan mountain range, Nepal shares a border with India for 1,690 km and with China for nearly 1,200 km. The majority of the inhabitants live in the south of the country (along the Indo-Nepalese border) and in the Kathmandu valley. Nepal became a republic in 2008 and the country adopted a new Constitution in 2015 which provides for a federal-type state, organized around 7 provinces which have their own assembly and executive power. This episode focuses on the State of Nepal, internal bordering processes, the marginalized people at its borders, notably the Madhesi People, and also relations with India and China.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube!

Kalpana Jha is a BIG Graduate Student Fellow and the author of “The Madhesi Upsurge and the Contested Idea of Nepal”. She is currently a board member on the Nepal Policy Institute (NPI) – an international policy think tank. Jha is an alumni as  well as former research fellow from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She also holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from TISS-Mumbai and a Master’s in Socio-legal studies from York University, Canada. Jha has worked extensively on identity issues, citizenship in Madhes and minorities and their status in Nepal and India. Jha has multiple publications including journal articles, book chapters, reports, newspaper articles and commentaries in the field of identity, citizenship, gender and borders. She has also worked in the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India as a Regional and internal security intern. Jha was a former researcher at Martin Chautari and worked on a comparative study on Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Nepal and Sri Lanka, commissioned by School of Oriental and African Studies, London, to Martin Chautari, in Nepal. She has also worked formerly in research foundations such as Social Science Baha in Nepal and Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India.

#16 BIG Podcast – “Popular Protest, the Middle East and Borders”

featuring Michael J. Carpenter – Political Scientist at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, and Managing Editor of BIG Review

The Middle East is the name of a complex geographical region comprising different countries and cultures between Europe, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Asia. It is also a space where many conflicts have existed and continue to exist today, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These disputes linked to a complex historical, religious and political situation should not obscure the presence of populations who struggle at their level and with their means against the domination that oppresses them. One thinks of the situation in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip and the difficult conditions of the inhabitants. We will discuss this territorial, border, human complexity with political scientist Michael J. Carpenter. He has written a book titled “Palestinian Popular Struggle: Unarmed and Participatory” (Routledge 2019).

Michael J. Carpenter is a Post-Doctoral Fellow working on a project titled, “Beyond ‘Irregular Migration’: Civil Disobedience without Borders”. In addition to his fellowship, Michael also serves as a founding member and current Managing Editor of the Borders in Globalization Review. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Victoria (2017) and a Master of Arts in Social and Political Thought from the University of Regina (2009). His research interests include borders, Middle East politics, global politics, civil resistance, non-state governance, and the history of social and political thought. He recently completed two publications based on his doctoral research, a monograph titled Palestinian Popular Struggle: Unarmed and Participatory, and a chapter called “Peace Process without the People: Sidelining Popular Struggle in Palestine” for an edited volume called the History of World Peace Since 1750 (both Routledge, forthcoming).

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the Podcast App!

Borders and Migration: The Canadian Experience in Comparative Perspective

Michael J. Carpenter, Melissa Kelly, Oliver Schmidtke | University of Ottawa Press | 2023

Since 2015, the cross-border movement of migrants and refugees has reached unprecedented levels. War, persecution, destitution, and desertification impelled millions to flee their homes in central Asia, the Levant, and North Africa. The responses in the Global North varied country by country, with some opening their borders to historically large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, while others adopted increasingly strict border policies.

The dramatic increase in global migration has triggered controversial political and scholarly debates. The governance of cross-border mobility constitutes one of the key policy conundrums of the 21st century, raising fundamental questions about human rights, state responsibility, and security. The research literatures on borders and migration have rapidly expanded to meet the increased urgency of record numbers of displaced people. Yet, border studies have conventionally paid little attention to flows of people, and migration studies have simultaneously underappreciated the changing nature of borders.

Borders and Migration: The Canadian Experience in Comparative Perspective provides new insights into how migration is affected by border governance and vice versa. Starting from the Canadian experience, and with an emphasis on refugees and irregular migrants, this multidisciplinary book explores how various levels of governance have facilitated and restricted flows of people across international borders. The book sheds light on the changing governance of migration and borders. Comparisons between Canada and other parts of the world bring into relief contemporary trends and challenges.

Editors:

Michael J. Carpenter is a Post-Doctoral Fellow working on a project titled, “Beyond ‘Irregular Migration’: Civil Disobedience without Borders”. In addition to his fellowship, Michael also serves as a founding member and current Managing Editor of the Borders in Globalization Review.

Melissa Kelly is a Research Fellow with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University. She holds a PhD in Social and Economic Geography from Uppsala University.

Oliver Schmidtke is a Professor and UVic European Studies Scholar in the Departments of History and Political Science. Since 2006 he holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European History and Politics. From 2005 to 2008 he was the Director of the European Studies Program at UVic and from 2004 to 2006 he served as the President of the European Community Studies Association Canada. Since 2012 he has been the Director of the Centre for Global Studies and during the academic year 2016-17 he serves as the Acting Vice President Research.

Nihon no Kyokai: Kokka to hitobito no sokoku (Japan’s Borders: For State or People)

Hyunjoo Naomi Chi, Edward Boyle | Hokkaido University Press | 2022

Featuring an Introduction co-written with Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly (BIG Project Director), this volume is the outcome of a BIG Workshop held at Hokkaido University in April 2018, bringing Japanese and foreign researchers together to reflect upon the history and specificities of Japan’s contemporary border regime. Published on December 25th, 2022.

Editors:

Edward Boyle is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and the Center for Asia-Pacific Future Studies. He holds a BA from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and an MA from the Faculty of Law at Hokkaido University, where he is also in the process of completing his doctorate. Currently, he is charged with the task of establishing Japan’s first interdisciplinary Center for Border Studies at Kyushu University.

Hyunjoo Naomi Chi is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy, Hokkaido University. She holds a BA from the University of British Columbia.