Artigos
Este artigo mobiliza as ecologias de valor como um quadro concetual para dar conta dos conflitos, contradições e dilemas decorrentes da experiência da crise socioecológica contemporânea. Baseia-se num trabalho de campo etnográfico em Brindisi,
[+]Artigos
This ethnographic article addresses the difficulties, practices, and strategies of the professionals of the only Argentine hospital fully specialized in the treatment of mental health problems of children and adolescents. More specifically, it
[+]Artigos
As ibejadas são entidades infantis que, junto aos caboclos, pretos-velhos, exus e pombagiras, habitam o panteão da umbanda. Nos centros, essas entidades se apresentam em coloridas imagens, alegres pontos cantados e muitos doces que nos permitem
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The article analyzes the Anata-Carnival festivity celebrated in the Andean town of Chiapa in the Tarapacá Region, Great North of Chile. I suggest that this celebration constitutes one of the main events that promote the reproduction of feelings of
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Partindo de desenvolvimentos na teoria etnográfica e antropológica para os estudos do turismo urbano, este ensaio oferece uma descrição das paisagens turísticas de Sarajevo pela perspetiva do turista-etnógrafo, detalhando como o tempo se
[+]Memória
O artigo comenta, contextualiza e transcreve o intercâmbio epistolar que mantiveram, entre 1971 e 1979, o antropólogo social David J. Webster (1945-1989) e o etnólogo e funcionário colonial português, António Rita-Ferreira (1922-2014).
[+]Dossiê "Géneros e cuidados na experiência transnacional cabo-verdiana"
Neste dossiê sobre o género e os cuidados na comunidade transnacional cabo-verdiana, as leitoras e leitores encontrarão os resultados de diferentes etnografias feitas tanto em Cabo Verde como nos países de destino da sua diáspora no sul da
[+]Dossiê "Géneros e cuidados na experiência transnacional cabo-verdiana"
Partindo do terreno etnográfico – interior da ilha de Santiago de Cabo Verde – e com base na observação participante e em testemunhos das habitantes locais de Brianda, este artigo é uma contribuição para poder interpretar as estratégias
[+]Dossiê "Géneros e cuidados na experiência transnacional cabo-verdiana"
Este artigo reflete sobre a categoria cuidado quando atravessada pelas dinâmicas de gênero e geração na sociedade cabo-verdiana. O ato de cuidar é de fundamental importância para as dinâmicas familiares nesta sociedade que é marcada por
[+]Dossiê "Géneros e cuidados na experiência transnacional cabo-verdiana"
Este artigo toma como base o trabalho de campo realizado com mulheres de quatro gerações, pertencentes a cinco famílias residentes na localidade de Burela (Galiza) e aos seus grupos domésticos originários da ilha de Santiago. Apresentamos três
[+]Dossiê "Géneros e cuidados na experiência transnacional cabo-verdiana"
The reconciliation of the personal, work and family spheres of migrants is an emerging issue in migration studies, with concepts such as the transnational family and global care chains. In this contribution we analyse the strategies deployed by
[+]Debate
Este artigo questiona a consistência, razoabilidade e fecundidade das propostas metodológicas e conceção de conhecimento antropológico da “viragem ontológica” em antropologia. Tomando como ponto de partida o livro-manifesto produzido por
[+]Debate
O artigo “Estrangeiros universais”, de Filipe Verde, apresenta uma crítica ao que chama de “viragem ontológica” na antropologia, tomando o livro The Ontological Turn, de Holbraad e Pedersen (2017), como ponto de partida (2025a: 252).1 O
[+]Debate
Se há evidência que a antropologia sempre reconheceu é a de que o meio em que somos inculturados molda de forma decisiva a nossa compreensão do mundo e de nós mesmos. Isso é assim para a própria antropologia e, portanto, ser antropólogo é
[+]Debate
Um erro do construtivismo clássico é postular que verdades alheias seriam construídas socialmente, mas as do próprio enunciador não. Que minha visão de mundo, do fazer antropológico e da ciência sejam moldadas por meu ambiente – em
[+]Nota sobre a capa
© Pedro Calapez. 2023. (Pormenor) Díptico B; Técnica e Suporte: Acrílico sobre tela colada em MDF e estrutura em madeira. Dimensões: 192 x 120 x 4 cm. Imagem gentilmente cedidas pelo autor. Créditos fotográficos: MPPC / Pedro
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Este artigo surge no seguimento do trabalho etnográfico realizado num aeroporto em Portugal, onde de junho de 2021 a abril de 2022 acompanhei nos vários grupos e turnos o quotidiano dos inspetores do Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF). A
[+]Artigos
Este trabalho pretende dar conta das interseções entre diferentes aspetos da vida quotidiana e das trajetórias de vida das pessoas idosas num espaço de bairro e a incidência da pandemia de Covid-19. Baseia-se no desenvolvimento sustentado,
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Neste artigo discuto as reconfigurações do fenômeno chamado de culture jamming, característico da dimensão comunicativa do consumo político, a partir da apropriação de memes da Internet como uma ferramenta de crítica ao consumo. Com base na
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The historical neighbourhood of Bairro Alto is the city’s most iconic nightlife destination, especially for tourists visiting Lisbon (Portugal). The expansion of commercial nightlife in this area has been accompanied by the increasing presence of
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This text analyzes the term of force (mana’ap) as a native concept formulated by the pames (xi’iui) of the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro. This is related to aspects such as blood, food, cold, hot, air and their effects on the body. It is observed
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In this article we present an exercise of reflection on the challenges involved in writing and studying the biographies and autobiographies of indigenous intellectuals in different geographical, historical and political scenarios: Mexico and Brazil,
[+]Artigos
Artigos
Este artigo analisa as experiências das crianças Capuxu com os animais de seu convívio diário, buscando compreender como as relações das crianças com estas espécies companheiras atravessam o tecido social Capuxu conformando o sistema
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Ancorado em anotações elaboradas em uma etnografia multiespécie, este texto formula uma leitura de laboratórios de ciências biológicas como práticas situantes de atores humanos e não humanos. Para isso, os autores trazem à baila plantas
[+]Interdisciplinaridades
Esta pesquisa cartografa e investiga os territórios criados em decorrência do abandono das estações férreas, acentuado a partir dos anos 1980, nas cidades gêmeas de Jaguarão-Rio Branco e Santana do Livramento-Rivera, na fronteira
[+]Multimodal Alt
Em 2016, três anos depois de ter concluído o doutoramento, embarquei numa primeira tentativa de traduzir a minha pesquisa etnográfica, em Maputo entre igrejas Zione, para uma linguagem gráfica. Através de uma série de ilustrações
[+]Recursividades
In this text we address the possibility of deconstructing the relationships – that have water as a resource available to humans – that have ordered some dichotomies such as anthropos-nature, establishing that there are methodologies, theories
[+]Argumento
Neste ensaio procuro primeiro identificar as razões do lugar marginal que a arte desde sempre ocupou no pensamento antropológico, sugerindo que elas são a influência da conceção estética de arte e da metafísica que suportou o projeto das
[+]Recensões
Celso Mussane (1957-) é um pastor evangélico moçambicano. Licenciou-se na Suécia (1994) e tirou o curso superior de Teologia Bíblica na Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, em Londrina no Brasil (2018). Entre 2019 e 2020, publicou
[+]Recensões
Este libro tiene tres dimensiones analíticas: primero, es una etnografía del movimiento de cultura libre en Madrid. Segundo, es un estudio histórico sobre la traducción de lo digital a lo urbano, favoreciendo una nueva manera de posicionarse en
[+]Visual approaches have not been systematically employed in the study of contemporary borders despite their affordances in bringing to the fore individual perspectives and experiences (Kudžmaité and Pauwels 2020; Ball 2014). Drawing on the concept of borderscapes, whose plasticity and inherent aesthetic nature stimulates an exploration of diverse border universes (dell’Agnese and Szary 2015), this visual essay interrogates routiers’ border(ing) enactments and contingent meanings.[1]
Routier is the self-designation employed by Senegalese men driving heavily laden, aging vehicles from Europe into Africa. This perilous journey takes them through Morocco, the Western Sahara occupied territories, Mauritania, and finally to their destination in Senegal. Some even beyond. The vehicles used by routiers are eventually sold and integrated into regional transportation systems. In Senegal, popular models include the Peugeot 504/505, older versions of the Renault Trafic, Volkswagen Golf, and Toyota Hiace. During their journey and upon arrival, routiers deliver money remittances and personal belongings. They also barter and trade diverse goods, mostly second-hand objects, some of which in need of repair: clothing, household appliances, toys, spare parts, rice, cosmetics. Not only do the vehicles they travel in regain value as they move south, but even items that are considered obsolete or even waste in Europe gradually become valuable (Neto and Falcão 2022).
Below, we present ten captioned images that depict and explore the borderscapes of routiers as they perceive, imagine, and experience the multitude of borders in which their livelihoods are embedded. Selected still images stem from audiovisual materials collected between 2017 and 2019 during ethnographic fieldwork and the filming of a documentary among Senegalese routiers.[2] Our research included extensive fieldwork in Lisbon and Dakar, as well as two ten-day journeys from Portugal to Senegal, travelling in late 1980s Peugeots 504s with the same seasoned routier: Mbaye Sow, who is now 63 years old. However, since pandemic restrictions were introduced in early 2020, most of this activity has disappeared, and the actors who once participated in it have either moved elsewhere or had to find other means of making a living. This is not to say that the flow of goods came to a halt, only that it has found other trajectories, from individual carriage by plane or bus to container shipping.
The result is a constellation of more or less singular perspectives that feed an on-going debate not only on how to visually represent borders writ large (Kudžmaitė and Pauwels 2020), but also on how certain groups of people embody (Mbembe 2019; Agier 2016), see and are seen by those very borders (Ball 2014; M’Charek 2020; Plájás, M’Charek and Baar 2019). Ultimately, our exploration is an invitation for the reader/viewer to embark on a journey of discovery.
A SENEGALESE ENCLAVE
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
The Senegalese workshops in Reboleira, a parish of Amadora in the outskirts of Lisbon, are located along a short segment of a former military road. In the mid-2000s, following the violent clearance of an existing informal neighbourhood, routiers seized the opportunity to set up their open-air car workshops in the area.
BORDER LEXICON
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017
This image depicts the road entering Rosal de la Frontera, located approximately 4 km away from the official border between Portugal and Spain. The only elements that acknowledge the existence of an international border are the road signposting and the border-lexicon applied to localities. Border checkpoints were dismantled in the mid-1990s following the implementation of the Schengen Agreement, and nowadays, there is virtually no control or surveillance, at least at the gateways and moments of crossing well identified by routiers. For them, this is essentially an economic frontier, which they master well, strategically juggling with the differential cost of things, particularly in terms of fuel, which is more affordable on the Spanish side.
ACROSS THE STRAIGHT
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
Some 11.000 nautical miles (20 km) separate the ports of Algeciras (Spain) from Tanger Med (Morocco). (…) For routiers, crossing this border means that while obstacles may not suddenly disappear upon entering “Africa”, things can be more easily managed, and the relative value of the vehicles and goods carried automatically increases.
MNEMONIC BORDER
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
The unknown and occult, fear, and landscape elements but also mountain ranges, rivers, forests, have represented – and still represent – some of the foundational and empirical arguments at the origin of many border demarcations and imaginaries throughout history.
INVISIBLE LINES
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
In the near horizon lies the borderline between Morocco and Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony known for its rich fishing and phosphate resources. That rectilinear imaginary line, which we cannot see but only grasp through other elements, shall remain invisible inasmuch Moroccan sovereignty is not called into question. Subtler aspects inform about the status and plight of this territory. As routiers move into Western Sahara occupied territories’, urban settlements gradually fade away, and the distances in between grow larger.
BORDER SOUNSCAPES
Source: © Ricardo Falcão 2022
At the Morocco-Guerguerat strip border post, a huge, ten-meter tall scanner analyses vehicles. (…)
The straight horizontal line of the spectrogram (first 53 seconds) depicts the sound emanating from the scanner: a humming noise mixed with a warning siren that is repeated in short cycles. The humming low noise is interrupted (final seconds) by a hissing sound from the release of a truck’s air brake, now ready to move forward. Indifferent to the geopolitical limit, birds fly and sing continuously across the arid and littered landscape.
“KANDAHAR”
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
A cemetery of vehicles grows by the day in the roughly 5 km of the Guerguerat buffer zone between Morocco and Mauritania border posts.
TRAVELLING BORDER
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
The road is the routiers’ own country. Beyond the roadside lies the unknown, an immense uncharted territory.
BORDER TWINS
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2019.
Between the twin border towns of Rosso-Mauritania and Rosso-Senegal, a smoky barge ferries cars, trucks, people and goods across the river Senegal. Locals cross freely without any form of control. This sudden in-betweenness of the river as a border provides an unique opportunity to capture images.
THE BORDER WITHIN
Source: © Pedro F. Neto 2017.
Mbaye Sow negotiated for extra time to meet a police officer responsible for overseeing the convoy of routiers travelling from Rosso-Senegal to Gambia. (…) It is worth noting that according to Senegalese law, vehicles older than eight years are not allowed to remain but only to traverse the country. However, this does not prevent the routiers’ networks from finding alternative ways to re-enter Senegal.
Despite their resilience, routiers constantly feel like foreigners no matter where they go. (…) Be it in Europe or in West Africa, routiers embody the frontier (Mbembe 2019; Agier 2016; Konrad 2015), a shifting, mobile frontier that remains within them.
THE MISSING PICTURE
In early 2020, the routier activity came to a halt due to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to the closure of international borders. Since then, most routiers have sought alternative sources of income in Europe or Senegal. Mbaye Sow, for instance, first migrated to France to work as a fruit picker, then moved on to Germany to work in an Amazon sorting facility, before eventually returning to Portugal to work on a construction site in Lisbon.
Although land borders have since reopened, most of the routiers we met did not return to Reboleira.
Pedro Figueiredo Neto e Ricardo Falcão
NETO, Pedro Figueiredo (pedrofneto@ics.ulisboa.pt) – ICS-ULisboa, Portugal. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7687-7202
FALCÃO, Ricardo (ricfal@gmail.com) – CEI-IUL, Portugal. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7419-865X
Para citar esta versão:
Pedro Figueiredo Neto e Ricardo Falcão, «Seeing like a routier: routiers’ borderscapes between Southern Europe and West Africa», Etnográfica Ágora-Multimodal Alt [Online], 2023, posto online no dia 10 novembro 2023.
URL: https://etnografica.cria.org.pt/ptcms/multimodal-section-audiovisual/175
REFERENCES
AGIER, Michel, 2016, Borderlands: Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition. London: Polity Press.
DELL’AGNESE, Elena, and Anne-Laure A. SZARY, 2015, “Borderscapes: from border landscapes to border aesthetics”, Geopolitics, 20 (1): 4-13. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2015.1014284.
KONRAD, Victor, 2015. “Toward a theory of borders in motion”, Journal of Borderland Studies, 30 (1): 1-1 DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2015.1008387.
KUDŽMAITĖ, Gintaré, and Luc PAUWELS, 2020, “Researching visual manifestations of border spaces and experiences: conceptual and methodological perspectives”, Geopolitics, 27 (1): 260-291. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2020.1749838.
MBEMBE, Achile, 2019, “Bodies as borders”, From the European South, 4: 5-18. Available at: < http://europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it > (last consulted October 2023).
M’CHAREK, Amade, 2020, “Tentacular faces: race and the return of the phenotype in forensic identification”, American Anthropologist, 122 (2): 369-380.
NETO, Pedro F., and Ricardo FALCÃO, 2022, “Routiers’ transformational trajectories of waste, from Portugal to Senegal”, in Giulia Daniele, Manuel J. Ramos and Pedro F. Neto (eds.), Border Crossings In and Out of Europe, 87-105. Available at: < https://cei.iscte-iul.pt/en/publicacao/2022-border-crossings-in-and-out-of-europe/ > (last consulted October 2023).
PLÁJÁS, Ildikó Z., Aamade M’CHAREK, and Huub van BAAR, 2019, “Knowing ‘the Roma’: visual technologies of sorting populations and the policing of mobility in Europe”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37 (4): 589-605. DOI: 10.1177/0263775819837291.
