Artigos
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[+]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,
[+]Artigos
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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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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
[+]Artigos
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
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Em 2020, um ano após a realização de uma pesquisa que teve como objetivo principal analisar, comparativamente, os ciclos de greves de canavieiros, em Pernambuco, e de metalúrgicos de São Paulo e do ABC Paulista, que ocorreram em fins da década
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This article links the issues of the inhabit and housing rights with that of the making of citizenship, which are explored from an anthropological perspective. It is based on the ethographic work developed between 2015-2020 with the inhabitants of a
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In June 2020, the Argentine Ministry of Development launched the National Registry of Popular Economy (ReNaTEP) which, among other categories, included sex workers and strippers. Sex workers’ organizations celebrated the possibility of registering
[+]Recursividades
O artigo surge a partir de uma investigação baseada em etnografia: observação participante, recolha de histórias de vida, entrevistas e testemunhos de refugiados e migrantes, residentes em Portugal. Centramo-nos numa experiência particular de
[+]O livro e os seus críticos
Parte do nosso compromisso no trabalho etnográfico é o de reconhecer nossos interlocutores como sujeitos de desejo. Mesmo que esses desejos, escolhas e vontades não sejam aqueles entendidos por nós, pesquisadores, como “bons”, “melhores”
[+]O livro e os seus críticos
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[+]Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"
The idea for this dossier began with a conversation over one of those long breakfasts given at conferences. It was 2014 and the blows of the 2008 economic crisis were still being felt strongly. There was growing concern in the academic field over
[+]Recensões
At a time when it is critical to understand humanity and its various forms of socioeconomic and political life, anthropology and other social sciences are being threatened by a neoliberal emphasis on “relevant” courses in universities in Kenya.
[+]Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"
A discipline’s value depends on the institutional position of its valuers. In U.S. liberal arts undergraduate education, trustees, marketers, and parents routinely link disciplinary value to “return on investment”. This market logic is evident
[+]Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"
Neoliberal reforms arising from Spain’s entrance into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have had major consequences for academic practice and unleashed heated debate in the university community and society. This article explores the main
[+]Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"
This article analyzes how the working conditions for Mexican anthropologists have deteriorated throughout the last few decades. Until half a century ago, only a few dozen professional anthropologists practiced in Mexico, and most of them had access
[+]Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"
There are global neoliberal pressures on the academy that are more or less faced by anthropologists around the world. To what extent are anthropologists required to publish in English in SSCI-ranked journals to keep their jobs and get promoted? But
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This is a truly innovative ethnography about writing; a worthy anthropological response to Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion. It centers on the encounter between two marginal creators: a brilliant geometrician from Africa, and a seasoned
[+]Artigos
Fazer antropologia na boca do urso, sem descrições densas ou contextos teóricos, apenas numa dialética simples entre tensões do mundo ocidental “capitalista” e as cosmologias animistas do Norte. Uma pretensão que leva a antropóloga
[+]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.
