Infrastructures of belonging: an analysis of borders and closure in Eastern Morocco (L’Oriental)

This thesis starts from the Eastern region, located at the Moroccan-Algerian borderlands. It investigates the process of border closure, that took place through the set-up of fences, trenches, and walls, asking what happens when a border closes? Drawing on novel empirical research, from fieldwork as well as primary and archival sources, it maps out the relationship between the reinforcement of the international border demarcation with bordering, ordering and othering processes taking place away from the physical demarcation, in cities and their adjacent towns. The thesis investigates the intertwinement between infrastructures, as social, material, and affective devices, and the processes of bordering. We argue that the infrastructures launched by the regional and state authorities following closure, and to deal with its pitfalls, are embedded in a longer trajectory of negotiating internal symbolic and historical borders between the centre and periphery. The (de)bordering of the latter is at once a political project of belonging and a political of project of governance, redrawing the contours of citizenship and inclusion beyond the securitisation discourse. Presenting these strategies as sites for struggle between borderlanders, local elites, and the central state, illuminates the productivity of borders, and how the territory-state-society nexus is navigated and leveraged. This thesis seeks to contribute to the literature conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, it extends border studies’ insights to the case of a closed border in the Maghreb – highlighting new dynamics of power relations and imaginations of the nation-state through the case of infrastructures as bordering devices. Empirically, the thesis starts from the border as a departure point and presents novel insights drawn from primary sources to highlight the negotiations and contestations at the heart of bordering, while also widening the investigation into its affective dimension through anticipation, hope, waithood, and idleness.