States and Pre-State Actors: The Nomadic Challenge to Westphalian Territoriality
44 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009 Last revised: 25 Aug 2009
Date Written: 2009
Abstract
The collapse of walls and borders after the Cold War has been coupled with a proliferation of transborder non-state actors. However, many non-state actors predate the state system itself. Surveying the phenomenon of traditional nomadism, this paper seeks to extend a critical dialogue about territoriality and borders in IR. Nomadism appears to present unique challenges to sovereignty. It destabilizes the state’s ability to maintain a territorially fixed population under law, undermining the state’s ability to control its borders. Adopting a constructivist approach, we argue that nomadism constitutes as much an ideational as a material threat to the state. The impulse to delegitimate and curtail nomadism belongs to the ideational structure of sovereignty. By disrupting the territorial foundation of statehood, nomadism becomes a source of ontological insecurity for the state.
States have responded to nomadism chiefly in three ways. Many forcibly settle nomads. Others facilitate relatively free international migration, by reducing the salience of borders as barriers to transit. In many further instances, weak states are unable to secure borders, allowing nomads to migrate relatively freely. We offer three examples: Bedouins, often forcibly settled; Roma, permitted to migrate transnationally within the European Union; and African pastoralists, permitted to migrate by porous borders. While the Bedouin and African instances suggest a necessary conflict between the role of state and the culture of nomadism, the European experience suggests that an ontological desecuritization of nomadism is possible: a relaxation of borders can allow these two political frames of reference to coexist.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation