Ambivalences of mobility: rival state authorities and mobile strategies in a Saharan conflict

How do ongoing histories of mobility in economic and political life affect rival state authorities’ claims over a disputed territory? In the conflict over Western Sahara, wide-ranging strategies of mobility pose a challenge to familiar tropes of states constraining movement while subjects seek to escape such control. Morocco and its rival, the liberation movement Polisario Front, both curb mobility while their mobile Sahrawi subjects evade the authority of a state; simultaneously, however, each state authority invests in the circulation of persons to support claims over territory while Sahrawis exercise mobility to enhance their position vis-à-vis a state authority. Mobility emerges as an ambivalent means of mediating and transforming power relations, especially between governing authorities and governed constituencies. [mobility, Morocco, Polisario Front, sovereignty, the state, territory, Western Sahara]