The current political developments in Libya and northern Mali represent nothing less than the renegotiation of the post-colonial political order. The toppling of authoritarian regimes in Libya and the subsequent disintegration of the country in post-revolutionary camps and regions, the continuing rebellion of the Tuareg in northern Mali, accompanied by the rise of transnational Islamist and Jihadist forces have led to the fragmentation of state structures, to more heterogeneity in politics, and to the emergence of non-state power groups which gain relevance on the complex political stage. Many of these processes happen across state borders and are thus transnational realities that challenge state conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality and citizenship. The paper brings together three theoretical concepts and fields of research: heterarchy, (historical and present) connectivities in northwest Africa, and the importance of local actors/locality. The first concept of heterarchy is a recent one, responding to the rapid development of political orders in Africa and elsewhere within the last twenty years. Heterarchy points at central traits of current political (state and non-state) orders, namely the mutable and unstable intertwining of state and non-state orders and the plurality of competing power groups. The concept of connectivity (across states and borders) is a newly re-discovered topic, perceiving state borders (and the Sahara desert) not as barriers, but as transitional spaces. It allows a better understanding of recent political developments and their historical roots. Recent studies have demonstrated that African borderlands are particular zones in which transnational realities challenge state conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality and citizenship and also generate specific interconnected political settings. The concept local actors/locality is well rooted in political anthropology and political sociology. It underlines the importance of the local in negotiation processes and struggles over what political order to establish.

Smuggling is commonly presented as an activity practiced in the ‘shadows’, ‘under the radar of the state’, and fundamentally ungoverned. This paper challenges this conception by examining the institutional governance of informal cross-border trade through informal and hybrid institutions. Based on 14 months of original fieldwork in the borderlands of Tunisia and Morocco, the paper argues that informal cross-border trade (ICBT) across the Maghreb is highly regulated through a dense network of informal institutions that determine the costs of ICBT, the goods that can pass through certain nodes, as well as their quantity. Through these institutions, ICBT has established trading channels that are illegal and yet normalised, and segmented from the routes that contain more illicit goods. The paper highlights key features of these institutions that inform the contemporary literature on informal institutions and hybrid governance. First, it finds state structures deeply involved in the negotiation and maintenance of these institutions, suggesting their role as a deliberate and strategic element of regional economic governance. Second, it finds that informal institutions governing ICBT in the region are commonly impersonal, establishing rule-based interactions between traders and law enforcement agents, rather than mere clientelistic relationships. And third, it finds that the adherence of local populations to these institutions primarily results from local economic strategies, and does not imply congruence with complex local conceptions of legitimacy. Taken together, the analysis of these institutions provides a novel and empirically grounded perspective on the reality of border porosity in the Maghreb.

The Tunisian coastal town of Zarzis sprawls on a wide strip of sand dotted with olive trees and elaborate villas, whose construction is largely funded by remittances from men working in France. Zarzis also boasts the last Tunisian port before the Libyan frontier, which lies 80km south. It is believed that “under Ben Ali, Tunisia’s sea border was the most secure in the entire Maghreb region” (Pro Asyl 2014). Despite changes in political leadership in the country since the 2011 revolution, the European Union has remained constant in the nature of its demands to Tunisia when it comes to border control. As a result, while in the months following the revolution Zarzis had turned into one of the main points of departure for the Italian island of Lampedusa, this period of openness did not last for long. Zarzis has since reverted to being strongly implicated in the production and policing of the EU’s border. This has not however prevented the young men belonging to the generation that was too young to leave in 2011 from seeking to do the "harga" - the burning of the frontier. At the same time, the town’s proximity to Libya also results in the presence of "rescapés" – people rescued in Tunisian waters while trying to reach Europe from Libya – and of the unidentified dead bodies of those who died on that same crossing. Based on 18 months ethnographic research in Zarzis, this paper will explore how migration is experienced and imagined by the inhabitants of this double frontier with the EU and Libya, and how this relates to people’s understandings of themselves and of the state. What is a good, ethical and dignified life for this borderland community? What is considered worth living for, and so worth dying for? How does the presence of both living and dead foreigners similarly constrained by the EU’s maritime border affect these understandings?