Contenu du sommaire : Frontières et souveraineté : quelles déclinaisons américaines ? + Varia

Although North American neighbours appear to be diverging significantly in politics, policies and outlooks, Canada, the United States, and Mexico remain linked by geography and the borders that also divide them. Whereas this study acknowledges North American divergence in the 21st century, we argue that by examining North American borders and borderlands in comparative perspective it is possible to see more clearly the linkages, seams and connectivities, and establish a realization of how North America works. The current pandemic illustrates the changing function and meaning of borders in a post-humanistic North America, where borders both help to contain the spread of the virus and sustain irreversible integration and systems of continental mobility.

Several claims on maritime spaces in the Arctic have resulted in disputes between riparian states, even though many of these disputes have been solved through negotiations. Among these disputes, we find the disagreement between the United States and Canada concerning the limits of their Exclusive Economic Zone in the Beaufort Sea. This is a relatively old dispute (1977) which, despite the cordial relations between Ottawa and Washington, does not seem to find a solution. This article aims at analyzing the situation in the Beaufort Sea, in order to present the reasons for the continuation of this dispute. Based on legal elements and government documents, the objective is to offer a synthetic reading of the factors that explain the weak commitment of the American and Canadian governments to solve this low-priority dispute..

Since March 2020, borders have been the instruments of simultaneous closure rationales throughout the world. At the same time, the continuation of migratory movements underlined their porosity. We focus on Latin America's state borders because this unprecedented situation shown once again how they are subject to contradictory processes and schizophrenic rationales that come into tension and reflect the current dynamics of the sub-continent. From an approach based on the border studies theoretical framework, and more specifically through the political geography of borders one, this article deals with the bordering processes at work on the Latin America borders's and the contradictory dynamics that we can observe there today. Around borders, new complex realities are emerging, which sometimes give the image of a fragmented continent and sometimes a increasing integration to the sub-continental. The political, economic and social tensions to which the Latin American borders are subjected today can be summarized around three notions - power, preservation and predation - which seem us reflecting the major issues at stake in these spaces today. Each of these three notions crystallizes strong dialectics which will be considered in turn: political over-investment vs. abandonment of the margins, cross-border integration vs. securitization, preservation vs. predation.

The Falkland Islands (Malvinas) are a British Overseas Territory (BOT) and have been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGT) since 1946. Argentina claims sovereignty over the archipelago and a number of other islands in the South Atlantic, leading to a simmering dispute, which turned in a full-scale war in 1982. The Argentine claim is based on the notion of continuity between the former Spanish empire and the states that were born following its demise in the early 19th century. In this vision, the British presence on the islands is viewed as a clear infringement of the territorial integrity inherited from the former colonial power. The United Kingdom's position was initially based on an early claim to the islands, before the end of Spanish colonial rule in South America and the peaceful occupation for a long period of the disputed territory and more recently on the right of the population to self-determination. Since the war, the dispute has remained central to the Anglo-Argentine relationship with periods of rapprochement and tension. Recent questions include the extension of the Exclusive Economic Zones and the competing claims by Argentina and the UK. Drawing on Michael Billig's notion of banal nationalism and Matthew Benwell's additional concept of blatant nationalism, this paper seeks to show how Argentina's territorial nationalism tries to dissolve the border with the Falkland Islands (Malvinas). By analyzing various elements in which banal nationalism is embedded such as passports, place names, maps, signposts or stamps the paper provides a picture of how blatant and banal nationalisms are connected. The evidence found suggests that this works at two levels: the institutions define and implement a set of policies whose purpose is to deny the existence of a border separating two sovereignties in international forums. These policies also contribute to the flagging of Argentine nationhood in a way that directly affects the individual's imaginary and their relationship to the border. This may make later negotiations more difficult if the concessions needed to reach a solution to the dispute are viewed as a betrayal of popular expectations.

This article contributes to research on urban geopolitics through an extrospective theorization of local territorial influence on the international stage. Empirically, the article focuses on a comparative study of extrospective development initiatives from Malaga (Spain) and Mazara del Vallo (Sicily) that have recently emerged in response to the effects of the Great Recession. We examine the symbolic, infrastructural and territorial dimensions of these strategically outward-oriented processes in order to advocate for a more transversal conceptualization of local geopolitical power than has been typically employed in current research. In doing so, our specifically extrospective approach provides a pathway for thinking across three key analytical distinctions that underpin geopolitical reasoning in the French School of Geopolitics: (i) those concerning territorial actions internal and external to the nation-state; (ii) the rapport between political and economic power rivalries, and; (iii) the role of conflict or consensus animating territorial action. Together, the issues seek to provide political geographers with scope to imagine alternative spaces by which local geopolitics is constituted today.

In this article, we question the modalities of representation of the geopolitical upheavals that have occurred since the early 1990s in Western spy cinema. To do so, we study the political issues and their spatialization in the last eight films of the James Bond saga and the six of the Mission Impossible saga, all released between 1995 and 2018. These films make it difficult to think our world outside the binary markers of the Cold War; nevertheless, they draw the outlines of a "postmodern geopolitics", with characteristics that are particularly salient after September 11, 2001 (globalization, multipolarity and new challenges linked to networked powers and counter-powers). They describe an unstable, illegible world, marked by the widespread infiltration of the power structures by increasingly indistinct enemies. They stage the anxieties linked to cyberspace, the relative disappearance of nation-states and the omnipresence of a diffuse threat against the West, emanating from psychologically unstable individuals. In short, they participate in the elaboration of a discourse aiming to depoliticize geopolitics, reducing its stakes to the necessary protection of the established order against the assaults of geographically and politically poorly defined entities.

This article analyses the spatial dynamics underneath the pogroms that took place in 2002, in Gujerat, India. Attacks were carried by Hinduist militants and solely targeted Muslims. Based upon a long-term ethnography, the article assesses the specific case of Ahmedabad, the economic main city of Gujerat. It defends the main argument that the specific location of violence nurtured a unique dynamic of segregation. Namely, the systematic targeting of mixed areas –spaces that were lived by both Hindus and Muslims– pushed the Muslim minority to gather in a peripheric area named Juhapura. Hence, high-, middle- and low-casts Muslims all gathered at the same place to look for a safe and secure ethnic entre-soi. This is an unprecedent reconfiguration of Indian residential patterns for space was traditionally organized according to economic cleavages, not ethnic ones. I analyze this newly constituted territory as a ghetto (Wacquant) and consider it to be a spatial dispositive of domination in a Foucaldian sense. From a Hinduist perspective, the ghetto intends to dominate the Muslim minority. One of the main features of the ghetto is indeed the selective neglect from the authority that its inhabitants have to face. But the lack of public amenities pushes them to manage the territory of the ghetto by themselves. In an apparent paradox though, by doing so the inhabitants consequently reverse the identity stigma that goes with the fact of living in a ghetto. Ultimately, they hence resist the domination that the ghetto aims at exerting on them via the ghetto.

Participatory practices in the environment and planning fields are tending to become more widespread (Alban et al., 2005). In France, citizen participation has been encouraged by a significant legislative trend since the 1980s and 1990s, which has led to the implementation of various types of public consultation processes (Raymond, 2009), some permanent, others temporary and most of which now have to include the participation of residents (Blondiaux, 2008; Muller, 2005). This development in participatory democracy, however, has come in for much criticism (Gourgues et al., 2013): some see the risk of it weakening representative democracy; others, on the contrary, deplore the lack of ambition of participatory processes, which rarely lead to co-decisions and often fail to secure equal expression for all points of view. In France, the Public Debate process was established by law under Act n°95-101 of February 2, 1995 on protection of the environment. The aim was to find a solution to address the strong opposition to major infrastructure projects, particularly high-speed railway lines (Lolive, 1999), observed in the early 1990s, the causes of which were considered to be a lack of information and a lack of consideration for the local populations affected (Dziedzicki, 2001). This consultation process is open to all citizens and was designed for major development projects with a high environmental impact. It aims to build up the social acceptability of a project through exchanges of different points of view (Gaudin, 2007; Doury et al., 2006; Blondiaux, 2008; Oiry, 2015). In reality, this public sphere for consultation does not always succeed in building consensus. How far are contentious positions taken into account in a participatory process that aims to avoid conflict in order to bring about a negotiated agreement on a project? How real is citizen empowerment in such public debates?This article aims to answer these questions by assessing the quality of participation in the case of a public debate process organized in 2011-2012 in south-western France (Landes département). This debate concerned an industrial gas storage project which, according to the project leader, would contribute to the energy transition. The research method was based on analysis of a textual corpus made up of verbatim transcriptions of the nine public meetings organized by the local committee in charge of organizing the public debate (CPDP) and on participant observation (the author being a member of this committee).The following results can be highlighted: - During this public debate, possibilities for citizens' expression of their views were very restrictive. - However, citizen participation in the public debate was very high.- During and outside the public debate process, a well-structured and cogently argued opposition movement to the project was gradually set up.- The emergence of this conflict has multiple causes and can be explained in particular by the specific characteristics of the area affected by the project.- The citizens mobilizing against the project never boycotted or obstructed the public debate process, but diverted it from its original purpose to turn it into a forum for protest.- While some researchers have emphasized the instrumentalization of mobilized citizens (Neveu, 2011) or their depoliticization (Gourgues, 2018) in public debates, the opposite was observed in the case studied here.

Although the influence of the private sector on urban planning is well established in urban studies and geography, the ways in which business and property owners take part in the management of homelessness has received far less attention. This article focuses on Portland (OR) in the United States as a means of understanding the motivations that underlie the role of the private sector and its impact on public policies. To this end, I focus on the support by Portland's downtown Business Improvement District of homeless outreach programs, and on the funding of two homeless shelters by business elites / philanthropists. I argue that although public authorities have different views on the actions to be taken to end homelessness, business elites often manage to bring initially-reluctant public authorities to support their projects in what might be termed a forced-march cooperation. I also highlight the ambivalence of the private sector and business elites' participation in homelessness management, given that the outreach programs they support and the homeless facilities they fund provide services for the homeless while simultaneously removing them from visible public space. In this sense, the involvement of business and property owners is also a way for them to protect their own interests.

The link between urban planning and transport networks is more than ever at the center of the concerns and expectations of the planning and transport actors. There is a strong interest from the research and professional communities in issues related to the design of more sustainable modes of urbanization, less costly in travel and less dependent on the automobile. The promotion of a city structured around transport networks mixes the polycentric urban organization scheme with that of the compact city, allowing the latter to move away from a representation limited to central spaces. This evolution of urban planning doctrines has been accompanied by a proliferation of new public action tools developed by state institutions, metropolitan governments, local authorities and even transport authorities to promote urban planning-transport coordination. In the Île-de-France region, the development of stations and station areas linked to the Grand Paris Express project has led to the establishment of “hub committees” that aim to overcome the plurality of ownership, project management and operators, and to build agreements on the basis of which actors can implement collective action. This paper analyzes this new instrument of public action in terms of its functioning, its missions and its interplay of actors. This makes it possible to address, from the angle of urban planning-transport coordination, the issue of governance in the capital region and to conclude that it is difficult to coordinate actors and scales, particularly in Greater Paris.

Conflicts regarding transport infrastructure projects are usual, but they seem different according to the mode. The purpose of this article is to analyze the reasons why the disputes regarding seaports projects are less strong and have less consequences on them (delay, additional cost, cancellation, appeal, modification, etc.) than in the case of highways and high-speed lines projects. Indeed, there is no publication which draws a comparative analysis of the three modes on conflicts and protests, which takes into account the new modes of participation resulting from the texts of 2008 and 2011, and which addresses the impact of participation and conflicts on the project. This article is based on three hypotheses: reasons which might explain protests seem to be different between the modes; the forms and intensity of mobilization appear to be different; the consequences of the challenge for the project seem to be different. These consequences can be assimilated to potential risks in project management. The first part provides a state of the art of research on participation and conflict. The second part presents the methodology. Eight transport projects were compared using three indicators: the grounds for contestation; the forms and intensity of mobilization; the possible consequences for the project. The third part analyzes the differences observed between each mode. The results of part 4 explain that disputes have fewer consequences for seaport projects compared to other modes because of attachment of inhabitants to the site, jobs created, difficulty for associations to assess the impact of construction on marine environment (which allows less easy to appeal) and the perimeter of projects.