Abstract
While non-state actors have recently proliferated, nomads we argue challenge sovereignty in ways others do not. Nomadism undermines states’ capacity to tax, conscript, and otherwise regulate population. However, nomadism constitutes an additional non-material threat to the modern territorial state. By disrupting states’ claims to territorial exclusivity, nomadism undermines the ideational foundations of statehood. States have responded to nomadism in three ways. Many forcibly settle nomads. Weak states, unable to secure borders, may allow nomads to migrate relatively freely. Others voluntarily facilitate freer migration by reducing the salience of borders.
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Notes
- 1.
For canonical accounts of state formation and expansion, see Olson (<CitationRef CitationID="CR30" >1993</Citation Ref>) and Tilly (<CitationRef CitationID="CR43" >1985</Citation Ref>).
- 2.
Nomads are thus somewhat different from ethno-national diasporas, which are detached from their traditional territory but are not defined by being traditionally migratory or pastoral (such as the Jewish population of Central and Eastern Europe, which the Zionist movement argued was not so much a religious minority as a nation without a state—we are grateful to the editor for indicating this contrast to us).
- 3.
Some accounts of state formation take tax collection to be the primary purpose in settling populations that go on to form early states. See Tilly (<CitationRef CitationID="CR43" >1985</Citation Ref>) and Olson (<CitationRef CitationID="CR30" >1993</Citation Ref>).
- 4.
Material and ideational/ontological threats overlap, and many of the threats addressed in our cases exhibit aspects of both. A parallel argument is presented by Wendt and Duvall (<CitationRef CitationID="CR652" >2008</Citation Ref>, pp. 620–622), who suggest that the potential existence of extraterrestrial life, in the form of UFOs, threatens the state both materially and ontologically, resulting in a ‘UFO taboo’ in which UFOs are effectively ignored by authorities. The ontological-ideational threat consists of the notion that a world government might be necessary to combat a material extraterrestrial threat, undermining the current sovereignty-anarchy formula.
- 5.
Scott’s work (<CitationRef CitationID="CR653" >2009</Citation Ref>) on Southeast Asian hill tribes as escapees from the state suggests a related logic, although he covers a different phenomenon—flight from the state as a reaction to it, rather than historical precedence over it. As such, these are not so much pre-state actors as ‘flee-state actors’.
- 6.
A more radical variant of this strategy, less often seen, is forced migration off the state’s territory—the ethnic cleansing of the nomadic minority from the state. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Roma were forcibly settled or ethnically cleansed in Europe.
- 7.
Similar to the debate about Palestinian refugees, Goering (<CitationRef CitationID="CR12" >1979</Citation Ref>, p. 5) points out that there is controversy as to whether Bedouin fled the hostilities or whether a massive exodus was planned by the Zionist leadership.
- 8.
Falah (<CitationRef CitationID="CR10" >1989</Citation Ref>, p. 87) disputes this evidence noting that ‘there are sizeable deficiencies [in the provision of services and infrastructure to the Bedouin] and services are not provided equally to non Jewish residents’. See also Krakover (<CitationRef CitationID="CR18" >1999</Citation Ref>, p. 558).
- 9.
However, this is not to say that the Bedouin did not actively resist state efforts to settle them. Many refused to register lands under the Ottomans and the British (Shamir, <CitationRef CitationID="CR38" >1996</Citation Ref>, p. 241), and, as already noted, numerous ‘spontaneous’ or illicit Bedouin settlements arose despite government plans to the contrary.
- 10.
These states are, in Robert Jackson’s terms (<CitationRef CitationID="CR16" >1990</Citation Ref>), as much quasi-states as states proper.
- 11.
This finds parallels in Ruggie’s (<CitationRef CitationID="CR35" >1993</Citation Ref>, pp. 164–165) discussion of extraterritoriality, wherein relations between modern states are made possible by the territorial exception of diplomatic institutions. Extraterritorially makes modern territorial rule possible much in the same way that weak states can legitimate the practice of nomadism. In each instance, the exception permits the rule.
- 12.
Under German rule, the Maasai of Tanganyika were restricted to the ‘Maasai Reserve’, which appears to have been anywhere south of the Moshi-Arusha-Dodoma road. All areas north of this division line were set aside for settlers. After the First World War, and the British take-over of Tanganyika, a more closely restricted reserve was created in 1924. Any Maasai found grazing outside of the reserve was fined 10 heifers and forcibly returned. In Kenya, huge game reserves were created in the north and south from the early 1900s. Maasai and other pastoralists who had pasturelands in these reserve areas were not initially moved (Enghoff, <CitationRef CitationID="CR8" >1990</Citation Ref>, pp. 96–97; Ndagala, <CitationRef CitationID="CR27" >1990</Citation Ref>, pp. 52–53).
- 13.
The Sywnnerton Plan, for short; this set of policies was formulated in response to the Mau Mau war for independence (Ochieng, <CitationRef CitationID="CR29" >2007</Citation Ref>, p. 459)
- 14.
See, for example, Bishop (<CitationRef CitationID="CR4" >2007</Citation Ref>, p. 16) and Narman (<CitationRef CitationID="CR26" >1990</Citation Ref>, pp. 108–121).
- 15.
According to the Humanitarian Policy group, more than 95% of regional trade in East Africa is conducted through ‘unofficial channels’, and much of this revolves around the trade in food and agriculture products (Pavanello, <CitationRef CitationID="CR32" >2010</Citation Ref>, p. 2).
- 16.
For example, the Green Pass System, now in effect, targets such pre-existing practices by harmonizing phytosanitary measures for agricultural products among Common Market for Eastern and Southern African States (COMESA) members. Similarly, common vaccination schemes lessen the threat of disease transmission among cattle and other livestock transported across borders unsanctioned. Finally, the Regional Resilience Enhancement Against Drought program (RREAD) explicitly looks to enlist pastoralist agricultural methods to reduce vulnerability to drought. Ostensibly, regional organizations like COMESA are meant to enhance trade, but they also legitimate pre-existing activities that the state cannot and has not been otherwise able to curtail.
- 17.
While there is no agreed-upon term with which to refer to the ethnic group, scholars and activists alike have tended, in recent years, to adopt the term ‘Roma’, which is a self-appellation. However, this term may exclude Sinti and other groups who do not consider themselves ‘Roma’ but are generally included in the term ‘Gypsy’. Confusing the matter further are many itinerant groups of non-Romani origin, seen to be autochthonous to Europe, such as the English Romanichels, the Welsh Kale, the Jenische of Switzerland, the Dutch Woonwagenbewoner, and the Quinqui of Spain. Bancroft (<CitationRef CitationID="CR2" >2005</Citation Ref>, pp. 5–8) uses the term ‘Gypsy-Traveller’ to refer to these non-Romani groups and ‘Roma’ to refer to continental European, non-autochthonous Gypsies, including Roma and Sinti.
- 18.
For example, the Habsburg Empire, which engaged more heavily in state-building activities, saw as their civilizing mission the elevation of the Roma to the ranks of ‘useful’ citizens through forced assimilation. In Yugoslavia, home to a more pluralist form of Marxism, Roma were granted national minority status, along with language and cultural rights, and nomadic Roma were not forced to settle (Fraser, <CitationRef CitationID="CR11" >1992</Citation Ref>, p. 282).
- 19.
The Nazi extermination of Gypsies is well documented, though estimates of the number of victims ranges widely from 200,000 to 1.5 million. Shahar (<CitationRef CitationID="CR37" >2007</Citation Ref>, pp. 12–13, 18) attributes the survival of a small minority of the Roma population in Germany and the occupied territories to a certain ‘romantic racism’ embraced by Himmler and other Germans, who saw certain racially ‘pure’ Gypsies as ancient Aryans, speaking an Indo-European language.
- 20.
The ECHR hears cases brought under the European Convention of Human Rights, a treaty signed by all member states of the Council of Europe (Golston, <CitationRef CitationID="CR13" >2002</Citation Ref>, p. 152).
- 21.
Policies devised to persuade the Roma to stay in their ‘sending’ states have been pursued throughout the EU (Guglielmo & Waters, <CitationRef CitationID="CR14" >2005</Citation Ref>, p. 773). There have also continued to be significant local discrimination against the Roma. For examples in 1999, the city of Ustf nad Labem in the Czech Republic erected a wall to separate Roma families from their Czech neighbors, and a mayor in Ostrava district promised subsidized airfares to those Roma who wished to move to Canada, claiming that Roma and ‘whites’ could not live together. However, under pressure from the EU and the Council of Europe, the wall was dismantled a month later (Braham & Braham, <CitationRef CitationID="CR5" >2000</Citation Ref>, p. 99). Golston (<CitationRef CitationID="CR13" >2002</Citation Ref>, pp. 158–159) notes that Italian teachers ‘find it “impossible to blend the nomad culture with ours”—despite the fact that, as in most places, few of Italy’s 100,000 Roma are actually nomadic’. Across Europe, local police forces are complicit in anti-Roma violence, and victimized Roma often experience discriminatory legal proceedings (Golston, <CitationRef CitationID="CR13" >2002</Citation Ref>, pp. 156, 159). While anti-Roma prejudice is alive and well in today’s Europe, the shift away from state-level policies with respect to the Roma toward both local- and regional-level policy is a significant one, reflecting the de-emphasis of state borders in the EU.
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Levin, J., de Carvalho, G., Cavoukian, K., Cuthbert, R. (2020). Before and After Borders: The Nomadic Challenge to Sovereign Territoriality. In: Levin, J. (eds) Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28053-6_4
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