Dynamiques socio-politiques et territorialités de l’immigration ivoirienne en Tunisie

Abstract

Like other Maghrebi countries, Tunisia has been at the heart of various flows and mobilities coming from all over the African continent, especially from its sub-Saharan portion, for at least twenty years. Quietly, this mainly Ivorian immigration is gradually taking place in Tunisian society, and raises important debates and social issues. Contrary to representations and works on so-called transit migration towards the European coast, this article – based on an ethnographic survey carried out between 2016 and 2019 – provides an understanding of the migratory strategies of these men and women from Côte d’Ivoire, in historical perspective, as well as their rationale for anchoring in Tunisia. Around which migration channels are these mobilities articulated? What place does Tunisia occupy in the strategies of Ivorian travellers, and around which spaces do their movements develop? And their integration? Far from the figure of the “refugee” or “migrant in transit” to the Maghreb, we propose to analyse what these travellers, as well as their practices of mobility, tell us about the wider transformations of intra-African migration.First, this article returns to the ways of positioning Tunisia as the new destination of choice for Ivorian immigration. It shows that these migratory networks were built thanks to the relocation of the African Development Bank (BAD) to Tunis, following the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire, and to the arrival of several hundred Ivorians in the country. These first arrivals succeeded in entering many professional fields and in developing a relational web between Côte d’Ivoire and Tunisia. It is starting from their networks that, at the end of the 2000s, more and more Ivorian citizens chose to come to Tunisia.The second part of the article returns to the role played by socio-political change in Côte d’Ivoire in their mobility. Indeed, many Ivorians justify their departure for Tunisia by the change in regime that followed the post-election crisis of 2011. By mobilising the register of ethnicity and their exclusion from the political game, these people expressed, in their mobilities, the structural changes to Ivorian society over the last twenty years. Indeed, beyond the change of regime, these Ivorian flows make visible a change in the political imaginary of success and of the figures of success in the country. Thus, our work accounts for the way in which, in a single movement, Ivorian migratory strategies, starting from socio-political dynamics, reconfigure the link and the possibilities between geographical mobility and social success. In the final section, the article interrogates the way in which these migratory strategies structure the modes of integration of these people in the Tunisian space. The examples of Tunis and Sfax are used to analyse the strategies of integration, the modes of anchoring and the new social practices of these Ivorians. Attention is given to bodies of sociability, especially associative, and their articulation in local spaces. More globally, it is about drawing the contours of the territoriality produced by these people and showing how their strategies of mobility are built around professional practices serving projects of social success.Thus, this article, in the scope of an Afrocentric perspective, helps to illuminate the new Ivorian migratory dynamic in Tunisia. It also questions the possible links between the exploration of a migratory dynamic and the role the political imaginary can play. In this respect, it contributes to the field of knowledge on the situation of African immigration in the country and, more broadly, on migration routes within Africa.

Keywords

• Tunisia
• Ivory Coast
• intra-African migrations
• migration strategy
• migrant territorialities