Mobilités plurielles et sens des modes d’habiter dans le sud-ouest algérien (wilaya de Béchar)

Abstract

This contribution presents the characteristics of the different forms of urban and domestic mobility and their socio-cultural logics observed within the Wilaya (department) of Bechar (southwest of Algeria). Based on the observation that the planning of contemporary urban habitat departs from the logic of traditional mobility, the diachronic approach adopted seeks to capture the evolution of the facts studied in the context of a Saharan environment undergoing rapid transformation. Indeed, and until the end of the colonial period, two modes of inhabiting coexisted : one nomad involving continual movement, the other sedentary based on a stable anchorage with the practice of internal nomadism. This work questions the evolution of these forms of mobility and their logics through current urban ways of living and their spatial inscriptions.To apprehend these forms of mobility and their specific articulation, this contribution demonstrates that contemporary urban living in Béchar is built in the logic of the evolution of the old practices of sedentarization of nomads in relation to accelerated urbanization and the improvement of socioeconomic conditions of the population. Likewise, the characteristics of the different scales and forms of mobility are apprehended : appearance of new forms of nomadism and transhumance, multiplication and transformation of internal migratory movements, double migratory flow between the north and the south of the country, multiresidentialitie and internal semi-nomadism. characterizing the domestic dwelling.The aim of this research is to grasp the meanings, strategies and specific issues of these practices of actors who move and replace themselves in the context of a rapid modernization of the Algerian Sahara. In addition to the historical, documentary and statistical sources available, the research was based on an ethno-architectural survey in the town of Bechar and its immediate outskirts.

Keywords

• mobility
• Algeria
• Béchar
• Sahara
• internal nomadism
• Saharan space