Étude sociologique comparative des activités informelles des unités économiques et sociales des frontières

Abstract

The affirmation of the informal economy in the multi-faceted socio-economic landscape is self-evident. The cross-border informality segment has, in particular, taken on the appearance of a phenomenon inherent in a social and economic environment that is undergoing profound changes. It is for us to highlight the informal activities of the borders which constitute a phenomenon of which is our responsibility to restore the complexity as one of transversal contacts that break the interstate physical boundaries. The main purpose of our thesis is, mutatis mutandis, an attempt to understand the dialectic of cross-border informality, which is now a transnational phenomenon. We have the borders of Algeria as a field of study to grasp the empirical realities of frontier spaces. Field surveys made of socio-anthropological observations and interviews with the actors were conducted at the land borders East, West and South of Algeria but also maritime and air in the North. The empirical investigations carried out confirm the existence, at the level of the borders, of these spaces of rupture and coalition, of a cross of interests between the organized social networks and composed of human chains whose constituents are in search, according to their positioning, of subsistence but also of accumulation. This phenomenon relies on the deployment of actors' strategies for circumventing devices. The results show the existence of cross-border cross-border trade whose terms of trade are more favorable to third-party economies. The analysis of this phenomenon, based on a comparative sociological approach, made it possible to discern the existence of an illegal segment that manifests itself at the level of the terrestrial borders according to the territorial particularities. It is a patent and fleeting reality whose functioning, composition and motivations do not leave the shadow of a doubt on the ingenuity and the engineering which founds a whole parallel cross-border system. Ultimately, this work is a radioscopy of the synchronized synergy between the economic and social units of the borders that participate in the erasure of borders in the current era of globalization.