Modern Nomads, Cosmopolitans or Vagabonds?

Modern Nomads, Cosmopolitans or Vagabonds? How can we describe the recent bordercrossing Tuareg (Ishumar) in the central Sahara? Are they new modern nomads, because they move irregularly, situativ and according to individual taste in the Libyan-Algerian-Nigerian-Malian borderland? Are they cosmopolitans, because they are diaspora people, exiles and migrants who are at the same time victims of modernity? Or are they simple Vagabonds, because of their lack of morals, norms and values? The aim of this project is an analyses of the recent borderliner, their several strategies and their patterns of thought in the central Sahara. Examining strategies of mobilty, territoriality, networking, ideology and belonging among these "borderliner" may help us in understanding nomadic societies in a globalized context. With answering the questions of this project, we can deconstruct and over-come the polarising logics of opposing "nomadism - sedentarisation" and try to build up a structural fluid concept of a mobile society. With that we come closer to a crucial question: What is the future of (ex-) nomads? Are the becoming settled citizens or disrooted borderliner?

Modern Nomads, Cosmopolitans or Vagabonds? How can we describe the recent bordercrossing Tuareg (Ishumar) in the central Sahara? Are they new modern nomads, because they move irregularly, situativ and according to individual taste in the Libyan-Algerian-Nigerian-Malian borderland? Are they cosmopolitans, because they are diaspora people, exiles and migrants who are at the same time victims of modernity? Or are they simple Vagabonds, because of their lack of morals, norms and values? The aim of this project is an analyses of the recent borderliner, their several strategies and their patterns of thought in the central Sahara. Examining strategies of mobilty, territoriality, networking, ideology and belonging among these "borderliner" may help us in understanding nomadic societies in a globalized context. With answering the questions of this project, we can deconstruct and over-come the polarising logics of opposing "nomadism - sedentarisation" and try to build up a structural fluid concept of a mobile society. With that we come closer to a crucial question: What is the future of (ex-) nomads? Are the becoming settled citizens or disrooted borderliner?