Many refugee camps last longer than basic transient settlements. Their size, their population density, their layout, their concentration of infrastructures, their socio-occupational profile and the trading activities they have developed give them urban features. Yet their durability depends on other factors, including the relationship between refugees and the indigenous population, and the ecological environment, i.e. access to local resources. This article argues that a political backing is crucial since the host country can facilitate or forbid refugee settlements. In any case, a complete withdrawal or a sudden contraction of humanitarian aid would not automatically mean the closure of camps: whether because self-sustainability would allow virtual cities to emerge as market towns, or because refugees would refuse to come back home and would become clandestine migrants.

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In this volume, edited by a leading French specialist on Nigeria, we have attempted to adopt an original standpoint in publishing a limited number of essays which, taken together, are an attempt to renovate the way we produce scholarship on such an underground movement. We have brought together a large variety of scholars, many of them related to the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA-Nigeria) in a one way or another, from Nigeria, France, Germany, the UK and the US. Some immersed themselves in fieldwork a few years ago, when this was still possible. They brought back outstanding data on northern Nigeria that can no longer be collected today. Others used discourse analysis or existing data on violence in Nigeria in ways never attempted before. Some are well-known scholars in the field, while others have signed here their first scholarly publication.Far from being an univocal assemblage of papers, the book fosters debate in constructive ways. With this book, we hope to be able to stimulate new scholarly discussions on the fast-replicating emergence across the Sahelian belt of a series of movements that cannot be satisfactorily described only in simple terms as violent, terrorist or jihadist. For a movement such as Boko Haram to mutate from a sectarian group splitting away from the Izala movement to a full-grown rebellion threatening the integrity of the most powerful state in West Africa, you need more than religious fanatics, violent Salafist ideology, and intolerance. The ingredients that fuel the fire spreading across north-eastern Nigeria are yet to be fully described. Some are to be found within the existence of a political elite used to buying off the settlement of insurgencies and social crises and incapable of responding to a new type of threat, ideological in nature, otherwise than through the use of blunt force. Other elites among security forces also hide their own secret agendas, as sustained violence legitimates accrued budgets and assists them secure new lucrative markets for themselves, in ways inherited from the pre-1999 era.This book is not a cookbook. All the ingredients of the crisis are not identified, and it does not pretend to provide recipes to solve current issues. It merely offers a variety of glimpses into the Boko Haram phenomenon and fosters a better and more nuanced understanding of a crisis that threatens to destabilise a large part of Africa.Boko Haram has redefined the way jihadists challenge the post-colonial state in Africa. The probabilities are high that this model will soon be exported outside Nigeria. This book is timely.

Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, docteur en science politique, est chercheur à l'Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD). Il a notamment publié États faibles et sécurité privée en Afrique noire,

La notion de réfugié est relativement moderne, en particulier sur le plan juridique. Pourtant, avant même l’arrivée du colonisateur, l’Afrique a connu de nombreux exodes qui ont marqué son paysage sociodémographique. Le recul de l’historien permet de mieux apprécier l’ampleur de ces phénomènes. Ainsi, dans le nord de l’actuelle République centrafricaine au xix e siècle, les razzias des esclavagistes musulmans ont provoqué des déplacements de population qui ont bouleversé l’habitat, les modes alimentaires et les pratiques agraires. Pour échapper à l’esclavage, les réfugiés de l’époque sont partis vers le Sud et l’Ouest, parfois jusqu’au Soudan, où la mémoire collective a entretenu le souvenir de leur épopée.

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