The mobility strategies of the Senegalese fishermen at the Senegal-Mauritania maritime border

Since the beginning of the 1980s, fishermen from the northern Senegalese border city of Saint Louis have faced significant difficulties at the Senegal-Mauritania maritime border. As a response to the strengthening of Mauritania’s border controls, they have developed mobility strategies to reach Mauritanian waters and circumvent border regulation practices. Drawing on in-depth field interviews in Senegal, this article sheds light on Saint Louis fishermen’s different strategies and tactics. I argue that fishermen have become active border producers and that their movement has shaped the maritime borderland in a geographic and political sense. I will show that through these mobility strategies and tactics, the local fishermen have developed significant appropriation practices of the Mauritanian maritime spaces. Their specific language and knowledge, creation of names and mental representations of these spaces challenge Mauritania’s fishing resources regulation and give legitimacy to their illegal cross-border movement.