Peripheral Space-Making: Migration, Trade, and Contested Authority in West Africa’s Rural Border Corridors

This paper investigates the governance of migration and mobility in the non-urban borderlands of Benin, Niger, and Nigeria. These spaces are characterized by deep historical connectivity, contemporary “mixed migration” flows, and a contested or diluted state presence. While migration governance research overwhelmingly centers on formal policy in urban cores, this study shifts the analytic lens to the periphery, examining how mobility is regulated in practice in remote, often marginalised border corridors. The research focuses on strategic, non-urban sites, including Gaya and Illela in Niger, Sabe in Benin, and the Oke-Ogun region in Nigeria, which function as critical nodes of arrival, transit, and informal economic activity. In these spaces, formal regional frameworks like the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol coexist with, and are often superseded by, robust informal institutions. The paper argues that two interrelated systems constitute the primary architecture of migration governance here- the transnational kinship networks and niche informal economies, specifically the cross-border trade in herbal medicine. These systems facilitate movement, mitigate risk, allocate resources, and sustain livelihoods, operating as a form of endogenous governance that negotiates, supplements, and sometimes subverts state authority. Through qualitative fieldwork, the study contributes to key debates on peripheral space-making, non-state migration governance, and core-periphery relations. It demonstrates how borderlands are not merely passive recipients of mobile populations but are actively produced and transformed by them, becoming dynamic socio-economic zones. Ultimately, the paper contends that a comprehensive understanding of migration in West Africa requires moving beyond the city to the borderland, where the realities of mobility are intimately woven into the fabric of informal economies and social networks that operate beneath, alongside, and beyond the reach of the state.