Abstract

"Present your identity document !", "Wen identité hanak", "pièce identité"

These expressions, in Chadian Arabic or French, are familiar to anyone who is used to taking public transport, coaches from travel companies that have been growing rapidly over the last ten years, to travel to the South or North of Chad. Today, to travel from one region to another, or to walk around the city, the most precious thing seems to be the national identity card or at least a passport, a school identity card, a birth certificate, a biometric electoral card, or a professional card. Freedom of movement, which is one of the rights enshrined in Chad's fundamental texts, is increasingly restricted by so-called 'identity documents'. The aim of this paper is to understand the different ways in which identity papers are checked at the checkpoints that have been set up for years on the national territory.  Based on this identity control system, I try to question the techniques of governmentality via the mechanisms of the exercise of power, of which the police control of identities is part. I intend to understand the role played by the identity card in the movements of individuals on the national territory. I will describe and analyze the social interactions between security agents and travelers through ethnographic observations on the road between Ndjamena and Moundou. Beyond the descriptive aspect of this paper, road control barriers in Chad participate in the maintenance of the authoritarian apparatus of power.

Dr. Kelma Manatouma is MIASA junior fellow and lecturer at the University of the Antilles (Guadeloupe). He completed his PhD in Political Sciences at the University of Paris-Ouest la Défense-Nanterre. Previously, he was member of the research programme on “The Bureaucratization of African Societies”, run by the German Historical Institute Paris and CREPOS in Dakar. He is a specialist in the trans-border region of Chad and the Central African Republic as well as in identification and biometric politics