Bedouins and in-between border space in the northern Sinai

Abstract

The northern Sinai as interstice space of contestation offers useful insights concerning the relation between the dynamics of power and resistance. This article aims to analyse the complex relationship between the local inhabitants’ belonging and spatial practices by referring to the idea of in-betweenness. The article uses the notion of in-between border space to understand the Bedouins’ changing identity formations within a given spatial situation, as well as to trace the Egyptian State’s spatial variations in achieving social control within its territory. It is argued that the decades-long marginalization and oppression of the Bedouins by the Egyptian State turned their borderland region into a space of resistance and leaded to the forming of spatio-temporal identities in-between border space in the northern Sinai.