Arts and humanities
Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 4:00 p.m. - UFR ARSH Library
Interview with Alexandre Lauret, geographer and anthropologist, researcher at the Strategic Research Institute of the École Militaire, who will present his book "L’épopée des passeurs. The Golden Age of Migrant Smuggling in Djibouti."
Discussant: Mr. Nima ZAHIR, Assistant Professor of Social Geography
Far from the routes taken to reach Europe, in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopian migrants with no prospects are leaving their conflict-torn country in large numbers, traveling through the arid region of northern Djibouti, where they embark to cross the Red Sea, before crossing war-torn Yemen to try their luck in Saudi Arabia. To reach their destination, they put their lives in the hands of smugglers.
This book is devoted to these intermediaries, despised figures in a trafficking network that allows states to absolve themselves of responsibility for the treatment of "illegal immigrants."
In Djibouti, Alexandre Lauret lived for more than two years among fishermen in a marginalized region of the country who had turned to organizing a carefully structured transnational migration network. Here, he recounts their story in the form of a true epic.
This epic, as short as it was violent, lasted only thirteen years. Between 2007 and 2020, these men smuggled more than 1.2 million Ethiopians. During this time, defying the authorities, they became richer and more powerful than Djiboutian ministers before losing everything and becoming nothing. Among their exploits, it is perhaps not so much the chases with the "feds," the clashes and convoys stolen between networks, or the rivalries with their Ethiopian or Yemeni counterparts that give their stories their epic tone, but rather the subordinate political discourse through which they legitimize their activity.
