Desert Entanglements: The Making of the Badiya by Sahrawi Refugees of Western Sahara

The Sahrawi refugees in southwestern Algeria have struggled from exile for fifty years to reconfigure the animated desert they call badiya. They recovered camel husbandry and access to part of the former rangeland, and wove it back as seasonal nomadism. Desert Entanglements analyzes this process as an act of place-making premised on refugees’ agency.

Gabriele Volpato is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. He has investigated different facets of human-nature relationships among Cuban peasants, Sahrawi refugees and nomads of Western Sahara, and Kenyan pastoralists and beekeepers.