Abstract
In the 21st century, states established an enormous amount of border barriers in order to fence off their territories from perceived harm of some of the spill-over effects. Nevertheless, one of the regions with enormous amount of threats stemming from security crises and economic disparity - North Africa - seems not to follow the suit.
Despite a presence of negative spill-overs in the form of a proliferation of the violent non-state actors like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Daesh and other, large-scale migration across the Sahara desert, instability in places like Libya, or smuggling, the border hardening did not take place. Is this development a consequence of a political choice or is it impacted by the lack of capabilities of the states? This contribution looks at the reasons for this development combining analysis of the structural and geographical factors as well as informal interviews with the officials from some of the researched countries.
It will contribute to the ongoing debate about the theory of border-hardening and theoretical framework of the border wall creation.