The Politics of Passage: Studying Checkpoints and Claim Making in Conflict-affected Settings

Roadblocks, or checkpoints, are obligatory passage points that are erected by entities claiming authority over a given crossing. They are often the most common everyday interface between civilians and armed actors in conflict-affected contexts, but are overlooked in studies on either trade or authority amidst conflict. This article, which introduces a special issue on the topic, argues that roadblocks are a useful empirical entry point to questions regarding the practical, political and theoretical interplay of economic circulation and political contestation. It proposes the framework of ‘the politics of passage’, which focuses on the entangled struggles over movement and authority arising from the interaction of a claim to the right of passage and claims to power over it. Through this politics of passage a range of broader social, political and economic claims are made and contested. Within this framework, checkpoints are a privileged field site and useful heuristic device to understand the relationship between trade, conflict and authority in contexts of contested statehood. Roadblocks function as critical nodes where otherwise implicit claims by states and non-state actors are made explicit in the encounter — or confrontation — between people, capital and goods on the move, and those who claim authority over them. Understanding the nature of these claims, and what shapes the types of claim making that emerge in different contexts, is a central contribution of this article.