La frontière gisement d’altérité, ou l’activation d’une limite géopolitique en ressource territoriale. Géographie du tourisme et Ailleurs de proximité en Pyrénées
Résumé
The boundaries, as limits between states, can be treated as territorial resource, or a minima, as
multi-scalar resource more or less territorialized (Amilhat-Szary, 2004). Indeed, both by structural
and cyclical factors (economy, state or regional regulations, political and religious situations, local
conditions ...), a differential between two countries generates a set of legal and illegal dynamics
(Gasperini, 1996; Guillot, 2009; Velasco-Graciet, 1998, 2006). In times of peace, there is mobility of
labor, smuggling or other traffic and consumption of duty-free. When prostitution is authorized on
one side of the border, it grows up and sometimes it even supports the economy of a region.
Otherwise, in times of conflict, we think of the exodus of refugees and smuggling of people. Wars,
dictatorships, revolutions, ethnic or religious conflicts... so many situations that motivate the
move. Closed borders, are often more important to cross. This sometimes brings up the paradox
that the more difficult a border is to overcome, the more reasons there are is to cross it.
Thus, economic borders, security or defensive planning, political, religious or ideological limits,
between states were well-documented. From another perspective this work studies the border
rather as a source of symbolic and geo-cultural otherness. The other side of the border is not
neutral. Borders represent a source of otherness. Therefore, the border becomes a fundamental
resource of the tourism phenomenon. Indeed, for most authors, tourism is motivated by the
search for an Elsewhere that compensates for a daily Here. This Elsewhere can be exotic and
distant (Bachimon, 1990; Cousin & Réau, 2009; Staszak, 2008), or it can be a proximal Elsewhere
(Bourdeau, 2003; Piolle, 1993; Urbain, 2002).
With the goal of supporting, or, at least, debating this hypothesis, this study offers a set of
empirical data and fieldwork in the Pyrenees at the border between France and Spain.
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