L'enclavement ethnique en Namibie. Du cloisonnement territorial à la structuration des identités

The Namibian territory has been structured according to a logic of enclosing during all its colonial history. The different powers, particularly the apartheid regime, never stopped imposing their territorial ideology based on the idea of partitioning and exclusion of the African populations, at the scale of the country as well as in the urban centres. Sometimes laid down by force, sometimes wanted by communities seeking land and territorial attachment, the ethnical enclosing has not only shaped the space, but it has also profoundly structured the identities. Since 1990 and the attainment of independence of Namibia, the territory has been restructured and the boundaries of the former enclaves officially abolished. But the enclosing is enduring, both in space through the permanency of socio-economic disparities and in the collective representations of groups of population for whom it is still a founding element of their identity.