Peripheral resistance: geographies of occupation and policing in Tunisia.

This article sets out to study Tunisian protest movements and state responses by focusing on continuities in protest and policing rather than radical breaks like the 1956 independence, the 2010–2011 revolution, or more recently, Kais Saied’s July 25 self-coup. Through ethnographic fieldwork among activists in Tunis, residents of its popular neighbourhoods and with the El-Kamour movement of the southern region of Tataouine, the article develops three arguments and theoretical tools: firstly, it argues that residents of Tunis’ popular neighbourhoods and Tunisia’s inland and southern regions are racialized through consistent securitisation at the hands of urban elites as they migrated to the cities to establish what would become peripheral popular neighbourhoods. Secondly, it develops and applies a lens of <italic>internal occupation</italic> to analyze policing of these racialized populations. Through a grounded theory-approach, it articulates intimately felt indignity and humiliation in the context of an outsider-insider policing dynamic. Thirdly, it argues that racialisation is perpetuated by a state-capitalist class nexus consisting of economic benefactors of the reserve army of labour and natural resource extraction. Security forces violently enforce this socio-economic order. Lastly, it suggests that <italic>internal occupation</italic> is a useful theoretical lens through which to analyze policing of marginalised populations in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]