Issue Editors: Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Jacob Mundy and Alexander Thurston

The Winter 2022 issue of Middle East Report begins with the premise that the so-called “peripheries” and borderlands of the Middle East and North Africa are generative spaces at the center of their own stories. They are spaces that call into question the seeming totality and power of the state, spaces that are at once integrated in and integral to global economies. Historically, these spaces played a role in defining the shape of the region. One set of contributions draws on rich archival research to paint a picture of how peripheries and borderlands (and the people who dwelled there) influenced the bordering and re-bordering of states. Several articles go beneath the surface of so-called “cores” and “peripheries” to examine the movement of people and goods between them. Whether the micro-practices of Sudanese migrant laborers in Egypt, the informal trade networks at the heart of the Maghreb’s borderland economies or the illicit gold that flows from rural Mali to the souks of Dubai, peripheries do not exist in isolation. From the roads surrounding the Yemeni city of Taiz to the destroyed homes of Douma in Syria, foregrounding the agency of populations on the margins, as well as efforts of states and “centers” to control these spaces, sheds light on evolving power relations within and beyond the Middle East and North Africa.