L’insécurité dans la région métropolitaine de Port-au-Prince et la déterritorialisation du quartier de Martissant (Haïti)

In the observation of criminal insecurity, territorial analysis has been an important aspect since the work of sociologists from the Chicago School. Initially, the focus was on the offender and the environment facilitating their actions. In the background, it was small-scale territories that were mainly targeted, especially neighborhoods. In Haiti, neighborhoods are created, evolve and proliferate. At the national level, there were officially 17 in 1950 which until then did not present security issues. Today, there are officially 64 neighborhoods nationwide, although, in reality, the approximately 400 existing slums are all categorized as neighborhoods. Indeed, faced with the violence perpetrated by “gangs” in certain areas, the neighborhoods are experiencing a double phenomenon: They undergo deterritorialization due to the forced exodus of the inhabitants, and also reterritorialization as the gangs seize control of these neighborhoods leaving behind vacant houses that were once occupied by legitimate residents. This article aims to study these two phenomena to account for the repercussions of clashes between “gangs” following a territorial dynamic, inscribed in the existence of an urban counter-power. Thus, we question insecurity through its territorial and social effects. The information collected from spontaneous interviews with displaced people from Martissant (accommodated in the Carrefour sports center) as well as from documentaries, and photographs provides us with valuable insights to enhance our comprehension of this phenomenon. Initial findings shed light on the strategies employed by residents to abandon their homes to escape the violence of the “gangs”, as well as their maneuvers to reterritorialize other spaces. They provide us with materials to advance the hypothesis that the deterritorialization of neighborhoods is a logistical supply strategy in terms of the diversion of the use of technical and spatial devices. Finally, this article aligns with the notion that there exists a dimension linked to the “bounded rationality” of criminal actors: in the city, the deterritorialization of neighborhoods fuels abandonment, the appropriation of the property of others, ease of committing offences, and the weakening of the social reaction leading to new delinquent opportunities