The city of Agadez in northern Niger has a complex history; the upheaval it has experienced in recent years is simply dramatic. While tourism declined long ago as a source of income, the city of the Tuareg then flourished as a hub of sub-Saharan migration – until a virtual border established in the Sahara at the behest of the EU cut off the city's main source of income. Gerald Igor Hauzenberger and Gabriela Schild, the directors of ON THE BORDER, have paid repeated visits to Agadez, accompanying committed Tuareg and watching as a city which had always maintained links to its nomadic tradition became, within a relatively short period and for the most contradictory motives, a plaything of geopolitical interests.