Dans un contexte de focalisation croissante des regards sur les migrations entre l'Afrique subsaharienne et l'Europe, ce premier ouvrage scientifique entièrement consacré aux migrations au Sahara permet de déconstruire nombre des discours médiatiques et politiques relatifs à ces phénomènes migratoires en montrant que les migrants qui traversent aujourd'hui le Sahara ne fuient pas des situations de misère extrême ou de conflit, et se rendent majoritairement en Afrique du Nord et non en Europe. En s'appuyant sur un travail de terrain de plusieurs années, l'auteur montre que ces migrations constituent actuellement le principal facteur de dynamisme et de transformation du Sahara central, et qu'elles sont de plus en plus perturbées voire entravées par le durcissement des politiques migratoires européennes et africaines.

Since the early 1990's there has been a significant migration of people, from various cultures and countries, streaming across Niger's Sahara desert, consequently "transforming" it. To spite the restricting, often hindering polices imposed by the Maghreb States, which does lessen what would be an even greater migration, people continue arriving and departing. Travelers from all parts of the continent, regardless of difficulties, both physical and political in nature, migrate to North Africa for few months or few years.
These migrations flowing in and out of the desert region surrounding Agadez are the main dynamic that transforms the area. Besides forging a new Saharan geography, they also connect various cultures creating a diversity that is the very essence of cosmopolitanism. The study of these migrations and the desert routes they utilize reveals how it effects the travelers themselves and their relationship to each other, as well as the geography of the region. It is a process of change that occurs also during the journey as much as upon destination.
In the context of identical tension and the refusal of otherness, the constant migratory flow of these travelers in Niger's region around Agadez, is a dynamic of globalization "from the bottom", yet renders the place cosmopolitan.