Introduction

This chapter discusses very synthetically the outlook, approach and purposes of this book. Drawing from fieldwork memories by Lake Chad, the analysis is later conducted on the very conditions of working on the terrain: structural disparities between researcher and respondents—identified as research partners—are problematized also in function of the overarching themes of the work, notably the lack of social mobility and overall marginalization experienced by youth around the Lake Chad Basin. Such feelings are discussed and analyzed in the backdrop of the Boko Haram crisis which has developed in the region since 2015. The chapter synthetically interrogates the reader about the very meaning of the notion of crisis, and its use in political discourses or technical solutions, in the effort to stimulate a discussion about practices of historicization and story-telling, both under the point of view of producers and users of the same.