Introduction: peace operations and francophone spaces

This introductory article presents the history of francophone spaces to critically assess their specificity, and to situate them in academic debates on peace operations. It argues that the specificity is the inescapable a priori context of peace missions, even if this context is rapidly evolving and in interaction with non-francophone spaces. The specificity is nevertheless increasingly difficult to identify, as new practices and conditions emerge and as the lines between different francophone spaces and between francophone and non-francophone spaces are increasingly fluid. The article explores the range of possibilities that emerge from such interrogations, and emphasizes that to add the experiences of ‘francophone spaces’ to analyses of peace operations is to confront the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion already expressed by the terms ‘francophone’ and francophonie. This approach points to where and how hegemonic practices move and change between locations and different contexts, and where and how the organization or reorganization of power is negotiated, imposed and/or resisted across ‘francophone’ and ‘non-francophone’ spaces.