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This article offers a critical analysis of the institutional narratives on the links between “pastoralism” and “insecurity,” which have become the new core of the debate on pastoralism in West Africa, by questioning the role attributed to the land and the political stakes of this discourse. After having traced the transformation and the publicization of the narratives of aid institutions, the article shows how these narratives cast the understanding of relocation, pastoral land, and rural social structures in a reifying and globalizing light. Based on an analysis of the dynamics at work in Nigeria, it shows how a multidimensional, processual approach to land leads to changing perspectives and to raising the question of citizenship in rural, pastoral areas.