Most international migration takes place within the global south. It is strange then that migration forms such a major part of political discourse in the West. The racist rhetoric and actions of far-right political forces in particular have vilified migrants and constructed them as unwelcome. In Europe, migration is indeed often used as a rallying tool for right-wing politics and the issue also serves as a useful diversion mechanism that draws attention away from other pressing issues.
Morocco is a country of emigration for Moroccans, sub-Saharans, and other migrants and refugees. For this reason, the country has been a central part of the conversation around "irregular migration" in recent years. It is now, however, not just a country of emigration and transit, but also a "host country" for significant numbers of migrants. In 2013, King Mohammed VI announced a new Moroccan migration policy, the National Strategy for Migration and Asylum, which led to two regularization campaigns in 2014 and 2016. No such campaign has taken place since.
Recent years have seen massive border securitization efforts from the European Union and Spain, resulting in Morocco's becoming a “permanent transit country,” in the words of scholar Mekki-Berrada. The European Union recently spent €152 million on a program to address “irregular migration,” to strengthen Morocco's border control, bolster Morocco's National Strategy on Migration and Asylum, and facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their countries of origin. The program was part of an EU-Moroccan deal with €500 million to support Morocco's major reform projects.
The latest statistics account for only around 700,000 sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco, although the true figure is likely considerably higher. There is a vibrant and vocal sub-Saharan activist scene in the country, calling for migrants to be better integrated into Moroccan society. This is a challenge to the notion of Morocco as merely a transit country, with many migrants now asking for regularization, access to employment and healthcare, and support from the state for entrepreneurship projects. In short, many sub-Saharan migrants want to make Morocco home.
Women's migration often differs from that of men. Statistics on global migration show that as of 2020, around 48% of all international migrants were women or girls. Gender studies fieldwork in Morocco shows that one of the critical issues facing women is gender-based violence, with the prevalence of rape during migration. Issues surrounding sex work, domestic work, and traumas such as the pain of leaving children behind to protect them from the dangers of crossing borders have also been shown to disproportionately affect women.
Other issues are common to both male and female sub-Saharan migrants, such as unemployment and the difficulty of finding paid work, even for individuals of officially documented status. Some turn to entrepreneurship and informal work as ways to make a living.
Morocco has been praised for its human rights-based approach to migration. It has also been criticized (like Turkey, in another context) for using migration as a diplomatic tool to exert political pressure on Europe. Moroccan authorities have been accused of instrumentalizing migrants as political bargaining chips by encouraging crossings into the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Both are geographically located within Morocco, which has often claimed sovereignty over them, although they have been Spanish territories for more than 500 years. On June 24, 2022, hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa attempted to cross the border between Morocco and Spain in Melilla. At least 23 died in clashes at the border and several law enforcement officers suffered serious injuries.
The status of migrants has arguably regressed in recent years, particularly since the departure of Anis Birou, the former Minister for the Moroccan Expatriate Community and Migration Affairs. This ministry no longer exists and, in the current government, migration issues have been integrated as a department within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The media also play an essential role in public opinion on migration and in fostering the issues migrants face. Moroccan mainstream media coverage often includes blatant racism toward sub-Saharan migrants. Civil society reports and academic studies indicate that this is reflective of widespread racist attitudes within Morocco. The discriminatory nature of Moroccan mainstream media’s representation of sub-Saharan migrants is often open and explicit, as in the case of the 2012 Maroc Hebdo International magazine cover titled “Le Péril Noir” (“The Black Peril”) and more recently in the coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the frontpage headline “1st Case of Corona Virus in Morocco: Who is Responsible?” on the magazine cover of Le Reporter. The headline was associated with the image of a black man on the cover, pointing to a racist allusion to sub-Saharan migrants as disease carriers.
In recent years, a number of voices, like Hassan Yemchou’s YouTube page Planet Migrant and the platform of the sub-Saharan diaspora in Morocco Attaches Plurielles have emerged in the digital public sphere to contest the dominant, often racist framing of migration issues. Thus far, these voices’ main audience is composed of scholars, civil society organizations, and people interested in the topic of migration. If they were to gain sufficient attention, they could raise awareness about migrants’ conditions and push for concrete socio-political change. An important aspect of twenty-first-century migration is the relationship between migration and digital media. Communities that have historically been silenced and rendered the objects of colonial discourse need to be encouraged to speak and participate in the discussion around their identities and their rights. Digital media has a critical role to play in this.
Alternative media, as non-commercial and non-state media, serve as useful channels of communication to transmit divergent messages. In this regard, we must take note of the media activism of Sub-Saharan migrants who use digital tools to express themselves and carry out advocacy on behalf of their communities.
In Morocco, the reframing of negative portrayals of migrants and their identities is more important now than ever, particularly in light of events in neighboring Tunisia, where racial tensions and violence has been escalating. In March 2023, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied launched a crackdown against undocumented sub-Saharan migrants, accusing them of causing crime and changing the demographic makeup of Tunisia. Tunisian authorities oversaw waves of arrests of undocumented sub-Saharan Africans, which led to an increase in migrants fleeing Tunisia in unsafe boats. This in turn led to an increase in the number of boats sinking off the Tunisian coast, resulting in a rise in the number of migrants dying in the Mediterranean. In response, the African Union urged Tunisia to avoid “racialized hate speech.”
Morocco’s National Strategy for Migration and Asylum, launched by King Mohammed VI in 2013, and the subsequent regularization campaigns of 2014 and 2016, were a positive moment for sub-Saharan migrants. Since then however, it appears that Morocco’s public authorities are less interested in the plight of migrants. While Morocco struggles with issues of unemployment, poverty, and the disconnect between rural and urban communities, which was virally brought to the fore in the recent earthquake in the Al Haouz region, we must recall the European far-right discourse of which people such as Moroccans have been victims. Those forces also attack foreigners in the name of scarce resources and the comparisons are worrying.
Throughout history it has always been impossible to completely stop migration and the movements of populations and in today’s interconnected world, efforts to do so are more hopeless than ever. We may only strategize efficiently to “manage” the inevitable flows of populations and look into the reasons that push people to seek a better life elsewhere, to the risk of dying in the pursuit of that hope.
