ABSTRACT

Germany is especially affected by the language certificate requirement, as marriage migration to Northern and Western Europe has a long tradition in Morocco and is the major legal category of immigration to Germany and also to other European countries (Block 2012, 9). Furthermore, Moroccan marriage migrants are more likely to be affected by the selective mechanism of this instrument of border control, as by international comparison Morocco is struggling with a relatively high illiteracy rate – the highest illiteracy rate of all North African countries (UNESCO 2003, 12). However, the case of Morocco and Germany is symbolic of more general developments in

international migration and its control and regulation, as Germany is not the only country which has introduced the requirement of a language certificate for marriage migration. In 2005, the Netherlands was the first country to establish this ‘pre-integration measure’. Germany, France, Austria and the UK have followed the Dutch example. Over the last decade, marriage migration to Europe and North America has become a specific target of restrictions and control (Block 2012; D’Aoust 2013) and it is now part of more general trends in European migration policies concerning the externalisation of border controls, the deceleration of migration processes, and the hierarchisation and selection of migrants following the utilitarian logic of a neoliberal management of migration.