ABSTRACT

Our account of recent migration policy changes in Morocco strengthens Sayad’s analysis that immigration does reveal how a state ‘thinks itself’. The radical change in Moroccan immigration policy, introduced by Mohammed VI in September 2013, suggests a change in the way that Morocco thinks of itself – less orientated towards the North and more receptive to its Southern neighbours than it has been over the decade that new patterns of immigration have become established. Morocco has developed new economic and political priorities that have resulted in an increase in high-profile diplomatic links with the South. Morocco has held very long established links with sub-Saharan Africa, extending far back into

history. An Africa-orientated geopolitical culture is not new in Morocco. Nevertheless, coming at a time of radical change in the approach to immigration, the recent reorientation does suggest a significant development. Without the broader shifts in geopolitical orientation, doubts about the ways in which the regularisation is taking place may have more solid foundations. But since the changes in immigration policy fit so obviously with broader geopolitical changes, there are significant reasons to think that this marks a substantial change in Morocco’s approach to immigration. This is not to say that the ‘radically new’ approach is motivated by a newly discovered concern for migrants, but that it marks a genuine break from the period when Moroccan migration policy could be dictated from Europe. The connections that the paper establishes between the overall trend of immigration policy and

broader geopolitical orientation are potentially of much wider significance. Migration policy is so central to the way state institutions consider themselves (pensée d’Etat) that in cases where clear orientations can be discerned or radical changes can be analysed it may help to clarify broader ways of thinking about the State (penser l’Etat). O Tuathail’s notion of geopolitical culture provides a way of identifying the key elements of broader political orientation which are relevant. This paper has begun to follow this kind of analysis in the case of Morocco’s 2013-2014 transformative experience, though there is certainly more to analyse as the results of that policy develop over time. In Morocco, the political implications of the regularisation are already very significant. They

make the three remaining elements of the new migration policy – on asylum, trafficking and immigration – more urgent and ensure the inevitability of further reform, particularly of the

M. Cherti and M. Collyer602

M. Cherti and M. Collyer604