ABSTRACT
Morocco’s emigrants and immigrants, but also (ii) how migrants use their agency to defy government constraints, as may be seen, for instance, in the continuation of Moroccan migration to Europe despite immigration restrictions, or the de facto long-term settlement of sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco despite their frequent labelling as ‘transit’ migrants by governments, the media and researchers. While these examples highlight that migration is a partly autonomous social process that often escapes or circumvents state restrictions, the articles also illustrate (iii) how changing migratory realities on the ground as well as broader geopolitical considerations have compelled the Moroccan state to adopt and adapt its own emigration and immigration policies. Through an analysis along these three key dimensions, this special issue pursues the broader
theoretical ambition of relating the particular Moroccan case to a larger conceptual effort underway in migration scholarship, that is, to reconceptualise migration as an intrinsic part of larger processes of social transformation and development rather than as a ‘problem to be solved’ (IMI 2006). This is important because many analyses of migration in Morocco, North Africa and the non-Western world in general are still mired in naive ‘push-pull’ models, which tend to portray migration as consequence of underdevelopment, poverty and conflict. This mode of analysis is also evident in media coverage of the tragic spike in drownings in the Mediterranean in spring 2015. This is at odds with increasing evidence on the highly complex, nonlinear and counter-intuitive relation between development and migration. For instance, going against powerful preconceptions, ‘development’ through economic growth, increasing education and infrastructure improvement often spurs emigration partly because it increases people’s aspirations and capabilities to cross borders (de Haas 2010). In the remainder of this editorial, we will therefore not only seek to explore how contemporary
migration theories – particularly those on the role of development, policies, agency and aspirations in migration processes – can help us understand recent trends in Moroccan migration, but also how the specific Moroccan case enriches migration theory. This is particularly relevant to remove the still predominant Euro-or Western-centric bias in migration research, where most debates and theories on migration and ‘integration’ are informed by the experiences of a handful of ‘migration destinations’ in the Global North, notably the USA, the UK, Germany and France, and largely disregard the dynamics of and experience with migration in countries in the Global South. It is therefore important to understand and analyse the experiences of countries like Morocco that are labelled ‘origin’ or ‘transit’ countries from a European perspective, but that are also immigration countries in their own right.
