ABSTRACT
In terms of their next destination, only 7% of migrants did not have a clear preference. As one migrant put it, discussing the variety of choices he faced:
Given the unpredictability of their ‘project’, many migrants are disoriented about what to do with their future. However, now that Morocco has offered a route for regularisation, their migratory project might become less uncertain, at least in the short term. Our central argument in this paper is that this recent regularisation deserves to be taken seriously because it fits with other recent developments in Moroccan geopolitical culture. The ways in which immigration reveals how the Moroccan state is ‘thinking of itself’ fit with other, related changes in political and economic priorities that became evident at about the same time as the ‘radically new’ migration policy was declared, in the last few months of 2013. In the next section, we turn to these broader diplomatic developments.
