Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-10T13:42:18.663Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is Europe really the dream? Contingent paths among sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2017

Dorte Thorsen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores migrant existences in the border zones around Europe. Drawing on ethnographic research in Morocco undertaken in 2012, 2013 and 2015 and in continued engagements with migrants using social media, the article analyses three extended migrant stories, detailing their experiences of uncertainty, waiting and hoping. By elucidating the objectives informing migrants’ pathways and the material and moral considerations underpinning the ways in which they navigate migrant life in Rabat, the stories unveil how different temporalities and spatialities intersect and influence their decisions and ability to endure hardship and waiting. The article argues that uncertainties and risks inherent in migration, and in irregular migration in particular, have transformed collective expectations of the migratory project as a means of upward social mobility and economic security into hope and into a mode of hoping that individualizes success and failure. Meanwhile, the rising costs of migration and structural marginalization render the opportunity to travel elsewhere contingent on assistance from transnational social networks or international institutions. Individuals’ success or failure thus comes to depend on how understandings of hardship, waiting, opportunity and moral obligation are configured and reconfigured by lived experiences in different places.

Résumé

Cet article explore des vies de migrants dans les zones frontalières de l'Europe. S'appuyant sur des recherches ethnographiques menées au Maroc en 2012, 2013 et 2015, et à travers le maintien de contacts avec des migrants par le biais de médias sociaux, l'article analyse trois récits développés de migrants détaillant leurs expériences d'incertitude, d'attente et d'espoir. En élucidant les objectifs qui informent le parcours des migrants et les considérations matérielles et morales qui sous-tendent leur mode de vie de migrant à Rabat, ces récits dévoilent comment différentes temporalités et spatialités se croisent et influencent leurs décisions et leur capacité à endurer la difficulté du quotidien et l'attente. L'article soutient que les incertitudes et les risques inhérents à la migration en général, et la migration irrégulière en particulier, ont transformé des attentes collectives du projet migratoire, en tant que moyen d'ascension sociale et de sécurité économique, en espoir et en mode d'espérance qui individualise la réussite et l’échec. Dans le même temps, le coût croissant de la migration et la marginalisation structurelle subordonnent la possibilité de se rendre ailleurs au soutien de réseaux sociaux transnationaux ou d'institutions internationales. La réussite ou l’échec individuel en vient donc à dépendre de la manière dont les interprétations de la difficulté du quotidien, de l'attente, de l'opportunité et de l'obligation morale sont configurées et reconfigurées par des expériences de vie dans des lieux différents.

Type
Reconfiguring migration
Information
Africa , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 343 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alioua, M. (2007) ‘Nouveaux et anciens espaces de circulation internationale au Maroc’, Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 119–20.Google Scholar
Alioua, M. (2008) ‘La migration transnationale: logique individuelle dans l'espace national: l'exemple des transmigrants subsahariens à l’épreuve de l'externalisation de la gestion des flux migratoires au Maroc’, Social Science Information 47 (4): 697–713.Google Scholar
Andersson, R. (2012) ‘A game of risk: boat migration and the business of bordering Europe’, Anthropology Today 28 (6): 7–11.Google Scholar
Araújo, S. G. (2011) ‘Reinventing Europe's borders: delocalization and externalization of EU migration control through the involvement of third countries’ in Baumann, M., Lorenz, A. and Rosenow, K. (eds), Crossing and Controlling Borders: immigration policies and their impact on migrants’ journeys. Opladen and Farmington Hills MI: Budrich UniPress.Google Scholar
Banégas, R. and Warnier, J.-P. (2001) ‘Nouvelles figures de la réussite et du pouvoir’, Politique Africaine 2001/02 (82): 5–23.Google Scholar
Barros, L., Lahlou, M., Escoffier, C., Pumares, P. and Ruspini, P. (2002) Migrations des africains du sud du Sahara vers l'Union Européene en traversant le Maroc. Cahiers de Migrations Internationales. Geneva: Programme des Migrations Internationales, Bureau International du Travail (BIT).Google Scholar
Berriane, J. (2011) ‘Les étudiants subsahariens au Maroc: des migrants parmi d'autres?’, Méditerranée 2: 47–150.Google Scholar
Berriane, M., Aderghal, M., Janati, M. I. and Berriane, J. (2010) New Mobilities Around Morocco: a case study of the city of Fes. Final report for the MacArthur-funded project on: ‘African Perspectives on Human Mobility’. Rabat: Research Team for the Regions and Regionalisation, Université Mohammed V.Google Scholar
Brachet, J. (2010) Blinded by Security: reflections on the hardening of migratory policies in central Sahara. Oxford: International Migration Institute (IMI).Google Scholar
Bredeloup, S. (2008) ‘L'aventurier, une figure de la migration africaine’, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie 125: 281–306.Google Scholar
Bredeloup, S. (2012) ‘Sahara transit: times, spaces, people’, Population, Space and Place 18 (4): 457–67.Google Scholar
Bredeloup, S. and Pliez, O. (2005) ‘Migrations entre les deux rives du Sahara’, Autrepart 36: 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brun, C. (2015) ‘Active waiting and changing hopes: toward a time perspective on protracted displacement’, Social Analysis 59 (1): 19–37.Google Scholar
Carling, J. (2007) ‘Migration control and migrant fatalities at the Spanish–African borders’, International Migration Review 41 (2): 316–43.Google Scholar
Castagone, E. (2011) ‘Transit migration: a piece of the complex mobility puzzle. The case of Senegalese migration’, Cahiers de l'Urmis 13. <http://urmis.revues.org/index927.html>, accessed 21 May 2012.Google Scholar
Collyer, M. (2006) ‘Undocumented sub-Saharan African migrants in Morocco’ in Sørensen, N. N. (ed.), Mediterranean Transit Migration. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).Google Scholar
Collyer, M. (2007) ‘In-between places: trans-Saharan transit migrants in Morocco and the fragmented journey to Europe’, Antipode 39 (4): 668–90.Google Scholar
Collyer, M. (2010) ‘Stranded migrants and the fragmented journey’, Journal of Refugee Studies 23 (3): 273–93.Google Scholar
Collyer, M. and de Haas, H. (2012) ‘Developing dynamic categorisations of transit migration’, Population, Space and Place 18 (4): 468–81.Google Scholar
Conlon, D. (2011) ‘Waiting: feminist perspectives on the spacings/timings of migrant (im)mobility’, Gender, Place and Culture 18 (3): 353–60.Google Scholar
De Haas, H. (2008) Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union: an overview of recent trends. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.Google Scholar
Escoffier, C. (2006) ‘Communautés d'itinérance et savoir–circuler des transmigrant-e-s au Maghreb’. PhD thesis, Université Toulouse II. <http://www.reseau-terra.eu/IMG/pdf/Transmigrant-e-s.pdf>, accessed 20 January 2017., accessed 20 January 2017.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Escoffier,+C.+(2006)+‘Communautés+d'itinérance+et+savoir–circuler+des+transmigrant-e-s+au+Maghreb’.+PhD+thesis,+Université+Toulouse+II.+,+accessed+20+January+2017.>Google Scholar
Frei, B. (2012) ‘I go chop your dollar’ in Hahn, H. P. and Kastner, K. (eds), Urban Life-worlds in Motion: African perspectives. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Gasparini, G. (1995) ‘On waiting’, Time and Society 4 (1): 29–45.Google Scholar
Grabska, K. (2005) Living on the Margins: the analysis of the livelihood strategies of Sudanese refugees with closed files in Egypt. Cairo: Forced Migration and Refugee Studies, The American University.Google Scholar
Gray, B. (2011) ‘Becoming non-migrant: lives worth waiting for’, Gender, Place and Culture 18 (3): 417–32.Google Scholar
Hage, G. (2005) ‘A not so multi-sited ethnography of a not so imagined community’, Anthropological Theory 5 (4): 463–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hess, S. (2012) ‘De-naturalising transit migration: theory and methods of an ethnographic regime analysis’, Population, Space and Place 18 (4): 428–40.Google Scholar
Horst, C. and Grabska, K. (2015) ‘Introduction. Flight and exile: uncertainty in the context of conflict-induced displacement’, Social Analysis 59 (1): 1–18.Google Scholar
Johnson, H. L. (2013) ‘The other side of the fence: reconceptualizing the “camp” and migration zones at the borders of Spain’, International Political Sociology 7 (1): 75–91.Google Scholar
Karam, F. and Decaluwé, B. (2010) ‘Is international migration a cure for Moroccan unemployment?’, Journal of North African Studies 15 (4): 497–520.Google Scholar
Levine, R. N. (2008) A Geography of Time: on tempo, culture, and the pace of life. New York NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mar, P. (2005) ‘Unsettling potentialities: topographies of hope in transnational migration’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 26 (4): 361–78.Google Scholar
Mountz, A. (2011) ‘Where asylum-seekers wait: feminist counter-topographies of sites between states’, Gender, Place and Culture 18 (3): 381–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MSF (2013) Violence, Vulnerability and Migration: trapped at the gates of Europe. A report on the situation of sub-Saharan migrants in an irregular situation in Morocco. Barcelona: Médécins sans Frontières (MSF).Google Scholar
Nieswand, B. (2014) ‘The burgers’ paradox: migration and the transnationalization of social inequality in southern Ghana’, Ethnography 15 (4): 403–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papadopoulou-Kourkoula, A. (2008) Transit Migration: the missing link between emigration and settlement. Basingstoke and New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Perrin, D. (2008) La circulation des personnes au Maghreb. CARIM AS 2008/46. San Domenico di Fiesole, Florence: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.Google Scholar
Pian, A. (2005) ‘Aventuriers et commerçants sénégalais à Casablanca: des parcours entrecroisés’, Autrepart 36: 167–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piot, C. D. (1999) Remotely Global: village modernity in West Africa. Chicago IL and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Poutignat, P. (2012) ‘Migration at the level of individuals: life trajectories in Mauretania and Spain’ in Streiff-Fénart, J. and Segatti, A. (eds), The Challenge of the Threshold: border closures and migration movements in Africa. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Riccio, B. (2005) ‘Talkin’ about migration: some ethnographic notes on the ambivalent representation of migrants in contemporary Senegal’, Stichproben Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 8: 99–118.Google Scholar
Schapendonk, J. (2010) ‘Staying put in moving sands: the stepwise migration process of sub-Saharan African migrants heading north’ in Engel, U. and Nugent, P. (eds), Respacing Africa. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Tazanu, P. M. (2012) ‘“They behave as though they want to bring heaven down”: some narratives on the visibility of Cameroonian migrant youths in Cameroon urban space’ in Hahn, H. P. and Kastner, K. (eds), Urban Life-worlds in Motion: African perspectives. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Timera, M. (2001) ‘Les migrations des jeunes Sahéliens: affirmation de soi et émancipation’, Autrepart 18: 37–49.Google Scholar
Tocci, N. and Cassarino, J.-P. (2011) Rethinking the EU's Mediterranean Policies Post-1/11. Rome: Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).Google Scholar
Vigh, H. (2009) ‘Wayward migration: on imagined futures and technological voids’, Ethnos 74 (1): 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, D. (2007) ‘Modes of hoping’, History of the Human Sciences 20 (3): 65–83.Google Scholar
Whitehead, A. and Kabeer, N. (2001) ‘Living with uncertainty: gender, livelihoods and pro-poor growth in rural sub-Saharan Africa’. IDS Working Paper 134. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies (IDS).Google Scholar