This chapter spells out the notion of the espistemology of the secret. It unpacks the two main components of the epistemology of the secret of international law: the necessary presence of hidden, unknown, invisible content in the texts, practices, actors, effects, representations, past, etc. of international law (what is called in this book the necessity of secret content) and the necessity for international lawyers to reveal such hidden, unknown, invisible content (what is called in this book the necessity of revelation). The chapter distinguishes the epistemology of the secret of international law from the hermeneutics of suspicion, the idea of an ideology of secretism and the idea of an economy of secrets.

Chapter 2 explores how aid constructs Morocco into an ‘Immigration Nation’, by fostering a hegemonic imaginary of immigration in the country as a predominantly ‘black’, ‘African’, and ‘irregular’ experience. This performance is subsumed by discourses and practices de-historicising immigration in Morocco and normalising the idea of ‘sub-Saharan migrants’ as the main group of foreigners living in the country. This escalates the political attention over Western and Central African migration to levels which are not supported by demographic data. I identify two critical junctures that allowed the migration industry to consolidate narratives of ‘transit’ migration throughout the country, trivialising projects targeting ‘sub-Saharan migrants’ along the major stopovers of migrant routes in Morocco.