French migrants in Morocco: from a desire for elsewhereness to an ambivalent reality

Abstract

Moroccan emigration has been widely studied over the past decades. Recently, sub-Saharan migrant populations have become a new focus for the media, politicians, and academics. However, European migration to Morocco remains little known, despite its potential to significantly transform the Moroccan migratory landscape. This article seeks to analyse this underexplored North–South migration by focusing on migratory paths of French people living in Morocco and on the social implications that arise from their relationships with Moroccan society. In order to enrich the theoretical framework on lifestyle migration, this article analyses the main migratory motives present in these migrants' narratives (better quality of life and desire for elsewhereness) and the reasons these individuals advance to explain their choice to move to Morocco. We address the ambivalence of social relationships between these migrants and Moroccans by analysing the migrants' configurations of home and their strategies of adaptation to the Moroccan professional environment. Ultimately, our findings emphasise the complexity and ambivalence of relationships with the ‘Other’ in a migratory context and shed light on the North–South migration research field.

Keywords:

• French migrants
• home
• Morocco
• North–South migration
• strategies of adaptation

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Mohamed Berriane (Université Euro-méditerranéenne de Fès), Hein de Haas and Katharina Natter (International Migration Institute, Oxford University), who organised the international workshop Moroccan Migrations: Transformations, Transitions and Future Prospects in Fez, Morocco, in May 2014, and invited us to present our current work on French migration in Morocco.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the AMERM (Association Marocaine des Études et des Recherches sur la Migration) in 2012–2013.

Notes

1. Examples of documentaries available on the Internet: http://www.francetvinfo.fr/retraite-les-francais-du-maroc_340388.html; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjb8q4UeYcU; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-cAEj3fmnE; http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-13h/2009/ces-francais-qui-passent-leur-retraite-au-maroc-5576771.html.