Immigration and Pensée d'Etat: Moroccan migration policy changes as transformation of ‘geopolitical culture’

Abstract

According to Sayad's famous phrase, immigration policy reveals how a state ‘thinks of itself’. Morocco ‘thinks of itself’ in very different ways: Arabic, Berber, Islamic, African, European, Maghrebian, Mediterranean, to name but a few. Each self-representation leads to an alternative set of policy orientations, and ‘geopolitical cultures’. In terms of migration and mobility, however, the Moroccan government's approach, from its application to join the European Union in 1986 to the signature of a Mobility Partnership with the EU in 2013, suggests a more singular geopolitical culture, orientated predominantly towards its northern neighbours. This paper argues that the recent change of approach to immigration into Morocco, announced by the regularisations of 2013, involves a more profound way in which Morocco is now ‘thinking of itself’. This much more positive, proactive approach is associated with a broader reorientation of Moroccan geopolitical culture towards the rest of Africa. This conclusion is substantiated by an empirical basis of interviews with sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco, undertaken as part of the Beyond Irregularity project from 2011 to 2013, supplemented with key informant interviews and analysis of recent policy developments. The paper argues that there is a close link between the geopolitical orientations suggested in migration policy and the broader international relations priorities of the State.

Keywords:

• geopolitics
• migration policy
• Morocco
• undocumented migration

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Katharina Natter from IMI for her helpful comments. The empirical findings in this paper are drawn from the Beyond Irregularity project led by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the authors would like to particularly thank Peter Grant for co-authoring one of the reports addressing sub-Saharan migration in Morocco.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was funded by the European Commission and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

ORCID

Michael Collyer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0407-5600