From irregular migration to radicalisation? Fragile borders, securitised development and the government of Moroccan youth

ABSTRACT

Building on fieldwork conducted in 2016 and 2017, this paper analyses projects seeking to disrupt irregular emigration in Morocco. Literature has analysed how these programmes transfer repressive migration control norms from European states to origin countries and the problematic representations of migration that they convey. However, scholars have overlooked the trajectory of this migration control tool and have analysed it in isolation from other donor- and state-driven forms of social regulation in migrant sending and transit countries. Against this background, this article explores the social life of preventive projects, comprehending border surveillance as a dynamic process that interacts with other governing strategies in aid-recipient countries. In the first part of the article, I build on Autonomy of Migration theories to analyse the progressive disappearance of dissuasion projects in the early 2010s. I argue that border regimes are unstable and not dependent merely on migration dynamics. In the second part, I draw on scholarship on development securitisation and on non-governmental organisations as alternative sovereign authorities to investigate the reappearance of dissuasion projects as initiatives labelled as ‘countering radicalisation’. I contend that migration containment can be conceptualised as part of a wider pattern of donors’ intervention in the governance of marginalised Moroccan youth.

KEYWORDS:

• Radicalisation
• development
• migration control
• irregular emigration
• Morocco

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude goes to all my interviewees for their precious time and availability in sharing information – and memories. I am also indebted to Dr Graham Denyer Willis, José Ciro Martinez and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Endless thanks to Yasmin Shearmur and Sigrid Lupieri for proofreading my Southern European English. I am also extremely thankful to Mercedes Jiménez and Francesco Vacchiano for their steering advices and for taking the time to discuss about my research while I was on fieldwork.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For a critical discussion of the expression ‘migration crisis’, see De Genova (2016) and De Genova et al. (2016).

2 Fieldnotes, September 2016.

3 Interview, Former officer of the Italian Development Cooperation, Skype, January 2017.

4 Email, 22 July 2016.

5 Interview, Officer of the Spanish Development Cooperation (AECID), Rabat, December 2016.

6 Interview, Officers of the Swiss Development Agency, Rabat, July 2016; Interview, Officer of the Swiss Development Agency, Phone, September 2017.

7 Interviews, Officers of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Rabat, August and November 2016; Interview, Officers of the Coopération Technique Belge (CTB), Rabat, December 2016.

8 Interview, Officer of the EU Delegation, Rabat, October 2016.

9 See Jiménez Alvarez for the criminalisation of child mobility in sending countries (Jiménez Álvarez 2011).

10 Informal conversation, NGO officer, Rabat, date withdrawn.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Cambridge Trust, Lucy Cavendish College, the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge and the Centre Jacques Berque pour les études en sciences sociales in Rabat.