By Dorte Thorsen
In a
research
project examining the social effects of European migration
management, Migrating out of Poverty researcher, Dorte Thorsen, has followed
the lives of migrants, refugees, and international students from West and
Central Africa who lived in Morocco’s capital, Rabat, in 2012. Ethnographic
research then, a follow-up field visit in 2014, and regular contact via phone
and social media offers insights into how ideas about opportunity, risk, social
standing, and settlement shape the lives of migrants.
What migration statistics tell
The
number of irregular sea crossings via the Western route in the Mediterranean
Sea has almost tripled since 2017 and, according to Relief
Web and IOM, 35 per cent of the migrants and refugees entering
Europe by sea are currently travelling via this route. These numbers do not
denote a new wave of migration via North Africa. The total number of people
entering Europe undocumented by sea is less than half of the numbers recorded
in 2017 and a fifth of those recorded in 2016.
Although,
the bleak reports of detention, extortion and slavery-like conditions in Libya
have triggered a shift in route preference, not all of the migrants trying to
cross the Mediterranean are recent arrivals in North Africa. Some are in fact of
North African origin, others, like my friend, have lived in North Africa for
five-six years or more. This blog examines their experiences to shed light on
what makes them decide to invest time and money in the journey to Europe, and
how this is linked with the broader effects of migration management and border
control.
Politics of transit and settlement
Often
Morocco is thought of as a transit country for migrants originating in
sub-Saharan Africa, but it is increasingly recognised as a country of
settlement and refuge. Some migrants and refugees settle reluctantly because
they do not manage to move to the location they had hoped for due to the hardened
border control in Europe, others settle to study, work or engage in trade. A
study published in 2016 by Mourji,Ferrié, Radi and Alioua reveals that 65 per cent of the migrants
from sub-Saharan Africa came to Morocco with the idea of settling there.
The
management of Moroccan borders has fluctuated considerably over time with
profound bearings on migrants and refugees; from border patrol far away from
the physical borders, to exclusion from the labour market, to regularisation of
some of the many migrants who were living undocumented in the country. The UN’s
High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is in charge of registering and processing
asylum claims, awaiting a pending Moroccan asylum law. Until the regularisation
process, recognised refugees were barred from the labour market and the UNHCR
only had funding for allowances to the most vulnerable refugees, pushing the
rest into petty-business and illegal work.
In
2012-13 migrants originating in sub-Saharan Africa experienced waves of
systematic harassment and deportation to no man’s land between Morocco and
Algeria at Oujda or desert regions further to the south. Only after the UNHCR
raised concern that asylum-seekers and refugees were among the deported were
these categories of migrants spared deportation. Such campaigns have happened
sporadically since the mid-2000s, often prompted by negotiations of migration
management with the EU and individual European countries (see Migrating out of Poverty Working Paper 54 for a critical account of
Afro-European negotiations). While European migration politics play a central
role, the indiscriminate targeting of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa also
demonstrates deep-seated racism in Morocco.
In
2013, Morocco reacted to pressure from the UN Committee on the Protection of
the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and the
National Council for Human Rights. A Royal Decree prompted a regularisation
process in which around 25,000 irregular migrants, who had lived in the country
for years, were given temporary residency in 2014. Another 24,000 migrants are
expected to benefit from a second and on-going regularisation process.
Furthermore, after the first regularisation process, recognised refugees were also
regularised. However, the regularisation of refugees was on hold most of 2017,
thereby preventing refugees the necessary documentation for accessing the
formal labour market.
With
the recent rise of sea crossings over the summer 2018, Morocco has again come
under pressure from Europe to patrol its borders better. We are currently seeing
an extreme hardening of how migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are treated by the
Moroccan state that cannot be attributed to European migration politics alone. The newest wave of systematic
and forced movement of migrants - regardless of their legal status - away from
the northern cities to small towns and desert areas in the south of the country
is the outcome of migration politics and both popular and political resistance to the new forms of
heterogeneity that follow immigration. Harassment is not restricted to border
regions but spill into big cities across Morocco, destabilising the
lives of settled migrants and refugees.
Living in Morocco as a migrant from sub-Saharan Africa
Regardless
of their legal status, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa frequently find
themselves in a situation circumscribed by structural racism. Each time
systematic harassment is welling up, many migrants lie low. Migrants who lived
in Rabat in 2005 recounted how they had left their houses to sleep in the open
on the outskirts of the neighbourhoods to avoid raids at night. In 2012, they
recounted fleeing the police after being rounded up, and a few recounted their
journeys back to Rabat after deportation.
“It is strictly prohibited to let apartments to Africans.” Notice stuck on a wall in Morocco (Source: Facebook). Here the allusion to ‘Africans’ signifies the deeply racist distinction made between migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Moroccans in everyday language use.
When
campaigns waned, migrants were still circumscribed by structural racism. Employers
got, and still get, away with paying lower wages to migrants than to Moroccan
workers without penalties. Landlords can refuse to let to black migrants and
they get away with asking rents that are two-three times higher than what
Moroccan tenants pay. Many migrants have experienced eviction or the threat of
eviction, sometimes for fickle reasons, other times because they are in breach
with their tenancy agreement because they are in arrears with the rent due to
lack of income, share accommodation or operate home-based businesses. Others
are affected by conflicts of ownership and use within landlord families,
resulting in eviction and even of having all their belongings destroyed with no
recourse to justice or compensation, as happened to another Senegalese friend
and his housemates in 2016.
Regardless
of their legal status, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are subject to high
levels of street violence, especially in the poorer neighbourhoods of large
cities where they are seen as competitors for meagre resources and easy
targets. A substantial number of migrants described being attacked by groups of
Moroccan youths. Asylum seekers and refugees noted that their complaints to the
police were shelved immediately and irregular migrants stayed clear of the
authorities not to risk detention and deportation, thus they never made
complaints.
Effects of the regularisation processes
Small
changes are noticed after the first regularisation process. In Rabat, migrants
with residency or refugee status are increasingly moving from the poorest
neighbourhoods in the cities to newly built satellite towns on the outskirts,
where they rent apartments rather than rooms in traditional residential riads. The
better quality of housing is off-set by the time and costs of traveling to
city-centres where work can be found more easily and, especially among the
petty-traders, not all wish to live far from work and trading places.
The
residency permit also enables migrants to take formal employment and thus to
enjoy protection of their rights as workers. However, apart from a few niches
such as call-centres where Francophone migrants have an advantage, specific
factories and the hospitality and care industry, it is still very difficult for
migrants to penetrate the Moroccan labour market and earn a regular and fixed
income. Female migrants working in domestic service are among the workers who
have benefitted most from the regularisation. They appear to increasingly
choose a combination of several part-time jobs to reduce the risk of
exploitation rather than working full-time as live-in domestics workers at the
beg and call of their employer.
The
majority of migrants get by doing informal, casual work, petty-trade and a
small number of them operate informal restaurants, bars and guesthouses from
their homes. People in these trades suffer a diverse range of interventions,
which are not uniquely driven by migration politics but also by urban planning.
Several of the women, who ran successful restaurants in the past, have closed
business due to pressure from their landlords. My Senegalese friend, whose
account opened the blog, experienced a series of fluctuations in his street
trade linked with campaigns to clear the streets of petty traders, including
Moroccan street traders, to campaigns harassing migrants from sub-Saharan
Africa, and probably also to competition among the petty-traders as their
numbers waxed and waned.
Fluctuation in sea crossings
Several
interlinked fluctuations are at play when numbers of detected sea crossings
change. For the many migrants who have been in Morocco for a while, the
experience of everyday racism among the population in the neighbourhoods where
they live is exacerbated by structural racism that allows abuse, exploitation
and marginalisation to continue. Lack of integration and economic conditions
that allow migrants and refugees to establish themselves and maintain their
socio-economic aspirations of social standing, welfare and education of their
children, push them to look for other options. Among these options, crossing
into Europe figures as one with future potential, as long as it is not safe or
economically viable in the long term to return their country of abode prior to
journeying to Morocco.
Fluctuations
in sea crossings are also related to seasonality and the likelihood of
detection before leaving Moroccan waters. It is not only this year but every
summer that the number of sea crossings rise as the sea is calmer and warmer.
My friend has tried to cross over to Spain almost every summer since 2012, as
well as a couple of times during seasonal festivities when the border patrol is
perceived to be less vigilant. Over the years he has spent more than £2,000 trying
to access the European labour market, and he is certainly not alone in making
this sacrifice to reach Europe.
The
amount of money spent in aborted attempts to enter Europe, not to speak of the
lives lost, would be better spent elsewhere. It is easy to assume that the
money could set up business in their countries of origin or even in Morocco. However,
it should be clear that currently the political mood in Morocco is not very
different to anti-immigration movements in Europe. The conditions are not presently
allowing more than a few migrants from sub-Saharan Africa to consolidate
themselves in Morocco. Some migrants return to their country of origin. If
those who continue trying their luck crossing the Mediterranean Sea thought
they could set up viable business or gain durable employment with the resources
they pay to the people helping them cross, they have enough economic acumen to
do so. As they do not hold this belief, it would perhaps be better if loss of
money and lives were prevented by giving temporary access to European labour
markets, allowing migrants and refugees to spend the money on their visa and
upkeep at the beginning of their stay in Europe.
