Heaven is Only a Border Away: Necropolitics, Infrastructure, and Moroccan Youth

Rachid Benharrousse is a Doctoral Candidate at Mohammed V University, Research Director at Palah Light Lab (The New School & University at Buffalo), and Don Lavoie Fellow at Mercatus Center (George Mason University). Previously with AMEWS, Berkman Klein Center (Harvard), AAMR (University of Witwatersrand), and PICT.

Introduction

This post delves into how the lack of adequate institutional and governmental infrastructure in Morocco shapes a necropolitical paradigm; it examines how the Moroccan nation-state wields pre-migratory expectations as political weapons in border control and migration policies. The post does so by contextualizing irregular migration within the historical, economic, and political developments of Morocco.

Contextualizing Morocco

Moroccan independence came through a collective war of liberation throughout the country following the lead of King Mohammed V. Independence in 1956 meant the grounding of nationwide hope toward economic, institutional, and governmental infrastructure development. However, the latter came to be perceived as a utopian reality amidst disappointment, leading to the riots in Casablanca in 1965. By the end of the 1970s, crippling debt forced Morocco to seek international donors, primarily the IMF and the World Bank. The Western Sahara War furthered the failure of the economic sector since Morocco focused almost all its resources on the war from 1975 until 1991, furthering the economic crisis in Morocco. As George Henderson argues, soaring prices, economic deprivation, and the lack of adequate infrastructure became fundamental in multiple waves of “bread riots” in the 1980s,  beginning with the famous Casablanca Bread riots in 1981, which (re)emphasized the demands of riots in the 1960s. Subsequently, the rest of the country engaged in riots of a smaller scale. Although Morocco invested 25-37% of its GDP in infrastructure, specifically the public sector between 2001 and 2017, protests increased from the 2000s onward as secular, leftist, Islamic, and feminist activists outspoke against the underwhelming development vis-à-vis the investment. The 20th February Movement did not stray far from previous visions of meritocracy, infrastructure, democracy, and human rights, which again failed to be realized, fueling the Moroccan youth's alienation from themselves, their community, and the nation-state.

Necropolitical Paradigm

The concept of necropolitics refers to how those in power can control life and death. In Morocco, the lack of basic infrastructure like roads, healthcare, schools, and water in most areas exemplifies the difference between Europe as Heaven, as Moroccan youth perceive it, and Morocco as Prison. For instance, the hope of socio-economic mobility is feasible for Moroccan youth through, primarily, education, yet this hope diminishes with the lack of adequate institutions, policies, curricula, and inclusion as “social disparity is widening with the growth of private schools as higher-income families increasingly opt to pay for better services, threatening those who rely on free and quality education.” It is important to note that higher-income families are the minority. Hence, dropping out becomes dominant because Moroccan youth perceive education as useless. The latter, in turn, is because Moroccan youth no longer perceive education as a means of socioeconomic mobility. This infrastructure deficiency shapes a paradigm where much of Morocco's population is reduced to a status of “living in death" without access to basic services that support life. 

Meanwhile, although cities like Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangier have privileged infrastructure over Eastern, Southern, and East-Southern Morocco, Moroccan youth continue to perceive it as Casanegra, a city in which there is only death and darkness, exemplified further through literary and cinematic representation, and in social media. Through pre-migratory expectations, this dichotomy differentiates between Europe "governing life" versus Morocco “governing death.” Europe represents a space brimming with robust infrastructure and governance that enables truly "living." This perception is coupled with tighter border control that obstructs access to Europe. Crossing into Spain symbolically represents escaping "death" in Morocco into "life" in Europe. For example, stories of Moroccans finding economic opportunities in Europe reinforce the notion of Europe as a utopia and Moroccan pre-migratory expectations (see work by Tarik Sabry). This shapes irregular migration as a journey to escape the status of "living dead" and "death-world" conditions of most Moroccan regions. Some normalize the risk of death en route in the Mediterranean as preferable to figurative death from lack of infrastructure at home. Looser EU border externalization and symbolic normalization of potential death during migration also emerge from this paradigm, since Moroccan youth dismiss rampant death rates and focus on escaping.

Exemplifying Necropolitics

In 2021, Moroccan-Spanish relations faced a significant challenge when Spain admitted Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front in Madrid. This move strained the diplomatic ties between the two countries, leading to repercussions on border control measures. Consequently, Morocco “loosened” border control for over 8,000 Moroccans to cross the borders into Spain as a protest and demonstration of discontent. This incident grounds two primary necropolitical ideas. First, the Moroccan nation-state understands that Moroccans want to emigrate to Europe because they perceive it as a socio-economic utopia. The latter means that Morocco is not oblivious to the dominant cultural and discursive frameworks that lead to increasing numbers of irregular migrants, especially since Moroccan youth continue to aspire to Europe irrespective of Morocco's plans and promises of development (See Reuters, Aljazeera in 2021, Aljazeera in 2015).

Second, loosening the borders to ease irregular migration is a necropolitical discursive structuring that uses the pre-migratory expectation of Europe as heaven to affirm Moroccan sovereignty and territory. Moroccan youth are used by the nation-state as political weapons dismissing the structural and socio-political factors that propelled them to migrate in the first place and without considering the possibility of their death during the crossing. Morocco's manipulation of border control measures as a response to diplomatic tensions highlights the instrumental use of pre-migratory expectations as political tools against Spain. Hence, upon the de-escalation of the situation, Morocco reinforced borders and returned more than 6,600 migrants (see here). This furthers the necropolitical paradigm between worthy and unworthy of life and the grounding of Moroccan bodies’ placelessness.

Conclusion

Rather than addressing underlying issues of corruption and infrastructural deficiencies, the nation-state strategically loosens borders to redirect discontent and uses irregular migration to maintain political agendas. It is crucial to dismantle the necropolitical structures that perpetuate the idea of Europe as a distant utopia and address the systemic issues that fuel irregular migration. We can only pave the way for a more equitable and just global migration system through a comprehensive and compassionate approach to pre-migratory expectations and their necropolitical discourse. 

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