This presentation offers a renewed perspective on sub-Saharan migratory dynamics through the lens of migration policies, migrants’ lived experiences, and struggles within the Moroccan context. Under the geopolitical influence of the European Union, Morocco has gradually transformed into a Mediterranean laboratory for the European externalization of border control practices, which it has adopted as a demonstration of goodwill in combating irregular migration (El Qadim, 2010). The paper examines the biopolitical process of “spatial dispersal,” coupled with that of bordering, by analyzing the spatial division of labour dynamics that generate border spaces and zones of forced relocation for migrants. These processes shed light on mechanisms of invisibilization and illegalization of sub-Saharan migrations (Scheel, 2015), producing “border bodies” (Mbembe, 2020) and reinforcing the thickness of Euro-Moroccan borders. To this end, we draw on our participatory action research, conducted between 2017 and 2021, with a sample of 215 migrants dispersed by Moroccan authorities from northern border cities to interior and southern Moroccan cities. We adopted an immersive ethnographic approach in emblematic sites of spatial constraints, particularly encampment spaces.
Through the prism of infra-politics (C. Scott, 1992), we highlight underground resistance and the emerging logic of local solidarity in the refuge cities of Tiznit (South) and Taza (Northeast). We explore how these solidarity mechanisms unfold through the actions of territorial intermediary bodies, which compensate for the inadequacies of institutional reception systems. Ultimately, we shed light on the local governance of sub-Saharan migrations and the resulting local turn, where city diplomacy (Kihlgren Grandi, 2020) combines with a new geography of hospitality. This analysis, which deconstructs dominant securitarian discourses, pays particular attention to migrants’ claims and agency, expressed through tactics aimed at recoding instruments of governability and depoliticization of migration.
