by Kelsey P. Norman
In academic literature and among policy practitioners, migrant destination countries are generally considered to be developed, Western states. Indeed, European countries were the highest immigrant-receivers per capita following WWII, and were then surpassed by Canada, the United States and Australia beginning in the 1970s (Castles and Miller 1998). But since the 1990s these traditional migrant-receiving states have enacted a series of increasingly restrictive migration controls, making it much more difficult for would-be migrants to successfully emigrate. As a result, countries like those of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are becoming migrant-receiving states. Due to new forms of border control measures and decreasing refugee resettlement rates, hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing conflict and poverty in neighboring African and Arab states have settled in MENA countries if they are unable to reach Europe or are not eligible for resettlement.
My research asks: how are ‘new’ migrant-receiving states in the MENA region handling this role? Because of the bias in the academic literature toward studying traditional migrant receiving countries, we know relatively little about how non-Western, developing countries conceive of migration, even though more than half the world’s migration takes place between developing states (OECD 2011). One particularly interesting case drawn from the MENA region is Morocco. In September 2013, the King of Morocco, His Majesty Mohammed VI, made an announcement that startled the country’s civil society: Morocco would be reforming its national migration policy. More specifically, the King called for the drafting of a new ‘comprehensive policy on immigration’ with the intention of providing a path to regularization for irregular migrants in Morocco, whether from sub-Saharan Africa or elsewhere. Why did the Moroccan government suddenly change its approach to migration, and what are the implications of this change for other countries in the region undergoing similar patterns of migrant settlement?
Morocco has been under pressure from the European Union and individual European states to crack down on irregular migration since the early 2000s (de Hass 2007; Boubakri 2013). In exchange for increased trade and the loosening of visa entry requirements for nationals of neighboring countries, the EU has successfully pressured many neighboring countries to adopt enhanced policing policies toward irregular migrants. In the case of Morocco, this has meant particularly violent policing measures toward migrants living on the country’s northern coast near the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. Migrants residing near these enclaves were frequently arrested in mass raids, driven to the border with Algeria, and forcibly deported into the no-man’s land separating the two countries (MSF 2013).
The buildup of stocks of migrants in Morocco since the 1990s has also given rise to a network of international and local NGOs that provide services for migrants and refugees. Migrants themselves have established community organizations like the Conseil des Migrants Sub-Sahariens au Maroc or the Collectif des Communatis Subsahariens au Maroc that advocate for migrant rights: the right to fair pay, access to health care, the right to remain in the country, etc. A turning point for many of these groups occurred in 2005 following the death of at least fifteen migrants at the hands of Spanish and Moroccan authorities while trying to scale the fences separating Morocco from Melilla and Ceuta (Goldschmidt 2006). After a number of violent and deadly incidents that year, a forum was held in 2006 between European civil society groups, migrant community leaders in Morocco, and Moroccan civil society organizations, many of which had only worked tangentially on the issue of migration up until that point. That same year, a NGO called GADEM[1] was formed to advocate for the recognition of the rights of foreigners and migrants. A ‘Platform for Protection,’ led by GADEM, Caritas, La Fondation Orient-Occident, and other NGOs, was officially launched in 2009 and continued to solidify over the next several years, even in the face of continued violence toward migrants and the excessive use of force by Moroccan authorities.
In August 2013, GADEM compiled a highly critical report on the status of migration in Morocco. This report provided the basis for a more condensed publication written by Moroccan Human Rights Council (CNDH), and presented during a closed session between the council and government. Shortly thereafter, on the 9th of September, representatives from GADEM presented their report in Geneva at an international forum for human rights. The next day, King Mohammed VI announced his plans for migration policy reform. This timeline of events has led GADEM and other civil society organizations to conclude that the primary incentive behind the King’s announcement of reform was international shaming: Morocco despises humiliation on the international stage. Organizations also cite Morocco’s mobility partnership with the EU that was signed in June 2013 as another incentive behind the timing of reform (European Commission Press Release 2013). A third explanation posited by civil society groups is Morocco’s desire to play a leading role in Africa, both economically and geo-politically. This could also be a bid for the support of African countries in Morocco’s control of Western Sahara, an ongoing conflict that remains a taboo subject in Morocco.[2] Lastly, as a counter-narrative to power politic explanations, some migrant community leaders in Morocco posit that the King’s decision was a response to the public outcry following several migrant deaths at the hands of Moroccan authorities in the spring and summer of 2013.
Regardless of the reason, those involved with the migrant advocacy and protection platform differentiate between the pre-2013 governmental approach to migration and the post-2013 period. Following the King’s announcement in September 2013, ministries were mobilized alongside the CNDH to develop an implementation plan for the unfolding of a regularization process for irregular migrants, beginning in January 2014 and running for one year. Migrants would have to meet certain criteria – such as being married to Moroccan nationals, or providing proof of residency in Morocco for five years – in order to be regularized. The policy changes would also involve the government taking on responsibility for refugees and asylum-seekers whose claims had previously been handled solely by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Lastly, informal policies of policing and mass arrests were minimized (though not eradicated) following the King’s announcement in 2013, signaling that perhaps the Moroccan government was sincere in its commitment to a new relationship with migrants.
In February 2015, the Organization Démocratique du Travail (ODT), a Moroccan labor union with a special section for migration, reported that 16,180 migrants had successfully received their residency permits and 10,950 had either been rejected or were still waiting to hear the results of their regularization application. While many migrants, refugees and civil society actors are skeptical of the implementation process, some individuals are critical of the entire reform. A representative from the Moroccan Association for Human Rights – the CNDH’s more radical, non-governmental counterpart – asserts that the reform is a way of appeasing European countries; not out of concern for migrants, but because these countries can then claim that migrants have no need to travel to Europe when integration possibilities exist in Morocco. In line with this distrust, a worrying incident occurred in February 2015 when Moroccan authorities conducted the first post-2013 large-scale police raid on a migrant settlement on Morocco’s northern coast (Associated Press 2015). According to an individual at GADEM who was monitoring the situation, this raid was more centrally organized and systematically orchestrated than any previous attack, perhaps ushering in yet another era marked by violence and exclusionary treatment toward migrants.
While organizations and migrants are justified in their skepticism of the Moroccan government’s intentions for policy reform, the move toward integration for irregular migrants and refugees is nonetheless unprecedented for a non-traditional receiving state. As European and other Western states continue to harden their borders, countries in the Middle East and North Africa will increasingly become receivers of migrants and refugees that settle on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. Will we see other states move toward regularization or formal integration measures for their migrant populations? In this regard, Morocco is playing a bellwether role, and the next year will be a telling one in terms of Morocco’s engagement, or lack there of, with its migrants and refugees.
Kelsey is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine where she researches migration and citizenship. Her research focuses on Middle East and North African states as countries of migrant settlement and her dissertation is tentatively titled “Strategic Ambivalence: Migrant Engagement in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey.” You can find out more about her work at kelseypnorman.com or follow her on twitter @kelseypnorman.
[1] GADEM is an acronym for Groupe Antiraciste de Défense et d’Accompagnement des Étrangers et Migrants.
[2] Morocco claims ownership over Western Sahara and is unwilling to recognize any claims for independence emanating from the Polisario Front and the group’s self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) (International Crisis Group 2007).
References:
Associated Press. 2015. “Morocco clears migrant camps near Spanish enclave.” Daily Mail [on-line]. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2949011/Morocco-clears-migrant-camps-near-Spanish-enclave.html [Accessed March 22, 2015].
Boubakri, Hassan, 2013. “Revolution and International Migration in Tunisia.” Migration Policy Centre (MPC) Research Report 2013/14, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, San Domen [on-line]. Available at: http://www.migrationpolicycentre.eu/docs/MPC-RR-2013-04.pdf [Accessed September 20, 2013].
Castles, Stephen and Mark J. Miller. (1998). The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, Guilford Press, 1998.
Goldschmidt, Elie, 2006. “Storming the Fences: Morocco and Europe’s Anti-Migration Policy.” Middle East Research and Information Project [on-line]. Available at: http://www.merip.org/mer/mer239/storming-fences [Accessed September 14, 2013].
de Haas, Hein. 2007. “Turning the Tide? Why Development Will Not Stop Migration”, Development and Change, 38 (5) pp 819-841.
International Crisis Group. 2007. “Western Sahara: The Cost of the Conflict.” Middle East North Africa Report No. 65 [on-line]. Available at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/Middle%20East%20North%20Africa/North%20Africa/Western%20Sahara/65_western_sahara___the_cost_of_the_conflict.ashx [Accessed January 15, 2015].
Médecins Sans Frontières, 2013. “Violence, Vulnerability and Migration: A report on the situation of sub-Saharan migrants in an irregular situation in Morocco.” Médecins Sans Frontières, March 2013.
OECD, 2011. Tackling the Policy Challenges of Migration. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris: OECD.
*Update: An earlier version of this article included the incorrect name of the author; the author is Kelsey P. Norman. Additionally, the earlier post has been updated with a more recent version. We apologize to the author and the readers for these errors.