Between agency and repression: Moroccan children on the edge

Abstract

In this article we analyze the independent migration of Moroccan children and youth to Southern Europe. The key issue is represented not just by the appearance of the minor as a new migratory actor, but by the process of institutional manipulation of images and narratives related to them. We argue that this process is new for its way of shaping the public narrative of the migrant in Europe. This contribution aims to demonstrate how the process of derogatory classification set up for these migrants is influencing the representations of childhood in Morocco. We argue that this process is coherent with the ‘outsourcing’ of the management of European borders. We claim that the transnational alliance in category (re)production hinders the social change, maintaining lower class youth in their assigned social rank and space. In this sense, independent migration represents a breach of the confinement and an investment in an ‘elsewhere’ which contrasts symmetrically with the prescribed social stillness of the contexts of origin.