From irregular migration to radicalisation? Fragile borders, securitised development and the government of Moroccan youth

Abstract

ABSTRACTBuilding on fieldwork conducted in 2016 and 2017, this paper analyses projects seeking to disrupt irregular emigration in Morocco. Literature has analysed how these programmes transfer repressive migration control norms from European states to origin countries and the problematic representations of migration that they convey. However, scholars have overlooked the trajectory of this migration control tool and have analysed it in isolation from other donor- and state-driven forms of social regulation in migrant sending and transit countries. Against this background, this article explores the social life of preventive projects, comprehending border surveillance as a dynamic process that interacts with other governing strategies in aid-recipient countries. In the first part of the article, I build on Autonomy of Migration theories to analyse the progressive disappearance of dissuasion projects in the early 2010s. I argue that border regimes are unstable and not dependent merely on migration dynamics. In the second part, I draw on scholarship on development securitisation and on non-governmental organisations as alternative sovereign authorities to investigate the reappearance of dissuasion projects as initiatives labelled as ‘countering radicalisation’. I contend that migration containment can be conceptualised as part of a wider pattern of donors’ intervention in the governance of marginalised Moroccan youth.