Migration, race, and gender: the policing of subversive solidarity actors in Morocco

Abstract

The policing of racialised migrant people in Morocco and across the Maghreb has been violent since the 1990s. The intimidation of those who support migrant people and seek to denounce human rights abuses against them has become an important dimension of border control. This article investigates the policing of “subversive solidarity actors”: human rights defenders and activists who publicly or covertly engage in a critical stance on migration control policies and practices in Morocco. These forms of activism are considered a threat by the state because they make visible the brutality of migration governance and control in the country, which the state seeks to conceal. As objects of state mistrust and suspicion, solidarity actors experience everyday acts of intimidation and criminalisation. Drawing on ethnographic material and interviews with migrant people and subversive solidarity actors, this article demonstrates how these solidarity actors - much like migrant people themselves - are differentially targeted according to intersectional differences. Racist and gendered bordering logics characteristic of migration management seep into the differential policing of those who dare act or speak out in support of migrants’ rights. Race and gender provoke particular policing behaviours which are reinforced when people engage in politics or acts of solidarity considered subversive. This is reinforced by the persistence of racial hierarchies of domination in post-colonial Morocco, which still bear the legacy of the active enslavement of Black people in the country and the legacy of the country’s colonisation by Europeans. First, honing in on racial difference, the article sheds light on the differential policing of Black, Moroccan and white-European solidarity actors. While Black solidarity actors are often migrant people who have regularised their status and settled in Morocco, their decision to engage in subversive solidarity work marks them as “ungrateful guests” and relegates them to a position of vulnerability in which their administrative status is compromised. In contrast, white Europeans in Morocco tend to benefit from privileges and freedoms, including within the bureaucratic realm. Those engaging in subversive acts of solidarity may experience state intimidation or punitive acts of administrative exclusion from the country, however these usually (with some stark exceptions) amount to better treatment relative to the experiences of their Black and Moroccan counterparts. Finally, Moroccans engaging in subversive solidarity action are framed as “internal enemies” to the state and are hyper-aware that punitive action might be set in motion against them at any moment. Second, this article focuses on gender, which also plays an important role in determining the ways in which solidarity actors are policed and their scope of action. Gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched in Morocco and social norms profoundly gendered. Particularly for women, activism is considered deviant, giving rise to greater police and social scrutiny of their acts and attempts to govern their behaviour. While men tend to face professional threats as insidious punishment for their activism, attacks on women more often target their family or intimate life. This article emphasises the importance of taking the policing of solidarity actors into account to understand the policing of migration more broadly, stressing how the racist and gendered policing of migrant people bleeds into the disciplining of those who support them. We conclude with a discussion of how this policing impacts subversive solidarity actors and networks, by instilling fear and hindering (coordinated) action. While some interviewees demonstrated an awareness of both intersectional differences and overlapping experiences, we call for solidarity actors to mobilise these differences and experiences to strengthen their action on migration issues and their ability to withstand intimidation from state authorities.