ABSTRACT This study investigates Algerian Arabic speakers’ attitudes towards Nomadic Ouled Naïl Arabic (ONA). Data were collected through 32 semi-structured interviews with adult L1 Algerian Arabic speakers. Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s ([2019]. “Reflecting on Reflexive Thematic Analysis.” Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 11 (4): 589–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806) Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Results revealed systematic prejudice against ONA speakers. Participants frequently perceived ONA speakers as uneducated, unskilled, or unsuitable for positions of authority, often citing their limited use of French. Urban varieties, which usually borrow heavily from French, nevertheless, were consistently linked to professionalism, overt prestige, and modernity. Some participants, however, expressed covert positive attitudes towards ONA speakers, describing it as authentic, attractive, and aesthetically pleasing. These attitudes demonstrate that ONA speakers are evaluated depending on context and domain of use. ONA speakers are offered covert prestige in attractiveness domains, but they are stigmatised in status domains. The findings echo studies from the Arabic-speaking region, including Tunisia, Morrocco, and Syria. Urban varieties index mobility and authority, while rural/Bedouin ones are downgraded to a lower status. Specifically, while similar hierarchies appear in WANA region, the Algerian case is distinctive in how colonial language legacies intersect with urban–rural divides. As such, French is not only a prestige marker but also a gatekeeping resource for professional mobility.

ABSTRACT Morocco's post-2003 religious reforms ushered in an unprecedented inclusion of women in positions of authority within the religious establishment. Their mandate encompasses safeguarding Morocco’s religious identity, which includes fostering the role of the monarchy and the practice of Maliki-Sufi Islam as the primary conduits through which Moroccan Islam is delineated, and religious discourse and preaching are disseminated. Drawing on interview data, this article examines expressions of compliant agency as a category that is conducive to the enacting and fashioning of a collective pious identity informed by normative and nationalistic values, while carving individual strategies of gaining voice, and negotiating religious spheres and social narratives through pedagogical and scholarly undertakings. It also highlights the intersection of women’s access to religious authority with broader gender reforms, notably the ongoing mudawwana debate, emphasising the convergent empirical formations and pathways within gender activism and its enduring role in consolidating the existing political order, despite seemingly divergent repertoires.

ABSTRACT In June 2024, two North African states – Algeria and Tunisia – were among 24 individual cases discussed by the Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS) at the International Labor Organization (ILO). The two countries were targeted for their non-compliance with fundamental ILO conventions on freedom of association and the right to organise. Algeria’s government was far less conciliatory than its Tunisian counterpart, contesting key parts of the process. It also privileged loyalist unions. What explains these divergent dynamics? Studies of international human rights pressure would suggest that regime type plays an important role in states’ response to international shaming efforts. Yet, both countries were authoritarian at the time. I argue that the countries’ divergent trade union histories are key to understanding the countries’ responses to ILO shaming. Tunisia’s more cohesive and historically stronger trade union movement meant that the Tunisian state would need to confront a more formidable domestic adversary at the CAS. By contrast, trade union fragmentation in Algeria and the country’s weaker and less independent trade union confederation meant that the state could marginalise autonomous unions and have more leeway to push back against the ILO. These findings shed light on how authoritarian regimes respond to shaming efforts.

ABSTRACT From 2011 to 2019, the people of Imider, a small Tamazight-speaking community of seven villages in southeastern Morocco, launched a resistance movement known as the Movement on the Road'96 (MOR96). This movement opposed the destructive social, economic, and environmental impacts of Africa's largest silver mine, becoming the longest-running protest in Moroccan history. While various studies have examined the camp's political mobilisation, this article focuses on a less explored aspect. It sheds light on how the Imider community employs documentary filmmaking as a tool for environmental and Indigenous resistance. Specifically, it examines Amussu (2019), a Moroccan-Amazigh documentary conceived within the protest camp and co-produced by activist-filmmaker Nadir Bouhmouch and the Imider community. Taking a cue from Indigenous media studies and Amazigh studies, we argue that Amussu constructs an Amazigh representational sovereignty through two main strategies. First, it is established through the production process, characterised by collaboration between the filmmaker and the community. Second, this sovereignty is constructed through the documentary's aesthetic and counter-narrative strategies grounded in Amazigh identity politics, language, culture, and oral tradition. The film is read in light of the Imider protest and the broader context of Amazigh identity politics in Morocco.

ABSTRACT This editorial introduction offers an overview of the research presented in the special issue which collates a series of research articles, research notes, commentaries and an interview by an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral selection of authors based either in academic research institutions or in civil society organisations (CSOs). The article foregrounds the significance of this special issue in bringing a critical mass of expertise on migration across the Central Maghreb into comparative perspective. It also offers reflections on the impacts of existing and emerging policies on vulnerable displaced people and the implications of carrying out fieldwork in vulnerable settings, highlighting how these methodological and ethical challenges informed research and its outputs. The editorial introduction outlines common threads which emerged from contributions to this special issue – gendered experiences of migration, integration (and its discontents), and im/mobilities in the Maghreb – and situates them in relation to the existing literature.

ABSTRACT ‘There is an ongoing plan to replace the Tunisian population with sub-Saharans,’ Tunisian President Kais Saied declared in February 2023. These remarks—widely compared by international media and analysts to Renaud Camus's ‘Great Replacement Theory’—sparked controversy both domestically and abroad. Western observers and human rights organizations have since argued that the political climate following these statements coincided with a rise in racial tensions and incidents targeting sub-Saharan communities in Tunisia. The president's idea was not new to locals, as it echoed the narrative of the Tunisian National Party, a small anti-immigration group whose claims about a ‘resettlement’ master plan gained traction in mainstream discourse by 2022. Informed by theories on conspiracism, this paper looks at the ‘Great Settlement Theory’ and analyses the country's post-2011 political and social environment to investigate how this theory emerged and how sub-Saharan migrants became a stigmatised ‘outgroup’. Through this lens, the study contributes to a broader understanding of conspiracism and its impact on national identity formation and intergroup relations in Tunisia.

ABSTRACT As Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria won independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s, new leaders turned to universities to prepare their nations for the future. Universities, officials and politicians agreed, would train the experts, engineers, and functionaries needed to build the countries’ infrastructure and bureaucracy, as well as researchers and instructors to articulate and propagate the very idea of the nation. However, officials confronted colonial legacies within their inherited higher education systems and navigated ongoing French influence in the form of ‘cooperation’: a French programme to maintain close ties with former colonies by sending French personnel to serve as teachers, administrators, and other experts. This article examines cooperation in North African universities’ faculties of letters and human sciences, which were central to the development and implementation of national education curricula. In doing so, it makes two arguments. First, that French cooperation in national letters faculties was characterised by both previously unacknowledged tensions and unexpected alliances, blurring the lines between ‘colonial’, ‘national’, and ‘neocolonial’ projects during the early independence period. Second, by comparing Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, this article highlights the significant constraints Maghrebi leaders faced as they sought to build national universities, and the nation itself.