Introduction

The introduction sets the scene for the argument, introduces the main questions the book aims to explore and presents the context of the research. Further, the main aims of the book, as well as the research design are introduced. This is followed by the chapter structure of the book.

Conclusion

The conclusion wraps up the arguments made in the course of the book and attempts to give some tentative answers to the main question concerning the consequences of ‘stuckness’ on people’s lives in Morocco. In summary, the book shows how the current policy mechanisms which limit certain people’s mobility through border controls can have particularly negative effects on the life course of individuals. The discussion of migrants’ situation in Morocco shows how international migration control policies are actively hampering migrants’ and would-be migrants’ abilities to design a dignified, self-controlled life plan and to establish productive and mutually supporting relations with others. Such policies foster segregation, marginalisation and exploitation. As such, control policies are doing much more than simply inhibiting movement. They are also inhibiting people’s effective settlement and their development as persons.

Waiting in Desperate Hope

This chapter is about the diverse strategies migrants use to ‘revolt’ against the absurd conditions they find themselves in by attempting to leave the country. The data presented in this chapter shows that migrants’ opportunities for leaving or staying are shaped by their capabilities to influence the forces of mobility on the one hand and luck on the other. Capabilities and luck, however, are both difficult to control in situations of extreme marginality. Therefore, rather than planning for departure, migrants have to wait for unpredictable opportunities to arise. The chapter focuses on the variety of waiting strategies that help migrants re-establish some sense of temporal and spacial order in their lives. By describing the process followed by migrants’ waiting for departure in desperate hope, the connection between time and social agency becomes evident. Waiting can be seen as an act of choice to create a new future within very limiting constraints for action in the present. In the conclusion, the findings are brought into connection with contemporary ideas about time and modernity in order to show why migrants ‘waiting creates such an uncomfortable situation for migration policy makers.

Migrant Communities in Morocco

This chapter shifts the view from how migrants see their own life to how they view each other. The chapter explores the contradictory community relations between migrants in Morocco by looking at moments of reciprocity and mutual help on the one hand, and exploitation on the other. I discuss how migrants’ relation to mobility, place and time conditions these dynamics. The data in the chapter shows that even though migrants are actually living in conditions very similar to what Agamben (1998) would term “the bare life”, it would be wrong to conclude that this prevents them from having any meaningful social and community life and therefore no basis for political agency. However, the analysis of the ethnographic material shows that migrants’ community life is characterized by activities which are mostly based on self-interest rather than on the desire to promote a common community goal.

Facing Time and the Absurd

This chapter changes the perspective and focuses on migrants’ image of themselves when stuck in Morocco. It describes the experience of being stuck in transit as an existential dilemma and analyses migrants’ efforts to resynchronize their temporal frames of reference with those of the external world. Through the stories of migrants I interviewed, I show how people become disconnected from the past and the future and struggle with a meaningless life in the present. This places them in a situation which they themselves conceive as absurd or senseless. This existence “out of time” can affect their capacity to take informed decisions about their life, to plan for the future and to care for their relations with families back home.

Arriving in Morocco: Becoming Trapped in a Context of Uncertainty

In this chapter, I describe how migrants actually arrive in Morocco. The data presented in the chapter situates their lives here in a context of extreme political, economic and social marginalization. I then analyse the migration policy context in Morocco and the increasing involvement of the European Union in this process. By doing this, I show how transit migrants’ rightlessness in Morocco has been constructed by states through the introduction of particular national and international migration policies which link mobility and rights in very specific ways.

Travelling Adventures: Migration as an Existential Quest

This chapter focuses on migrants’ journeys from their countries of origin to Morocco. The text analyses how phases of mobility and immobility are interdependent parts of the complex migration trajectories of my migrant research subjects. It explores the variety of obstacles that migrants encounter during travel towards Morocco, and the ways in which they continue to negotiate their social locations with respect to mobility along the way. By reviewing the variety of regulatory authorities (market, state and family) that structure their movement, I will show how aspirations and capabilities to migrate are produced and reproduced not only at the point of departure, but also along the way. Thus, rather than transiting through different places, the data shows how migrants’ journeys are best described as “fractured stays” in various places. These stays and the ways in which people travel do not leave them unchanged. Instead, it has a profound impact on themselves and their future migratory project. The migratory experience becomes a way of life which influences every other aspect of their identit

EU Externalization Policies and their Impact on Migrants in Morocco

This chapter lays out the context of research in Morocco and the general situation of migrants in the country. In the beginning, it provides a general overview about the characteristics of Morocco’s migrant population. It explores the different types of migrants which Morocco is hosting, as well as their socio-economic and legal statuses. Furthermore, the chapter gives a short overview of new and old migration policies and their connections with EU migration policy and development cooperation. After that, important state-and non-state actors involved in migration management in Morocco are introduced. The chapter focuses on the structural conditions which regulate migration – both on national and international level- and how these are “framed” in policy talk. By doing this, the chapter uncovers the contradictions between the theoretical justifications for non-state and state actors’ decisions and activities in migration management in Morocco and those pursued by migrants themselves.