Crossroads at the Edge of Worlds: Sub-Saharan Transit Migration in Morocco

The contemporary globalization process has created the world of blurred, disseminated frontiers between countries and cultures, thus allowing for a free movement of great amounts of people, capitals and goods. However, the Morocco-EU border has been closed for decades, which caused the increase in illegalized transit migration of Sub-Saharan Africans to Europe.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

In recent years Morocco has implemented the policy, aimed at controlling every aspect of migration: under pressure from the EU, the Moroccan government ordained the law, which denied European visas to citizens of Sub-Saharan countries and pronounced illegal migration as a serious crime, allowing for means of enforcement to be applied to illicit trespassers. Yet, fleeing from ultimate poverty and war at home, thousands of Africans are willing to break the law and risk their lives in a vague hope to enter the elusive "promised land" across the border.

The quest for Europe for 90 % of illegal immigrants from all over the African continent starts in the capital of all sorts of illicit trafficking, including the smuggling of people, Oujda, also called "the No Man's Land". From here, paths of many of them lead to Tangier, the city situated across the 14-kilometer Strait of Gibraltar from the Spanish coast, the free trade zone, where capitals and products are exonerated of all taxes and where the new huge Tanger-Med port is being under construction. However, there is no place in this bounteous island of exemption for the othered and the dispossessed. They find refuge and a substitute for their nonexistent homeland in the informal migrant camp of Bel Younech, a highly organized community, where they wait for the opportunity to cross the Strait and plan the crossing itself.

Another hideout for illegalized transit migrants are the overpopulated slums of Rabat-Sale, in which they easily vanish among crowds of people and, using various kinds of fraud strategies, disguise their identities and escape from state repressions and repatriation, while further organizing their journey to Europe. Finally, around 50% of illegal Sub-Saharan immigrants, scared away by the militarization of control over the Strait of Gibraltar, choose Laayoune as the jumping-off place for their pursuit of better opportunities, aiming to reach the Canary Islands by sea. Forced to wander in the desert, on the verge of dying from thirst and hunger, in search of marine traffic to take them to their desired destination, the majority of the illegal immigrants ends up in Laayoune's prison only to be sent back to Oujda, the initial point of their journey. Yet, unable to physically reach their European "El Dorado", they never want to give up their dream and will attempt crossing over and over again, migrating permanently in between the colliding worlds.

In its attempt to resist globalization by closing its frontiers and introducing policies against illegal Sub-Saharan transit migration, the EU only achieved the increase in the phenomenon it intended to combat, inciting African immigrants to invent new practical strategies of escaping government repression and new routes for crossing the border between Morocco and Europe.