ABSTRACT

In September 2013, King Mohammed VI announced sweeping reforms to Morocco’s migration policy that promised to break with decades of repressive border control, respect human rights, and open the path to integration for migrants across the country. In this introductory article, we outline the insights that postcolonial studies offers to understanding the ‘radically new’ migration policy in Morocco, and what such insights might add to the study of (North) African migration policy and politics more generally. Examining Morocco’s migration policy as it ‘actually exists’, the articles in this special issue decentre European actors and narratives, prioritise everyday and informal practices, and privilege subaltern accounts, to bring into view a complex migratory landscape that undermines the Eurocentric categories of ‘externalisation’ and ‘transit’ and that challenges presentist accounts of African migration as ‘new phenomenon’ or as ‘crisis’. We contend that these articles constitute an archive of what Ann Laura Stoler [2016. Duress: Imperial Durabilities for Our Time. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] calls ‘colonial histories of the present’, narratives animated by imperialism’s afterlives. Telling these present-day histories provokes a reckoning with the ‘colonial presences’ that influence migration politics today, at the macro-level in relations between former metropolitan and colonised countries, the national level where implementation is subject to the central government’s strategic needs, and the micro-level where racialised, gendered migrants are subjected to quotidian violence. To conclude, we reflect on how such histories of the present offer alternatives spaces of belonging and more expansive definitions of North African subjects.

摘要

2013 年 9 月，国王穆罕默德六世宣布对摩洛哥的移民政策进行全面改革，承诺打破数十年来压制性的边境管制，尊重人权，并为全国各地的移民开辟融合之路。在这篇介绍性文章中，我们概述了后殖民研究为理解摩洛哥“全新的”移民政策所提供的见解，以及这些见解可能为（北）非移民政策和政治研究更广泛地添加什么。审查摩洛哥“实际存在”的移民政策，本期特刊中的文章以欧洲行为者和叙事为中心，优先考虑日常和非正式实践，并优先考虑底层账户，考虑到一个复杂的移民景观，它破坏了“外部化”和“过境”的欧洲中心主义类别，并挑战了将非洲移民视为“新现象”或“危机”的当前主义描述。我们认为这些文章构成了 Ann Laura Stoler [2016.胁迫：我们时代的帝国耐久性。北卡罗来纳州达勒姆：杜克大学出版社] 称“现在的殖民历史”，是由帝国主义的死后生活激发的叙事。讲述这些当今的历史会引发对影响当今移民政治的“殖民存在”的反思，在前大都市和被殖民国家之间的宏观层面，在国家层面，实施取决于中央政府的战略需求，以及种族化、性别化的移民遭受日常暴力的微观层面。总而言之，我们反思当下的这些历史如何提供替代的归属空间和对北非主题的更广泛定义。