Muslim Moroccan Migrants in Europe

Transnational Migration in its Multiplicity

M. Ennaji

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137476487
• eBook ISBN: 9781137476494
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Based on the author's fieldwork and readings of media, government reports, and historical and contemporary records, this book explores how Muslim migrants in Europe contribute to a changing European landscape, focusing on Muslim Moroccan migrants.

PART I

Moroccan Migration Flows: Past and Present

This part sets the scene and contextualizes the topic of Moroccan migration then and now, the kinds of migration, and the push/pull factors, facilitators, and constraints. It includes two chapters that discuss the history and present-day situation of Muslim Moroccan migrants in Europe. It discusses the origins and causes of this kind of international migration, as well as its current characteristics and challenges.

Espousing a postcolonial historical approach, chapter 1 reviews the various causes of legal and illegal migration from North Africa to Europe, and discusses the different experiences of migration waves to France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Chapter 2, which assesses the current situation of immigrants and their descendents, reveals that diversity is what characterizes Moroccan migrants in Europe, and that they form a heterogeneous ethnic group living very diverse experiences that are shaped by factors like their level of education, duration of residence in the host country, socioeconomic background, and age and gender. The chapter shows that Moroccan Muslim migrants have suffered a setback since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, chiefly with the increase of Islamophobia.

Chapter 1

Moroccan Migration History: Origins and Causes

The history of Moroccan migration to Europe is one of unexpected developments and unplanned effects. This is true of colonial migration, labor migration, and most lately, undocumented migration. Adopting a postcolonial historical approach, this chapter reviews the various features of Moroccan migration to Europe and tentatively draws a few parallels from these experiences by covering, in particular, the cases of migration to France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Many researchers have wrongly argued that European countries intentionally called for colonial migrants in order to meet the demands of the postwar economic growth. The reality is that these countries recruited the guest workers from ex-colonies only after failing to secure white workers from the rest of Europe (Hansen 2003). The late 1950s and 1960s were characterized by a great demand for North African workers in Western Europe.

North African workers migrated because they were needed for the reconstruction of Europe and the expansion of its economy. The migration of thousands of Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians has been initiated by European countries, namely France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, according to bilateral agreements signed after the North African countries gained independence.

Initially, European trade unions were extremely mistrustful of labor migration, as they worried that it would lead to the lowering of native workers’ wages. But eventually, European governments promised the guest workers the same benefits as the natives, and guest workers were later incorporated into the unions. It was assumed that the immigrant workers would return to their home countries once they were no longer needed. However, most of them ended up settling in Europe and subsequently brought their families to join them. According to El Manar Laalami (2000), at the beginning of 2000 about 1.2 million Moroccans had legal residence in one of the 15 countries of the European Union, and between 1990 and 1999 almost 300,000 Moroccans obtained European citizenship (see chapter 8).

At first, the laws and policies on migration were about the regulation and management of these migrant flows; but lately these policies have become more focused on issues of integration and migrants’ rights. This new tendency can be explained by the intensification of migration and by the growing xenophobia toward Muslim immigrants. The conditions and rights of these migrants have attracted little attention from researchers and experts. Thus, undertaking research in this area and understanding the history of Moroccan migration in Europe is of paramount importance both regionally and transnationally.

Origins of North African Migration

The migration of North Africans to Europe started during the colonial period with the French occupation of Algeria in 1830 and escalated in 1912, when the French-Spanish colonization of Morocco was formally established. In World War II, the need for a workforce again led to the recruitment of Moroccan men by the French army.

Thus initially, North African migration was involuntary, because many young men were forced to join the French army; later on, migration varied according to the needs of the host country. Algeria experienced migration first, starting at the end of the nineteenth century. With the outbreak of World War I, more than a million North Africans, most of whom were Algerian, were recruited by the French army.

Migration to France

The first Moroccans who migrated to France were from the Souss region in the south of Morocco, and had been recruited by the factories of Nantes in 1909. By 1966, Moroccan migrants from the south constituted 50 percent of the overall migrant population in France (Daoud 2011: 39). During colonization, a significant number of Moroccans moved to France. From 1914 to 1918, there were more than 35,500 Moroccans working in agriculture and mining in France, replacing French men sent to the front, and about 40,000 Moroccan men were recruited by the French army (Khachani 2004: 15; Daoud 2003: 38). The Moroccan soldiers were from the Middle Atlas and the High Atlas. In all, 200,000 North African men fought in the French army during World War I.

Thousands of North African migrants participated in World War II on the side of France. According to de Haas (2005), approximately 126,000 Moroccan men fought in the French army during that war and in the ensuing Indochinese and Korean wars, and many spread out over the three wars.¹

After the war ended in 1945, many of these migrants took part in the reconstruction of France. At that time, there were about 250,000 North African migrants in France—220,000 Algerians, 25,000 Moroccans, and 5,000 Tunisians (Guennouni 2004: 25).

After independence (1956 for Morocco and Tunisia, 1962 for Algeria), migration increased, and the countries of destination began to vary, as new destinations, such as Germany and Belgium, were available. The main cause of this migration flow was the need for manpower for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II and resulting economic growth after World War II. However, many immigrants settled permanently in their host country because the investment and employment environment in their former home country was extremely difficult.

Emigration was encouraged by successive North African governments, especially in Morocco and Tunisia, because of its alleviating effect on unemployment, and its positive impact on the balance of payments through migrants’ remittances. Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia signed bilateral agreements with the major European countries of destination concerning migrants’ rights and obligations. Subsequently, emigration to France and Belgium became more organized as offices of recruitment began to sign work contracts with potential migrants. In 1974, the number of North African migrants reached nearly 1.5 million (Guennouni 2004: 25).

Beginning in the 1960s, the number of Moroccan migrants progressively increased from 3,000 per year in 1959 to 17,000 in 1963 to 30,000 in the mid-1970s, according to the Moroccan Ministry of Employment’s 1986 report. The migrants at this epoch were mainly single men, and their increasing number was accompanied by a diversification in countries of destination, France having been the chief destination up until then. Morocco signed agreements of recruitment of guest workers with the then West Germany (1963), France (1963), Belgium (1964), and the Netherlands (1969).

This diversification sprang from the need for manpower in European countries during the phase of reconstruction that followed World War II.France, Belgium, and the Netherlands created immigration offices in big Moroccan cities like Casablanca, Rabat, Fès, and Marrakesh to recruit Moroccans chiefly from rural areas.² Over 300,000 Moroccan workers left for European countries, particularly France. In 1973, the Moroccan migrant population in Europe totaled 500,000 (Ennaji and Sadiqi 2008: 82–84).

Official recruitment by intermediary companies (called in Morocco at that time Bureaux de Placement) was significant in the 1960s. According to Daoud (2003: 15), the selection of workers was done through slavelike criteria. She cites a recruiter called Félix Mora, who went to the Souss region in 1960 to engage workers. He selected 1,000 men out of 10,000 candidates and most of them signed the job contract by pressing their thumb against the piece of paper without reading it, for they were illiterate. “He looked at their half-naked bodies, checked their teeth, touched their biceps, before they were accepted,” recalls M’Barek, one of the selected workers who subsequently spent most of his life in France, adding that “there was a migration organization that used to come to Morocco; they passed in front of the candidates, looked at those who were in good shape, stout men, in order to recruit them to work in the industry. Those who were not in good shape were not selected. The workers who were chosen had to be strong, healthy, and ready to adapt.” Most immigrant workers joined coal mines, in which the French men refused to work. They worked under appalling conditions, slept in dormitories with other North African workers, and cooked their own meals. A few of them returned to Morocco because they could not stand the conditions; others struggled and stayed because it was shameful to go home empty-handed, and their families in Morocco would not appreciate their return.

Most of them could not read their pay checks, were underpaid (they earned less than minimum wage), and were under-represented in the trade unions, particularly in the Confédération Générale de Travail (CGT), which initially ignored North African workers. Later, CGT helped these workers create their own body to protect their rights, Le Comité de défense des travailleurs marocains en France, whose headquarters were in the city of Gennevilliers (Daoud 2003: 38). North African workers, however, did not integrate easily, as they were keen on preserving their Muslim faith and identity; they lived together in nostalgia and often in regret, for they felt uprooted, exploited, and ill-treated by their employers.

According to de Haas (2009), migrants who were informally recruited by businesses and industries, or through relatives in Europe, were significantly more numerous than those who had migrated through formal recruitment in the 1970s.³ Migrants were often assisted by family members or friends who had already settled in Europe, and who acted as intermediaries between European employers and the would-be migrants. In the 1970s and 1980s, most migrants traveled to France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe without a visa (because there was no visa for Moroccans at that time) and resided in Europe as undocumented migrants before being subsequently regularized. The visa was not imposed by most European countries until 1990. Thousands of North African migrants managed to obtain the status of permanent resident through a number of documenting processes in the Netherlands (1975), Belgium (1975), and France (1981–1982).⁴

North African Jews have also experienced international migration. Their relatives and connections abroad helped them to migrate and to reside in France (Paris, Marseilles), the United Kingdom (Manchester), and North America (Montreal, New York). After the creation of Israel, most Jews left North Africa. Out of 250,000 Moroccan Jews, only 5,000 stayed in Morocco. Approximately 700,000 Jews of Moroccan descent live in Israel today.⁵

Other Countries of Destination

The main destination for most former and current Moroccan migrants is Europe. Only 4 percent left for a non-EU country. As we have seen above, France is the number one destination for Moroccans (35 percent), followed by Italy (22 percent), and Spain (17 percent) (Ennaji and Sadiqi 2008, ch. 6). The preferred country of destination is strongly related to the region of origin. The vast majority of Moroccan migrants from Larache prefer to emigrate to Spain or the United Kingdom (UK), while Italy is preferred by migrants fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Framing and Contextualizing Muslim Moroccan Migrants in Europe
• PART I: Moroccan Migration Flows: Past and Present
• Part II: Being Moroccan and Muslim in Europe
• PART III: Becoming Moroccan-European
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index