The outside inside, the inside ouside: emigration ant de imagination of life in Central Morocco.

What happens when something that has become a synonym for possibility, wealth and dignity starts deteriorating, and something that is associated with hardship, corruption and impossibility starts transforming? This project addresses the ways in which the current economic crisis in Europe and the recent revolutions in North Africa may be affecting, independently or in unison, the way migration is imagined in Morocco a part of the world characterised by decades-long emigration towards, and dreaming of, Europe. Through an ethnographic investigation of a part of the country in which emigration to Europe is pervasive, the research aims to explore how both the practicalities of everyday life and the imagination of a better elsewhere are being affected by the crisis. What happens, I ask, to the local understandings of emigration when the utopian land to which many have moved and many others hope to reach, starts showing tangible signs of weakness: when remittances decrease and money must be sent to emigrant relatives to help them survive abroad? Moreover, in the face of Europes crisis, to what extent do countries closer to home, such as Tunisia and Egypt, become novel points of reference through their revolutions? Observing the workings of global economic processes and political events from a local perspective, the project traces the consequences of crises and transformations in areas where people have for decades moved, or attempted to move, towards better horizons.

Keywords:Morocco, Migration, Mobility, Imaginary, Ethnography, Outside, Inside

Disciplines:Anthropology