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'We're not coming from Mars, we know how things work in Morocco!'

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

Subtitle:how diasporic Moroccan youth resists political socialisation in state-led homeland tours
Diaspora policies, to be defined as emigrant state policies aiming at maintaining and strengthening ties with its expatriate population, have become a regular feature of twenty-first century international politics. A particular diaspora policy strategy adopted by various emigration countries including Morocco is the introduction of state-led homeland tours. These can be understood as an origin-state tool to socialise mainly young expatriate community members with homeland orientations and identities. Both by opponents as by sympathisers of these tours, it is often assumed that homeland tours are effective in their socialisation project. However, this assumption undervalues the agency of tour participants. This article presents an in-depth investigation of the Moroccan Summer Universities, annual state-led homeland tours for college and university students of Moroccan descent, based on participant observation and qualitative interviews. The analysis highlights the tour participants resistance against both discourses and practices of these homeland tours organisers. As such, the article attends to the need to understand better how state diaspora policies are received by young members of the diaspora, in a situation where statediaspora relations are tense and policies are top-down.
Journal: Journal of ethnic and migration studies
ISSN: 1369-183X
Volume: 45
Pages: 674 - 691
Publication year:2019
Keywords:A1 Journal article
BOF-keylabel:yes
BOF-publication weight:1
CSS-citation score:2
Authors from:Higher Education
Accessibility:Open