Migration policy and international human rights frameworks in Morocco: tensions and contradictions

Abstract

[Abstract] In 2013, Morocco announced the adoption of a new, ‘humane’ migration policy. The implementation of the reform, however, has been characterised by an apparent contradiction: while Morocco has leveraged the humanitarian and international orientation of the policy as a foreign policy tool, this new political framework has not so far been translated into law and has been accompanied by persisting violations of migrants’ rights, especially in border areas. Most literature on the topic observes these discrepancies as a sign of the incomplete or ‘indecisive’ character of Moroccan migration policies. Building on the literature on human rights politics and migration policy, in this article we ask instead: what do these contradictions tell us about the trajectory of the Moroccan state, and its relation to the international human rights regime? These discrepancies, we argue, speak to the process of regime hybridisation that has characterised Morocco’s political transition since the 1990s. Morocco’s transition from authoritarianism to a hybrid political regime has been marked by political openings towards liberalism, social mobilisation, and closer engagement with the international human rights framework, which have helped Morocco recraft its international image as a ‘modern’ and ‘stable’ country. These phenomena, however, have coexisted alongside the survival of practices of authoritarian rule. The National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum (SNIA) conforms to Morocco’s formal alignment to the international human rights regime. However, the lack of legal harmonisation grants the state the flexibility to manoeuvre the policy according to its European and African foreign political interests, thus leaving the progress in terms of migrants’ rights vulnerable to sudden setbacks.