Dissident Bodies and Migrant Hogra among Young Maghrebi during Two Years of the ‘Arab Spring’ (Tangiers 2011, Morocco; Turin 2010-2013, Italy).

Abstract

The immense so-called Arab Spring mobilization suggested a politically-produced process; created by contingent dimensions and fluent coalitions that influence the current migration dynamics and policies in Europe. The present contribution is part of a multi-local ethnography effectuated in Morocco (Khouribga 2007; Tangiers 2011) and Turin among the ultimate-decade’s Moroccan immigrants and Tunisian migrants from the so-called North African Emergency. During summer 2011, Moroccan media renamed Tangiers: ‘People’s Capital of the 20 February Movement’; depicted as young and new, albeit heterogeneous in age, genre and of socio-political appurtenance. Furthermore, the last decade has witnessed populace protests throughout Morocco; particularly in small, medium-sized cities like Khouribga; emigration springboard towards Turin since the eighties. Here the 20 F movement redefined and integrated itself with local-migration policies. Crucial, politically-related events within an intimate and familiar sphere - concomitant with intergenerational, social breakdowns and continuity amplified by emigration - will emerge through life-stories. Migrants, both in Tangiers and Turin, criticize the hogra as standing for vulnerability and a life-style when confronted by power. My analysis shows how this sentiment - publicized during the Arab Spring, but rooted in Moroccan history - emigrates by accompanying people, who encounter growing migration-policy and life-condition difficulties in a new context. In conclusion, I will show how corporeity can transmute into a manipulatively exploitable power-element; culminating in individual and collective violence. This occurred both during Tangier’s movement and in Turin amongst Tunisian Asylum-seekers and migrants held within the CIE (Centre of Identification and Expulsion).

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p58