The transnational kingdom : migration, economic development and social change in Morocco

الملخص EN

One out often Moroccans live beyond the Kingdom's borders, and the money they send home to their families each year represents over 10 percent of the nation's GDP, Morocco's largest source of income by far.

The government of Morocco has elaborated a series of policies to tie Moroccan emigrants into the national economy and political culture, some of which are strikingly innovative.

These policies are the focus of my paper, with special attention directed to policies that build a link between migration and local economic development.

In my paper, I engage in a kind of institutional archeology: I reconstruct the largely undocumented history of these policies over the last forty years in an effort to bring to the fore the processes - both institutional and political - through which they were elaborated.

I argue that while the Moroccan government has always been mindful the economic importance of remittances, the primary function of its policies toward emigrants was to deal with the Kingdom's domestic political challenges, namely the establishment of a new state after independence and the destruction of threats to the crown's legitimacy.

The Moroccan state extended to emigrant communities the logic and style of governance it adopted internally, and the policies that emerged were the product of the government's attempt to acquire - and often wrest - the consent of emigrants to this form of transnational government, despite their often serious resistance.

These policies ultimately shaped both the economic impact of migrant remittances and the political ramifications of emigrant mobilization, however it did so in ways that were unanticipated by the crown and often contrary to its interests.

To illustrate my thesis, I will discuss Morocco's three main policy instruments in this area : the Ministry for Moroccan Living Abroad, the Hassan 2 Foundation for Moroccans Living Abroad, and La Banque Populaire.