Colonization, immigration, and borderization: Contemporary perspectives of the Moroccan and Tunisian left

This article aims to analyze the main discourse of political actors in the Tunisian and Moroccan left in regard to the migration issue. The evolution of this discourse will be examined between two key periods of immigration history from these two countries to Europe. The first period saw a relative opening of borders after gaining independence (from 1956 until the end of the 1980s), while the second period was marked by the establishment of visa systems and the Schengen area at the beginning of the 1990s. I will start with the following hypothesis: after the North-South border had been the structuring matrix of the emerging left within the national decolonization movement, the prolonged process of nationalization, endorsed by the 1956 independence, had a profound influence on the socialist-communist discourses, making them align with “national” priorities and relegating the issue of borders and immigration to a secondary level. However, the year 2011 marks a shift in perspective. In the southern bank of the Mediterranean, it was a year of heightened awareness of the centrality of the migration issue and the problems posed by an increasingly repressive border. This leads to the second part of my hypothesis: the Arab Spring is also the name of a re-enlightenment movement – meaning the awakening of collective consciousness – in the face of borderization and the prohibition of mobility.

Before revealing the investigative method informing to this article, it is necessary to first situate the hypothesis in an experience that is both political and personal. It is a dual position that guides the research process. The first one comes from my own experience as an activist within the Moroccan left. I was a member of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) from 2006 to 2012. I participated in the 20th February Movement, which was the frame of reference for the Arab Spring in Morocco in 2011. I have also been an actor within the Federation of the Democratic Left (FGD – Morocco) from 2012 until today. These political experiences have allowed me to grasp the major protests and discursive references of the Moroccan left in specific, and the Arab left in general; particularly within dynamics such as the Maghrebi Social Forum (FSMagh). The second position is about my own immigration experience that that led me to Europe (where I currently reside) in the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011. This experience is marked by an immersion within diasporic organizations of the Moroccan and Tunisian left, particularly in France, offering me an overall vision of the protest dynamics and the main left-wing causes in the context of immigration.

Therefore, in both Tunisia and Morocco, it is a matter of exploring the main discursive lines in the middle of what is now being addressed as “the immigration issue” in government discourses north of the Mediterranean. Moving on, the analysis will focus on the main political positions regarding four specific issues. First of all, this article will examine the ties between the Tunisian and Moroccan left and the European borderization policies, including visa restrictions and the establishment of a migrant-selection process. Second, I will study their position regarding irregular immigration and the death and disappearance of migrants on the way to Europe. Third, these leftists’ perception of the conditions of migrants, mainly sub-Saharans in transit through these two countries, will be explored. Finally, the analysis will seek to assess the levels of cooperation between diasporic and national left organizations regarding all of these issues, as well as the migratory situation in the face of racial and social issues in host countries. All of these questions will be addressed based on testimonies and extracts from interviews with actors involved in the left and diasporic associations.

The results of this study must be taken as a first restitution of a field in progress, even if we are relying on observations and an immersion that mobilizes several years of Action Research on the themes of the Arab Spring of 2011^[1] and of postcolonial immigration in the face of borderization^[2]. The perspective of ethnographic observation is refined in this text by using four new extensive interviews with actors playing a central role within the Tunisian and Moroccan left. I carried out these interviews between 2023 and 2024. The first interview is with Mohamed Achâari. He is from the Moroccan left and he was the former minister of culture. Before he joined to the transitional government, he was the personification of a socialist critique marked by the tricontinental and decolonial struggles. knowledgeable of the migration issue and committed to the organization where he held positions of responsibility (the USFP), Achâari’s thinking rehabilitated the stances of leaders and founding thinkers of the Moroccan left, such as Mehdi Ben Barka and Mohamed Abid al-Jabiri. The latter had long stressed that the colonial relations are anchored in the north-south division. The second and third interviews were conducted out with two activists from the Tunisian radical left. In the circles of the post-revolutionary mobilization of 2011, they were committed to promoting the inseparability of “democratic struggle and the problem of immigration restriction”. The fourth interview is with an artist who is also a founder of numerous Tunisian diasporic associations in France and a coordinator at the Federation of Tunisians for Citizenship of Two Banks (FTCR) in France.

[1] Sakhi Montassir, Revolution and Jihad. Syria, France, Belgium, La Découverte publishing house, Paris, 2023.

[2] See the special issue of IBLA’s journal The Review dedicated to this restitution: “Borders Mobility Migrations: Investigations, Testimonies, Representations”, IBLA, Vol. 86 No 232, Tunis, 2023. https://ibla.tn/index.php/ibla/issue/view/1