Communication with friends and relatives is not the sole use of WhatsApp. Participants point out their involvement in groups beyond their own closed ones: groups composed of alumni, current peer students, Mozambican students in Portugal, work colleagues, church members, Brazilian women in Portugal, Italian parents in Lisbon, parents from the same school, and more. Here, Facebook comes into the picture too: its pages and groups function as online fora on a range of topics. As Iorio already argued in her study about Brazilian students in Lisbon, Facebook is crucial before and at the time of migration (Iorio & Fonseca, 2017). Participants follow specific pages or are members of groups, such as groups where migrants from common origins (e.g. Israeli, French, or South-East Asian) share tips and recommendations before migration or during the first months of settlement; groups where available rooms and flats in Lisbon are advertised; groups for swaps and donations such as Buy Nothing Lisbon; and pages of cultural, militant or leisure organisations. For instance, Flora shared:

So I wanted to know what was there in the city and it was all through the Internet. All through... Facebook itself, to see what events there were or... even the Festival Feminista was a call that was made on Facebook and I came across the call and went to these Festival Feminista meetings.

Few have attempted to escape the WhatsApp/Facebook monopoly. Rachel tried to move her contacts to Signal, and Thomas mentioned Telegram, but, in general, their use is rare. WhatsApp and Facebook are more widely used to link with other migrants or with Portuguese people than dedicated platforms, such as the social media Meet Up which enables the organisation of city-based meetings and events

Image 16.1 Screenshot from Tal. Tal posted in the Facebook group "Israelis living in Lisbon": "Hi everyone, is there anyone here who knows if the Israeli Embassy went back to work or that has any interesting strategy to make them answer?". Fifteen answered with a comment, and he eventually managed to contact the Embassy and solve the issue

along its users' specific hobbies and interests. If Andrea and Tal have used Meet Up when arriving in Lisbon, they have eventually switched to WhatsApp or Facebook. Participants seemed to recognise a certain 'social media stratification' by linking the Meet Up platform as a preserve of European and North American relatively privileged migrants, or as Flora puts it, "Global North" migrants.

For their socio-cultural needs, participants mentioned the restaurant aggregator Zomato and the restaurant booking service The Fork. More broadly, the photo and video sharing social media Instagram – another brand of the Meta conglomerate also owning WhatsApp and Facebook – is indeed used to look for events, restaurants, places to visit, and more. Commonly, participants are redirected to certain events or places of their liking by Facebook or Instagram based on their embedded algorithmic calculations.

For this research project focused on digital urban resources, we also enquired whether participants used geolocation apps. Overwhelmingly, they used Google Maps (and sometimes City Mapper). Several pointed out that they "save" places they liked or would like to visit on Google Maps while Tal remembers that he and his partner created layers on the Google Maps' feature MyMaps registering their exploratory walks in Lisbon. All research participants also downloaded Uber and/or Bolt apps and use them for car rides, to use the bikes or electric scooters available in Lisbon, and to order food.

When it comes to employment, LinkedIn is the professional social media used by a few. Although they mention locally-used platforms, Andrea, Thomas, and Tal have mostly relied on LinkedIn when looking for a job. They simply switched their location to Lisbon and began receiving job adverts for Lisbon-based posts.

Apps have not replaced browser-based searches. Google was mentioned when it came to scan universities and education opportunities; to check the requirement for visa and social security upon arrival; to look for housing (Couch Surfing, AirBnb, Uniplaces and Lovely Place for short-term rental before settling; and Idealista and Imovirtual when the stay extends); to sell and buy second-hand (such as the Portuguese Website OLX); and later on for events (TimeOut, TripAdvisor, and specialised website for families such as Estrelas e Ouriços).

Following such descriptive overview of ICTs use among the group members, there is little that differentiate migrants from other locals or short-term visitors/ tourists. The technology and the type of apps and websites mobilised by research participants are based on general needs or solution-based tools that are used transversally by urban residents, regardless of origin or length of stay.

#### Embedded Digital Urban Lives

Participants (and researchers) spend a lot of time in front of a screen. Andrea, Thomas, Tal, Flora, and Karen work at home from their computer, Armando and Rachel are students and are therefore required to spend a good part of their day in front of a monitor, and Mohamed is constantly checking his smartphone throughout his 14 h-work shift (he does not own a computer). Yet in the interviews, they also describe at length a wealthy family, social, and/or cultural life. In that sense, an intensive digital presence was in no way related to a weak level of in-person interactions with people and with the resources of the city of Lisbon.

What's more, the interviews we recorded demonstrate that digital and urban resources are in fact mutually constitutive. Sometimes, ICTs facilitate city exploration, while at other times, participants experience the city before they look for further information online. But no matter the order – digital/urban or urban/digital -, it makes no doubt that digital resources influence our urban experiences; that our experiences will influence what content we feed online; and eventually, this will, in turn, have an impact on the ways migrant persons use certain urban resources.

Rachel wrote in our research WhatsApp group that "Google, apps, internet, etc. are helpful in finding the big picture... and then you, of course, by yourself, through trial and error, navigate the details". As we pointed out in the introduction, Karen discovered the cultural association Sirigaita a few hundred metres from her home thanks to a suggestion made by Facebook. Proximity does not necessarily mean familiarity – it was Facebook that made her discover the place, not the fact that she lived nearby. She admits in the interview that 70% of the cultural events she takes part in are Facebook suggestions and this is how she, in her words, builds her "cultural agenda". On a similar note, Rachel remembers that another geolocationbased app was helpful in getting to know what the city had to offer: dating apps.

So, I met a guy, like, just met him, it was like potentially romantic at the beginning and then I was like "Yeah, I'm not interested", but we realised that we both loved football so he was like "Wow, well, if you love football then you should come play with me!" and I was like "Oh, where do you play?", so "It's with this group...", and then he took me there. [...] I got to see a lot of different places that I had never seen before, you know?

Other times, participants rely on offline knowledge, and only later verify information online. Tal remembers the bus lines by heart, but uses the app Move it to look up the schedule. Rachel first sees flyers or billboards in the street with cultural events, takes a picture of them, and looks up the details on the Internet once back home. And Andrea saves places she has discovered wandering around on her Google Maps. This corroborates Gordon and Silva's argument (2011) that "we used to talk about the World Wide Web as an interconnected information space set aside from the world we live in, but the world we live in and the web can no longer be so easily separated" (2011, p. 1).

Indeed, there is an emerging body of research in Lisbon looking at the ways the online and the offline imaginaries of the city are brought together. Baumann et al. (2017), Riboldi (2018) and Feijó and Gomez (2018) have constituted samples of Instagram images to sketch a visual imaginary of Lisbon, either by locals or tourists. As Massey et al. (1999, 107) have argued, "placemaking is a localised process which participates in the production of places. It is, precisely, a reorientation of the city within a restructured wider geography. And that restructuring of the wider geography, of the networks within which the city is set, provokes effects within the city itself". The data we collected here hints that the embeddedness of digital and urban resources affects people's experiences and the very production of the places that make up Lisbon.

As a freelance family consultant, Andrea shares information about Lisbon for new families settling in the city. Since 2017, Andrea has been the administrator of 4 Facebook groups for (mostly foreign) parents in Lisbon. The success of these groups lies in the English-speaking peer support offered to foreign residents with children, from medical services to playdates or second-hand children's clothes. Thomas is part of a Facebook group where French nationals share experiences in Lisbon. He affirms that the questions are always the same, e.g. "in which neighbourhood should I live?", "how much does one need to survive in Lisbon?", etc. Thomas's opinion is that French newcomers, therefore, tend to settle in neighbourhoods recommended to them by other fellow French. Would they choose these areas if it was not for tips collected online? He says the comments following the posts are often complaints about the pressure put on rents by French newcomers. The anger of certain members is related to processes of gentrification that foreign newcomers – particularly from European countries with a higher purchasing power – take part of (Buhr & Cocola-Gant, forthcoming). Thomas humorously refers to the process of gentrification many neighbourhoods of Lisbon are affected by, and says: "Lisbon became a city much more... I don't know, with brunch and all this". Yet, he admits he himself takes advantage of the new commercial offer by frequenting bars and restaurants catering to international customers.

Against running the risk of techno-optimism (Leurs & Smets, 2018), participants also shared a sense of resistance to ICTs. Rachel expressed a lot of concern regarding privacy in the interview, as well as Tal who said: "It doesn't interest me to expose or tell the world what I am doing or where I am going...". All participants have given value to an offline exploration of the city. Armando finds it better to ask people for directions or to call restaurants rather than check comments online. Tal uses "the rule of the street", meaning that he checks if a café or a restaurant is busy to assess its success. As for Karen and Rachel, they both dedicate specific leisure time to purposely getting lost. Karen acknowledged to sometimes leave her place in advance to try and get someplace else in the city by wandering around. Rachel and her daughter take public transport to other neighbourhoods, and walk around to explore new places. In that sense, both suggest that leaving their smartphone behind and getting to know a place without the support of a GPS is a way to reclaim control. The satisfaction that follows is an empowering moment for them.

#### Using Community Digital Urban Resources

Although our research participants' use of ICTs seem to differ little from that of other Lisbon residents, or even visitors, part of their urban resourcefulness may be labelled migrant-specific. Namely, WhatsApp groups formed by Mozambican students or Brazilian women in Lisbon, Facebook groups of French (wannabe) residents, or of Asian migrants in Lisbon which Mohamed is a member of: the participation of Portugal-born locals in these groups is very rare. Other groups that seem more centred on interest/status such as the various Facebook groups of foreign parents administered by Andrea, or the Facebook donation group Buy Nothing Lisbon used by Flora have English as an official language. Even if some Portuguese members take part in the discussion, the majority of members are migrants.

Data collected by social media on the users themselves enables them to target advertisements more effectively. The so-called Facebook "suggestions", may, therefore, reinforce this migrant-specific trend, channelling migrants to their own national- or ethnic-related urban resources or activities. For instance, Flora shares: "Recently Instagram has been showing me advertisement about Brazilian restaurants that seem interesting too".

It makes no doubt that migrant users leave digital traces, which in turn are harvested by big tech corporations. The exploitation of "big data" by the scientific community itself to learn more about migration remains problematic (Taylor & Meissner, 2020) and is far beyond this pilot study's reach (Image 16.2).

In contrast to the claim that migrants have more digital interactions with relatives and friends in their regions of origin rather than in the place where they settled, we

Image 16.2 Screenshot from Flora's smartphone. The restaurant's description is 'A Bahia em Lisboa', which means 'Bahia in Lisbon'. Bahia is a state in Brazil known for its African gastronomic heritage

find that even these migrant-specific resources are based in the city of settlement. Gordon and Silva (2011) make a compelling argument: "Net locality is, indeed, a global phenomenon, but it needs to be considered locally. How specific cultures appropriate technologies, adapt social practices, and produce cultural references, are going to influence the meanings of location." How does this unfold in practice?

One, participants join digital resources that are Lisbon-specific. The Facebook page Lisboa para pessoas, or that of the Festival Feminista where Flora interacts, the cultural activities Karen adds to her agenda – all eventually translate into physical encounters and embodied navigation. Facebook's Marketplace which was mentioned by a few participants to sell and buy second-hand goods is geolocated too and entails a physical meeting to exchange the purchased object.

Two, the digital resources developed by the participants are not always portable to other cities. This part of the interview with Flora was enlightening:

I developed Twitter in Spanish, so when I arrived here, people... that community that I had built on Twitter had nothing to do anymore! That is, nothing to do... If I would continue speaking Spanish, I would never talk to people here, right? With this tool. So I ended up leaving the tool aside [...].

Flora moved away from Twitter when her geographical/linguistic network did not match her new location. Tal gave a similar example with LinkedIn. By changing his location to Lisbon, he got much fewer job offers: the professional network he developed back in Israel did not match his new geographical location, hence the platform could not effectively advertise relevant jobs to him. This hints to a perceived limitation of the transnationalism paradigm, inasmuch as Flora's and Tal's connections elsewhere actually hindered opportunities in their new place of residence, rather than benefiting them.

#### 16.4 Discussion and Conclusions

In line with the transnationalism paradigm, this chapter has shown how migrants' use of ICTs to manage local life is place-binding but not place-bound (Ingold, 2011, 148). The ways migrant individuals construct their own urban resourcefulness does not only mean knowing by heart where to go or how to go, but increasingly implies the capacity to mobilise the digital realm in ways that respond to their daily practical needs. By resorting to ICTs, the circulation of urban knowledge is rescaled – and may include the support of neighbours and acquaintances on WhatsApp, but also transnational crowd-sourced information produced by other residents, other migrants, and city visitors alike, which is the case of Google reviews, TripAdvisor, or Facebook fora.

It is evident that this pilot research, both because of the number of participants, and the exceptional circumstances of a global pandemic only enables us to draw potential pathways for further research. Yet we trust that these preliminary comments are of great interest to those engaging with the intricate connections between migration, emplacement, and ICTs.

Firstly, our findings reinforce the argument that we cannot essentialise migrant persons in terms of their use of ICTs. ICTs often blur the established versus newcomer divide. The urban penetration of ICTs – the most visible of their powers being the so-called "algorithm" – is mentioned by participants concerned about data collection and privacy in general. Interestingly, while ICTs facilitate migrants' emplacement process, the search for autonomy involves asking people in the street rather than the GPS, or purposefully getting lost in the city. This has been perceived as an empowering and freeing moment by our research participants.

Secondly, as finely argued by Gordon and Silva (2011), this chapter provides further evidence that digital and urban resources are intertwined. Spatial apprenticeship (Buhr, 2018a) is increasingly supported by ICTs. Online navigation can actually shape the offline experience of using the city and vice-versa. But the fact that (migrant) urbanites provide feedback online produces new ways to imagine Lisbon, and in turn, can affect the ways the city is experienced by non-migrant locals and visitors. Previous works have highlighted the extent to which migrants are citymakers (Çaglar & Glick Schiller, 2018). Migrants' practices alter the structure of places (Desille, 2019). What we come to see is that their digital traces and the way they portray the places they use – by posting, commenting, sharing, and leaving reviews online – add up to an ICT-supported imaginary of the city fed by residents, migrants and tourists alike.

Thirdly, we found that certain digital urban resources may indeed be migrantspecific. There exist parallel WhatsApp and Facebook groups seldom used by Portuguese residents and in languages other than Portuguese. The "algorithm" can reinforce a rather migrant-specific use of space by directing users to places, events, or to groups used mainly by other people who have experienced migration in similar conditions or belonging to the same ethnic population.

The participants of this study are highly educated and highly mobile, and most of them have come of age with Internet at home and a smartphone. In their cases, rich social networks translated into more intense online activities and resources. In a context where access to education, the labour market, as well as cultural and social activities are increasingly mediated by ICTs, the lack of access to them – or low levels of digital literacy – could potentially represent a factor of double exclusion for more vulnerable and marginalised groups – including migrants.

Annex

The intensity of ICT use was self-determined (by research participants) based on daily screen time and number of online/app-based services used

#### References

Franz Buhr is a research fellow at the Centre of Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, where he obtained a PhD degree in migration studies. He was formerly a Marie Sklodowska-Curie junior researcher and his work lies at the intersection between migration and urban studies. He is particularly interested in migrants' roles in transforming urban space, their urban mobilities and place-consumption practices. He has recently conducted research for the H2020 SMARTDEST project, in which he examined the commercial landscape transformation driven by the demands of lifestyle migrants and digital nomads in Lisbon. He is co-founder and coordinator of PriMob, the IMISCOE research initiative on privileged mobilities. His work has been published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Mobilities, and in various edited volumes.

Amandine Desille is a postdoctoral researcher for the Horizon project Re-Place Reframing Non-Metropolitan Left Behind Places Through Mobility and Alternative Development, at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Lisbon. Her research addresses international migrations, return migrations, local governance and ordinary cities. She co-authored the volume International Migrations and Local Governance: A Global Perspective, published at Palgrave Macmillan in 2018; as well as the volume Visual Methods in Migration Studies: New Possibilities, Theoretical Implications, and Ethical Questions, published at Springer in 2021 and winner of the IMISCOE book competition. Her research was also published in Political Geography and Territory, Politics and Governance, among others. She holds a PhD in geography from the University of Poitiers (France) and the University of Tel Aviv (Israel). Previously, she has worked with NGOs and UN agencies on topics related to immigration, local economic development and urban planning.

Maria Lucinda Fonseca is a Full Professor of Human Geography and Migration Studies at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT), University of Lisbon. She is the Coordinator of the Research cluster MIGRARE – Migration, spaces and societies at the Centre of Geographical Studies (CEG) and the Director of the PhD programme in Migration Studies at the University of Lisbon. She is a member of the Board of Directors of IMISCOE. She is, moreover, a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and a member of the International Steering Committee of the Metropolis International Project and EuroMedMig (Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on Migration). She coordinated and participated in several EU and NORFACE funded research projects and has wide experience in research training. She has published extensively in Portugal and abroad in the fields of international migration, migration and integration policies, urban transformation dynamics, migration, ageing and depopulation of low density areas.

She has been an advisor of a wide array of local, national and international governmental organizations and civic society institutions, including the Portuguese Observatory of Migration, the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Brazilian Observatory of International Migration (OBMigra).

She has served on numerous management and leadership positions at the University of Lisbon, namely the following: Dean and President of the Scientific Council of IGOT (2013–2019); Member of the General Council of the University of Lisbon (2010–2013); Pro-Rector (1998–2002); Board Member of the Faculty of Letters (1991–93).

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Chapter 17 The Fenced Off Cities of Ceuta and Melilla: Mediterranean Nodes of Migrant (Im)Mobility

Xavier Ferrer-Gallardo and Lorenzo Gabrielli

# 17.1 The Iconic Fortification of Ceuta and Melilla

Since their building in the mid-nineties, the border fences around the North-African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have become icons of what has been popularly known as "Fortress Europe". They have also been central stages of what academics and activists have critically denounced and referred to as the external EU 'border spectacle' (Andersson, 2014; Brambilla, 2021; Cuttitta, 2012; De Genova, 2013; Gabrielli, 2021a; Van Reekum, 2016). For years, the fences have symbolized the harshness with which the European Union has tackled irregular migration flows across its external borders.

Back in the nineties, the fences represented a poignant visual counterargument against the then widespread rhetoric of a "borderless Europe" -to be built in what was supposed to become a "world without borders". Later, border reinforcement processes similar to those triggered in Ceuta and Melilla in the mid-nineties were developed, even on a major scale, in other segments of the EU external border (at the land border between Greece and Turkey, at the Hungarian border with Serbia,1 or at the Polish border with Belarus,2 amongst others). Certainly, the imagery of walls, sealed off and heavily securitized borders (Jones, 2016; O'Dowd, 2010; Vallet, 2016; Coleman, 2020) has only but proliferated in Europe and elsewhere since the

X. Ferrer-Gallardo

Researcher at the Humanities Department, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

L. Gabrielli (✉)

<sup>1</sup> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-hungary-fence-idUSKBN1692MH 2 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/25/poland-begins-work-on-400m-belarus-border-wallagainst-migrants

Senior Researcher at GRITIM - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
fortification of the EU land borders in Africa started. Thus, the border fences from Ceuta and Melilla do not seem to be an anomaly within the contemporary global border order anymore.

Somehow it could be argued that the fences of Ceuta and Melilla acted as forerunners, as precursors in the radical anti-immigration and securitization turn EU borders have gone through over the last decades. And probably also because of that, for years they have gained widespread media attention and uninterrupted scholarly focus (Acosta-Sánchez, 2022; Driessen, 1992; Barbero, 2021; Castan Pinos, 2014; Coleman, 2020; Español Nogueiro et al., 2017; Ferrer-Gallardo, 2008, 2011; Ferrer-Gallardo & Albet-Mas, 2016; Johnson, 2013; Gabrielli, 2015; Saddiki, 2010; Scott et al., 2018; Soddu, 2002; Fuentes Lara, 2018, 2019; Planet, 1998; Pallister-Wilkins, 2017; Queirolo-Palmas, 2021; Suárez-Navaz & Suárez, 2022).

Building on the already vast body of academic literature about border governance and migration management in Ceuta and Melilla, this contribution situates the border regime of the EU-African cities within the broad research agenda on Mediterranean migration studies. The chapter traces the evolution of these cities' border regimes since they joined the European Union in 1986 and gradually became crucial Mediterranean nodes of migrant (im)mobility towards the Schengen Area. The text highlights that the functional and symbolic role played by Ceuta and Melilla echoes that played by other EU external border territories like Lampedusa, Lesvos, Samos or even the Canary Islands (Cuttitta, 2012, 2014; Dines et al., 2015; Kalir & Rozakou, 2016; Tsoni, 2016; Vives, 2017), which have respectively acted as migrant (im)mobility nodes within the Central, Eastern and Western Mediterranean and Atlantic migration routes towards Europe. These territories embody manifestations of socio-spatial exceptionality which are part and parcel of what Alison Mountz (2011) has labelled as the "enforcement archipelago" vis-à-vis global dynamics of border/migration control.

For years, the preponderant media and scholarly focus on the excesses of border management has perhaps eclipsed the fact that the borderwork assemblage operating around the North-African cities has not been exclusively characterized by securitization practices but has also witnessed the increasing intervention of humanitarian actors. However, a recent wave of academic contributions has addressed this gap in the literature and has highlighted how the logic that characterizes the border regimes of these territories is sourced in a permanent tension between securitarian and humanitarian approaches (see for example, Sahraoui & Tyszler, 2021; Aris Escarcena, 2022; Sahraoui, 2020; Pallister-Wilkins, 2017, Cuttitta, 2018; Garelli & Tazzioli, 2018; Gorrín & Fuentes Lara, 2020; Vaughan-Williams, 2015).

On the other hand, these dynamics have been deeply influenced by Morocco's postcolonial claim of sovereignty over the cities as well as by Rabat's growing relevance as a partner within the EU border externalization strategy. Gradually, and even without its authorities officially recognizing the legitimacy of the EU land borders in Africa, Morocco has become an indispensable actor when it comes to deploy the EU migration control strategy at the borders of Ceuta and Melilla. EU foreign dependency vis-à-vis migration and border control has only but grown over the last years. And Morocco has skillfully used it as strategic advantage in its bilateral relationships with Spain and with the EU (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2022; Okyay & Zaragoza-Cristiani, 2016).

Over the last decades, as the externalization logic has been intensifying, a joint EU-Spanish-Moroccan political strategy has paved the way to diverse controversial practices of border management in Ceuta and Melilla. These practices have been closely scrutinized from academic, journalistic and activist perspectives. The logic of exception that drives the EU border regime as well as how migrants have challenged it is examined in this contribution. The chapter ends by highlighting that, more than three decades after the fencing off of the cities started, the consequences of the growing foreign dependency vis-à-vis Morocco, together with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in cross-border mobility dynamics, has contributed to yet a new reconfiguration of the Ceuta and Melilla border regime. As the deadly events at the Melilla fence in June 2022 illustrate (Guardian, 2022), these two interrelated factors have acted as vectors of change, and have toughened the practices of migratory obstruction at the external borders of the EU. In this light, the iconic strength of their border fences remains, and so does its explanatory power both as an illustrative sample of the general EU external border and of its footprint in the Mediterranean migration system.

# 17.2 Ceuta and Melilla into the EU (1986): Crucial Mediterranean Nodes of Migrant (Im)mobility Towards the Schengen Area

When Spain joined the Schengen Agreement in 1991, the geopolitically contested cities of Ceuta and Melilla started to gradually turn into key hubs of – mainly but not only<sup>3</sup> -sub-Saharan migration to the European Union. The reconfiguration of the Spanish border regime which followed Spain's EU entrance in 1986 ran parallel to the reshaping of migratory dynamics in the North of Africa. In the mid-nineties, the growing flows of sub-Saharan migrants heading the EU implied that Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco started consolidating as key transit countries, but also as destination countries (Iranzo, 2021; El Ghazouani, 2019; Lahlou, 2015; Collyer, 2007; De Haas, 2007; Schapendonk, 2012). Consequently, migratory dynamics in Ceuta's and Melilla's hinterlands went through huge transformations. The land borders of Ceuta and Melilla emerged as new, but relatively low thresholds to be crossed within the trajectories of sub-Saharan migrants to the EU. Increasingly, the Spanish African cities would be perceived as a less dangerous irregular gate to the

<sup>3</sup> Refugees and migrants from other origins (Syrians, Bangladeshi, Pakistanis, etc.) had also used this route towards the EU (See Barbero, 2021). During the year 2015, for instance, 7189 Syrians crossed the borders in Ceuta and Melilla, as well as 4.435 people of other nationalities (see Fig. 17.1).

EU. Entering Ceuta and Melilla would therefore become a relatively safer and more attractive alternative to the clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean.

In 1995, the irregular access of sub-Saharan citizens to Ceuta and Melilla (that were not repatriated to their countries of origin nor allowed to cross the maritime border toward the Iberian Peninsula) had already become a frequent phenomenon. Many migrants were stranded in Ceuta and Melilla for long periods of time, and this became a source of social tensions in the city, where racist attacks and migrant protests claiming for their rights proliferated (see Gold, 1999, 2000; Planet, 1998). In this context, Spanish and EU authorities decided to undertake the fortification of the land perimeter of the cities. The range of legal modifications associated to the Schengenization of the Spanish-Moroccan border came together with the physical reshaping of the border. In order to halt the increasing flows of irregular immigration, a double metal fence –whose height would later on reach 6 meters (Saddiki, 2010; Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2018), then 7,20 meters, and subsequently 10 meters in some segments – was erected between the cities and Morocco. This is how the borders of Ceuta and Melilla started to become paradigmatic examples of the EU's sealing off of its outer perimeter. Parallel to that, the Spanish Government began creating the reception system within which the involvement of humanitarian actors would become essential (Aris Escarcena, 2020: 5). And this is also the moment when the hybridisation process of the securitarian and humanitarian logic of the border regime started.

Over the years, due to the implementation of a variety of Spanish, EU and Moroccan policies of deterrence, dissuasion, containment, detention and even abandonment (Gross-Wyrtzen, 2020; López-Sala, 2015), the cities were gradually transformed into crucial Mediterranean nodes of migrant (im)mobility fulfilling a significant role within the contemporary system of Mediterranean migrations (Panebianco, 2022; Zapata-Barrero, 2020). Since the (EU)ropeanization of the cities started, both the increasing securitisation of their land perimeters and the fluctuant – though persistent – arrival of migrants (see Fig. 17.1) have transformed the sociospatial nature of these Spanish territories and that of its Moroccan surroundings.

#### 17.3 Border Acrobatics

After Spain's EU entrance in 1986 divergent patterns of cross-border (im)mobility of people and trade have coexisted in the region. Despite the territorial dispute and the spatial constraints arising from the securitization of their perimeters, socio-economic interaction between the cities and their local environment has been profound. For decades, the harsh though ineffective attempts to completely obstruct the mobility of some "undesired" non-EU citizens across the borders of Ceuta and Melilla contrasted with the elasticity that EU legislation showed when it came to facilitate the free cross-border flow of "desired" non-EU citizens (see Ferrer-Gallardo, 2011; Krichker, 2020; Fuentes Lara, 2019). The rational of this acrobatic border regime of "exceptional Schengenization" lies in the fact that the economic sustainability of Ceuta and Melilla has been largely dependent on the interaction with its hinterlands. For this reason, Spain exempted the visa requirement to the citizens of the neighbouring Moroccan provinces of Tétouan and Nador.4 The coexistence of daily crossings of workers and porteadoras5 (Fuentes Lara, 2019) from one hand, and of migrants and refugees' crossings from the other, underlines the porosity of borders in the enclaves and illustrates the existence of selective and differential cross-border (im)mobility patterns.

As explained later in this chapter, these dynamics were deeply affected by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as by Morocco's unilateral decision to close the borders and freeze all types of trade and human flows across them in March 2020. Borders were only reopened in May 2022, after Spanish-Moroccan diplomatic frictions related to the Western Sahara conflict were smoothed out. The consequences of the two-year border closure deeply impacted in the complex amalgam of political and socio-economic interdependencies between Spain and Morocco. Irregular entries of migrants persisted though (see Fig. 17.1).

In 2014: 3305 Syrians and 4180 from other nationalities; in 2015: 7189 Syrians, 4.435 other nationalities. In 2020, it has to be considered the COVID-19 pandemic impact. Data of 2021 do not include May 18th–19th crossings in Ceuta

Source: Ministerio del Interior, Balances y Informes, 2005–2021. https://www.interior.gob.es/ opencms/es/prensa/balances-e-informes/

<sup>4</sup> This exception was incorporated into the Protocol of Accession of Spain to the Schengen Agreement in 1991 with the commitment to maintain tight identity controls to those wanting to travel to the rest of Spanish territory (Planet 2002).

<sup>5</sup> This Spanish expression to define women carrying on their shoulders large bundles of products is commonly translated as 'female porters' or 'mule woman'.

# 17.4 Cracks in the 'Fortress': The Agency of Migrants and the Agency of the Neighbours

Since the mid-nineties, the fortress-like EU border regime has had to functionally, geopolitically and symbolically cope with a series of cracks in its walls. Despite the growing geopolitical, economic and human cost of EU border control policies (Ferrer-Gallardo & Van Houtum, 2014), irregular entries to Ceuta and Melilla have never stopped.

Due to the Ceuta border "crisis" of May 18th 2021 discussed later in this chapter, more than ever before, the metaphorical and material expanding cracks in the fortress became blatantly visible. For the umpteenth time, it was made clear that irregular border crossings in the region do not exclusively depend on the height of the fences, on the millions of euros invested in innovative securitization measures (see Akkerman, 2019; Andersson, 2014; López-Sala & Godenau, 2022; Migreurop, 2020; Statewatch, 2021), or on the degree of inflammation of the anti-immigration political rhetoric manifesting in each member state's electoral microcosmos. In order to fully grasp what was going on during this and similar border "crises", other equally important variables –still often overshadowed- must be taken into consideration.

One of these variables is encapsulated in what migration/border scholars have traditionally referred to as the "agency of migrants". This can also be read through the lens of the now more widespread notion of "autonomy of migration", which, as Casas-Cortés et al. (2015: 895) explain, contributes to shift the analytical focus from the apparatuses of control to the multiple ways in which migration responds to, operates independently from, and in turn shapes those apparatuses. As Mezzadra (2010: 121–122) suggests, it is necessary to look at "the subjective practices, the desires, the expectations, and the behaviours of migrants themselves" and at how their struggles to overcome border restrictions foster a tense conflict-driven process in which "the 'politics of control' itself is compelled to come to terms with a 'politics of migration' that structurally exceeds its (re)bordering practices". Over the last decades securitarian and humanitarian practices in Ceuta and Melilla have been continuously adapting to counteract the new challenges posed by migrant struggles as well as by the action of solidarity networks. The action of migrants has responded to growing border securitization measures, and, in particular, to the wide range of costly and often externalized apparatuses of control by means of which the border regime operates (Casas-Cortes et al., 2015; Andersson, 2014; Tiszler, 2019).

Since the middle of the 1990s, events in Ceuta and Melilla demonstrate how migrants are constantly updating their tactics in order to confront infrastructural innovations. The cyclic reinforcement of border-fences, as well as the action of security forces on both sides is constantly translated into new ways to overcome them.6 As argued by Pallister-Wilkins (2017) the North-African border fences are producers and sites of resistance. Moreover, as Scheel (2018) underlines, the

<sup>6</sup> Migrants react to update of the border apparatus utilizing in turn wooden ladder to overcome the growing height of fences, harpoons for shoes and hand hooks to climb the 'anti-climb netting', as

European border regime is "a parasitic and precarious apparatus of capture" recuperating tactics and practices implemented by migrants at the borders in order to use their creativity and knowledge to update its own control apparatus and sustain its existence and development.

In other words, what we want to remind here is that, for years, many of the cracks in the EU-African "fortresses" have been repeatedly produced by the capacity of initiative, organization, resistance and subversion of migrants and refugees (Scheel, 2019; De Genova, 2017; Papadopoulos & Tsianos, 2008; Mazzara, 2019). The yearning to seal off the borders is also related to another factor: the increasing dependency of Spain and the EU in their attempt to stop migrants before they enter in Ceuta and Melilla, and to reaccept them expeditiously after they eventually cross the fences. Certainly, the "weaponization of migration" strategy (Greenhill, 2010) or, differently said, the instrumentalization of border control and migrants' crossings has been increasingly used as a resource for foreign policy purposes within the EU and elsewhere. It is true that migrants can be (and in many cases are) used as pawns, and they are instrumentalized in the framework of long and remotely played geopolitical games. Notwithstanding that, it should not be neglected that these so-called pawns are not passive actors on a chess board. Migrants make their own decisions, and unlike what happens in chess, these pawns do not require the hands of any player to move themselves around. They can design their own strategies and trajectories; they can choose their allies. And, clearly, they can even individually or collectively defeat the adversary and subvert the mechanisms of control of the border regime. This, in turn, sheds light on the porosity of the EU external borders in Africa – which are far from being impermeabilized (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2018) – as well as on the performative dimension of the costly (in human, diplomatic and economic terms) securitization apparatus.

# 17.5 Permanent Crisis and Exceptional Migration Management Policies

The cases of Ceuta and Melilla clearly exemplify the rhetoric of "emergency" that time and again informs the management of irregular migration flows towards the European Union. The arrival of migrants in Ceuta or Melilla is often constructed by the Spanish authorities as an unpredictable phenomenon which falls into the "crisis" category (New Keywords Collective, 2016; Jeandesboz & Pallister-Wilkins, 2016; Scott et al., 2018.). However, the word "crisis" refers to a break from the status quo, a crucial and decisive point, a climax. A brief chronology of irregular migration at the Spanish border in the past two decades clearly shows the structural nature of this phenomenon (Gabrielli, 2015). It is hence clear that the arrival of migrants to Ceuta

well as hiding in cars, swimming, using "fake passports" (in the case of Syrians and Algerians), among other creative means.

and Melilla is by no means exceptional. Nevertheless, treating the structural phenomenon of irregular migration as an emergency has for years constituted an essential feature of the Spanish immigration and border policy which, in turn, overfocuses media and policy attention to specific segments of the border.

Elsewhere it has been argued that both the practices and the rhetoric of securitization and humanitarianism at the borders of the North-African enclaves have unfolded within the framework of a political imaginary of permanent crisis (De Genova & Tazzioli, 2022; Gabrielli, 2021b, Gabrielli, 2015, Scott et al., 2018). This imagery has paved the way to the implementation and chronification of exceptional and costly migration management policies (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2018), in human, economic and diplomatic terms.

The deployment of exceptional border/migration control practices has transformed these cities into what in Agambean terms could be defined as "pieces of land placed outside the normal juridical order" (see De Lucas, 2015: 19). This gives rise to a de facto state of exception, which is even outside the legal framework of the exception itself. We refer not only to 'devoluciones en caliente' (express deportations) that for several years have been practiced outside any existing legal framework (and also actually these practices, despite their inclusion in a law, are deeply criticised by CSO and human rights activists), but also to the immobilisation of asylum seekers (now sanctioned by several judgments of the Supreme court7 ), or to the use of counter-riot devices against migrants swimming to cross the border, among other examples. This entails a clear example of how borders are used strategically to shift the balance between security and freedom through the non-coincidence between the space for State action and this of fundamental rights (Basaran, 2008).

As explained by Cuttitta (2012: 20), the emergency has to be considered as "an essential characteristic of the current migration regime, an essential part of the border spectacle." Similar to Cuttitta's characterization of Lampedusa (2012, 2014), the borders of Ceuta and Melilla also represent symbolic scenarios where the fiction of the efficient response to the 'unexpected' migration crisis is represented. Exceptionality also applies to the Spanish government's actions concerning its legal obligations vis-à-vis the rights of refugees and potential asylum seekers (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2018). Immediate and indiscriminate push-backs which have been documented in Ceuta and Melilla constitute a clear violation of the 1951 Refugees' Convention. This produces not only a "neo-refoulement" practice8 (Hyndman & Mountz, 2008) but also a situation in which refugees entering informally through the Spanish borders are thus in a zone of rights exclusion, in legal black holes, in real "areas of pure sovereign power" (Basaran, 2008).

<sup>7</sup> See: https://www.cear.es/nuevo-a-favor-de-la-libre-circulacion-de-las-personas-que-solicitanasilo-en-ceuta-y-melilla/

<sup>8</sup> This concept is defined as the "rights-based legal instruments are trumped by geographic strategies that constitute neo-refoulement, the strategy of preventing the possibility of asylum by denying access to sovereign territory" (Hyndman & Mountz, 2008: 268).

Emergency and exceptionality become, on the one hand, permanent, as do the reassertion of state power, backed by violence and extra-legality. Permanently exceptional management of migration by Spanish governments has been implemented in close cooperation with Morocco and has entailed fast and slow forms of violence (from beatings to abandonment, etc.) (MSF, 2013; Gross-Wyrtzen, 2020). As Schindel (2019, 146) argues, episodic, recurrent, but isolated media, activist and academic references to border-related deaths should be put in relation to the rather invisible, daily, silent forms of violence migrants and refugees are exposed to on their journeys to Europe.

Over the last decades, the increasingly intensive monitoring of these "exceptional" border management practices by activists, journalists and critical scholars has unveiled the existing juridical void surrounding migration/border control dynamics – such as those related to the irregular push-backs of sub-Saharan migrants (Escamilla et al., 2014) and the refusal of entry to Syrian refugees.9 Interestingly, the visibilization of these practices and the multiplication of expressions of resistance to official understandings of the EU Southern border has shed valuable light on the logic of permanent exceptionality that governs the land borders of the EU in Africa.

# 17.6 The Externalities of Externalization ("Crisis" of May 2021)

During nearly two decades, EU border control policies have pursued the involvement of third countries like Morocco in the management of irregular migration beyond the EU external border. This has been translated into political pressure vis-à-vis these countries. As Saddiki (2022) reminds, in order to implement the border controls outsourcing agenda, in the 2002 Seville summit of the European Council, EU member states concluded that any future association agreement between the EU and any third country should include a clause on joint management of migration flows and on compulsory readmission of "illegal migration" (Council of the EU, 2002).

The somewhat Eurocentric lens through which Ceuta and Melilla border dynamics have been often scrutinized has tended to overshadow Morocco's political agency and its crucial ability and capacity to set (or at least influence) the agenda of border/migration control. Securitarian and humanitarian borderwork in the region has been clearly operating in growing cooperation with Morocco, which has become an indispensable partner in the EU border externalization strategy. The same has occurred with other neighboring countries like Turkey, Libya and Egypt (Bachellerie, 2021; Tsourapas, 2017) vis-à-vis the management of other Mediterranean migration routes towards the EU.

<sup>9</sup> I.e., see: https://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/21/fotorrelato/1442847540\_598870.html

What happened in May 2021 in Ceuta is a paramount example of this. On may 18th 2021, more than 8000 people irregularly crossed from Morocco into Ceuta in a single day (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2022; Saddiki, 2022). Morocco was accused of encouraging its own population -minors included (Independent, 2021)- to irregularly cross the border (Casey & Bautista, 2021), or, more subtly, of not acting diligently enough to prevent the irregular crossings. Migrants were not stopped at the Moroccan side of the fence. One of the main partners in the EU border externalization venture seemed not to be cooperating at all.

After more than two decades of border externalization policies, these events transparently showcased the rising EU dependency on some of its neighbouring countries. Hence, at first sight the events of May 2021 looked like the same old song, like the classic "border crisis". However, on this occasion events unfolded on a much bigger scale. Unlike what had occurred many times before in this very same spot, migrants were not immediately and irregularly pushed back or even shot with rubber bullets (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2018). Instead, on this occasion migrants were somehow being irregularly pushed forward. Thousands made it across by swimming from Morocco, others were even allowed to access Ceuta via the literally open doors of the iconic securitization fence that was supposed to stop them (FaroTV Ceuta, 2021).

In so doing, and although many of these migrants would be subsequently pushed back during the following days, Morocco seemed to be unilaterally and temporarily suspending the border control outsourcing deal it agreed with its EU neighbors. It seemed to be launching a clear warning message northward (Garcés, 2021). Similar messages had been launched before in a more discrete way (Águeda, 2021), but this time the volume in which the message was projected was stridently louder. Spanish and EU authorities "timidly" described this as blackmailing (Adami, 2021).

# 17.7 The Western Sahara Conflict and Covid 19: Catalysts of a New Border Reconfiguration

The Ceuta border "crisis" of 2021, of course, did not happen in a vacuum. The chapter must be read in light of both the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic in the border region and the deterioration of the traditionally tense Spanish-Moroccan diplomatic atmosphere (Serón & Gabrielli, 2021). The crucial point here is that this already tense bilateral relation was further tensed by the Trump's administration recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Spanish former colony of Western Sahara, in December 2020 (USEM, 2020).

This last-minute diplomatic "gift" was offered by Trump to Rabat just after Biden had won the presidential elections in the US in November 2020. In exchange, and by acrobatically merging US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara with the "Abraham Accords", Morocco would restore diplomatic relations with Israel (Joffé, 2021). Trump's move was a potential game-changer in the region. Morocco's position vis-à-vis the Western Sahara conflict (Kutz, 2021) was significantly reinforced. And the positions of the Polisario Front, and of those countries in tune with UN resolutions regarding the decolonization of the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara – like Spain's position back then – were fragilized. The seismic waves of this unexpected geopolitical earthquake in the Sahara just came to further embroil a series of Spanish-Moroccan unresolved territorial disputes and postcolonial diplomatic frictions. Things reached a peak of complexity when Brahim Ghali, the secretary-general of the Saharawi Polisario Front, travelled to Spain in order to receive treatment for COVID-19 in April 2021. Morocco interpreted this as an affront and reacted.

After the events in Ceuta on May 18th 2021, the Moroccan ambassador in Spain, Karima Benyaich, established a crystal-clear link between Ghali's presence in Spain and the irregular entries across the Ceuta border which quite evidently sounded like retaliation. She declared that "there are acts that have consequences in relations between countries" (Kasraoui, 2021). This constituted a handbook example of how to use the European obsession on border and migration control for foreign policy purposes, and how to manufacture a border/migration 'crisis'. 10

Significantly, the Moroccan ambassador would only travel back to Madrid after Spain (although not officially supporting Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara) diplomatically suggested that Morocco's proposals were "the most realistic ones" vis-à-vis the resolution of the conflict. The "Joint Statement" published on April seventh 2022, after the talks between King Mohammed VI and the President of Spanish Government Pedro Sanchez, notes that.

Spain recognizes the importance of the Sahara issue for Morocco, as well as Morocco's serious and credible efforts in the framework of the United Nations to find a mutually acceptable solution. As such, Spain considers the Moroccan autonomy initiative, presented in 2007, as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for the resolution of this dispute (Kingdom of Morocco, 2022).

This unexpected and significant turn in Spain's foreign policy triggered a new geopolitical tension (now between Spain and Algeria and the Polisario Front), but in a rather illustrating way, led to a new diplomatic "honey moon" between Spain and Morocco. This implied the possibility of reopening in the short term the land borders between Ceuta/Melilla and Morocco, even if with certain restrictions,11 and new border/migration control deals (Migreurop, 2022; Saddiki, 2022). This also implied the reestablishment at a cruising speed of deportations to Morocco.<sup>12</sup>

Beyond the above-described grand geopolitical turbulences, what happened in Ceuta in May 2021 should also be interpreted in light of the specific local

<sup>10</sup> For further discussion on the critical analysis of the so-called "crisification of migrant arrivals", see Gabrielli (2015) and Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins (2016). 11 https://elpais.com/espana/2022-04-30/espana-y-marruecos-mantienen-sus-diferencias-para-abrir-

la-frontera-con-ceuta-y-melilla.html

<sup>12</sup> https://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/migraciones/grupos-semanales-20-migrantes-derechosegundo-abogado-son-deportaciones-canarias-sahara\_1\_8934471.html

circumstances that had been affecting the Ceuta and Melilla border region before and after the closure of the border due to the Covid 19 pandemic (Latmani, 2021). The pandemic brought with it the complete disruption of all forms of cross-border mobility between Morocco and Ceuta and Melilla in early 2020. This is was translated into new forms of forced (im)mobility at the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, the disruption of existing daily cross-border flows; as well as changes in informal migration trajectories.

The COVID-19 outbreak also produced a sudden change in polarity between Spain, and particularly Ceuta and Melilla, and Moroccan territory. This was illustrated by a number of border significant incidents. For example, at the end of March, a group of about a hundred Moroccans boarded two inflatable boats to return illegally to their country and circumvent the restrictions.13 A bit later, in early April 2022, the Spanish police forces blocked a group of five Moroccan citizens -who found themselves trapped in the city- while trying to leave Spanish territory to enter Morocco, by swimming back from Ceuta's Tarajal beach.<sup>14</sup>

On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced, at least during an initial period, attempts to enter Spain via Ceuta and Melilla. This occurred mainly due to the tightening of controls on the Moroccan side of the border, not only at the exit, but also at the entrance, and to the lock-down that made movements inside Morocco difficult.15 The closure of the Moroccan borders entailed another effect associated with informal migration flows: the temporary blocking of forced returns, both of Moroccan nationals and of those from sub-Saharan African countries.

But in order to fully grasp the impact this had in regional border dynamics (Ferrer-Gallardo, 2011), it must be taken into account that the Covid crisis became an opportunity for the Moroccan authorities to fully implement an ongoing agenda that aimed to put an end to the so-called atypical trade (irregular cross-border commercial flows) between the two cities and Morocco (Gabrielli, 2021b). Indeed, on 9 October 2019, in a unilateral -and apparently unexpected decision on the Spanish side-, Morocco sanctioned the end of 'atypical' economic trafficking related to the transit of porteadoras women in Ceuta. In practice, the burst onto the scene of COVID-19 and the subsequent closure of the Moroccan borders totally blocked these 'atypical' or informal trade flows even also in Melilla, de facto spurring the implementation of Moroccan plans.

As Goeury (2020) highlights, the irruption of Covid-19 acted as an accelerator of an ongoing process of border reconfiguration that had been put into operation by Morocco earlier in 2019. In this context, the Covid related border closure aggravated the severe socio-economic unrest at both sides of the border (Martínez, 2021), particularly affecting Moroccan cross-border workers and those directly or indirectly

<sup>13</sup> https://elpais.com/espana/2020-04-23/mas-de-5000-euros-por-escapar-de-espana-en-patera.html 14 Ibidem.

<sup>15</sup> If we widen our gaze, we see that instead migrant arrivals seem not only to continue but also to grow considerably in the Canary Islands archipelago, reinforcing a trend that had already emerged in 2019.

making their living out of informal cross-border trade. Interestingly enough, as it has been pointed out earlier, the borders of Ceuta and Melilla would only reopen in May 2022, once the Western Sahara related diplomatic conflict was readdressed.

# 17.8 Conclusion: The Postpandemic Externalized EU Borders in Africa

What happened in Ceuta on May 18th 2021 was a clear example of Morocco's ability and capacity to influence EU border management dynamics, as well as of the increasing foreign dependency of EU border control policies. Once again, the vulnerabilities of the European Union's border regime were staged in one of the most heavily securitized segments of the Union's outer perimeter.

It was of course not the first time that something like this happened. In fact, over the last decades the aforementioned iconic "fortress" dimension of Ceuta and Melilla has been reinforced by a range of so-called migration "crises" that have been taking place in the region, the most significant ones being those of 2005 (Ndaw, 2022) and 2014 (Gabrielli, 2015), in which attempts of entry by migrants were responded by violent actions (with deadly consequences) to deter them by the border authorities. This was also the case in June 2022, when an attempt to cross the fences at the Melilla border which was violently addressed by Moroccan border authorities ended up with 23 people dead – other sources from CSOs rise this number to almost 40 (Lema, 2022).

What these episodes of "crisis" reveal (be it in Ceuta, Melilla, the Canary Islands, Lampedusa, Lesvos or even Poland) is that the EU forged apocalyptic narratives of migratory invasions are increasingly recycled and transformed into bargaining tools at the other side of the border. The EU-forged political rhetoric of migratory dystopias, and the social construction of migration as a security threat have become a really useful instrument for some EU neighbours. These neighbours, be it Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Turkey or Morocco, in turn, have been geopolitically empowered by means of years of border externalization deals, and, in a certain way, they are claiming their right to be able to set the EU border agenda too (Sanz, 2021; see also Gabrielli, 2016; Bialasiewicz, 2012; Okyay & Zaragoza-Cristiani, 2016; Afailal & Fernandez, 2018; Triandafyllidou, 2014).

What happened in Ceuta in May 2021 highlighted the rising feebleness and counterproductive logic of the current general EU bordering regime and resonates with similar unexpected episodes unfolded at other segments of the EU perimeter. The increasing foreign reliance vis-à-vis EU migration and border management policies became apparent.

And in so doing, it points at two mutually reinforcing consequences of outsourcing strategies, which we have elsewhere referred to as the "externalities of externalization" (Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2022). These sequels are: on the one hand, the EU-wide electoral growth of far-right, anti-immigration political discourses advocating for more strictly securitized border practices (Van Houtum & Bueno Lacy, 2020), and on the other hand, the growing diplomatic leverage at the disposal of neighbouring gatekeeper-countries like Morocco, Turkey, Libya, Egypt or Belarus. As argued during this chapter, this diplomatic leverage was clearly put at work by Morocco during the Ceuta border "crisis" of May 2021. And its output helps understand the subsequent deadly border "crisis" in Melilla in June 2022 (BBC, 2022), when, after Spain's significant turn in its foreign policy vis-à-vis the Western Sahara conflict, Morocco was much more eager to cooperate in EU external border control practices. It also helps understand the terms in which the border was reopened two years after its Covid-19 pandemic related closure.

Spain and Morocco's land border reopened on May 17, 2022, although only those possessing Spanish citizenship, EU passports, Spanish residency and/or working permits, or Schengen visas were permitted to walk through. At the time of writing this chapter, the Schengen exception that allowed citizens from the Moroccan provinces of Tétouan and Nador to enter the cities had not been reinstated. But it was politically foreseen, as it was also the establishment of official customs at the borders of Ceuta and Melilla.<sup>16</sup>

More than three decades after the fencing off of the cities, the growing foreign dependency vis-à-vis Morocco, together with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in cross-border mobility dynamics, have contributed to yet a new reconfiguration of the Ceuta and Melilla border regime. The iconic strength of their border fences remains, and so does its explanatory power as an illustrative sample of the general EU external border and its footprint in the Mediterranean migration system.

#### References

<sup>16</sup> https://www.ceutaldia.com/articulo/politica/albares-traslada-vivas-detalles-acuerdo-marruecosapertura-aduana-comercial/20220928171645251868.html

Vallet, E. (2016). Borders, fences and walls: State of insecurity? Routledge.

Xavier Ferrer-Gallardo is a Beatriz Galindo Researcher at the Humanities Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. At the cross-roads between Human Geography and Political Science, Ferrer-Gallardo's research focuses on the geopolitics of borders and migration dynamics. He completed his PhD in Geography at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. During his doctoral research period he conducted research stays at Queen's University Belfast, UK, and at Université Abdelmalek Essaadi, Tetouan, Morocco. He subsequently worked as a postdoc researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Recent publication: Ferrer-Gallardo, X., & Gabrielli, L. (2022). The Ceuta Border Peripeteia: Tasting the Externalities of EU Border Externalization. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 37(3), 645–655

Lorenzo Gabrielli, Ph.D. (with honors) in Political Science from LAM (Les Afriques dans le Monde) – Science Po Bordeaux, France, is Senior Researcher at GRITIM-UPF and Joint Professor at the Political Science department of UPF. He is also Associate Researcher at GEA (Group of African Studies) – UAM. His research focuses on the external dimension of migration policies, as well as bordering processes in the Euro-African space, among others. Dr. Gabrielli has been a member of several European research projects, visiting Researcher at the UNU-GCM, senior research fellow at the IEMed, as well as researcher for EUI, ITC-ILO, Oxfam-Intermón, CIDOB, Euromesco, EUNOMAD, among others.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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# Chapter 18 Mediterranean Migrations and Cities with Their Cultural Histories and Imaginaries: The Case of Marseille

Yvan Gastaut

# 18.1 Introduction

History reveals that Mediterranean cities have been formed from the significant mixing of populations since very ancient times. This means that the Mediterranean area has become a kind of universal model in terms of cosmopolitanism, which makes it possible to focus on the multiple identities of the cities from the South and North of the basin between the colonial period and decolonization. Using the case of Marseille, our aim is to reflect on the way in which the major cities in the Mediterranean, both by their past and current activities, have played a fundamental role in how migrants are perceived, and how a positive cosmopolitan imaginary has been constructed at a time when the movement of people is simultaneously encouraged and discouraged. Marseille is not the most prominent city in the National Association of Welcoming Cities and Territories (ANVITA), an organization founded in September 2018 by nine French cities, and which brings together local authorities, groups of authorities and elected officials who seek unconditional migrant reception policies, to include exiled populations, and for hospitality to be shown on their territories. However, its role is essential, as is the evolution of its political situation after 25 years under the management of Jean-Claude Gaudin (1995–2020). Indeed, being able to showcase the historically cosmopolitan dimension of Marseille appears to be a fundamental issue in the implementation of migrant reception policies. Marseille has often been considered as rebelling against Paris, and more broadly, against the French state, even though President Macron is keen to make the city more attractive in the eyes of the rest of the country.

© The Author(s) 2024

Y. Gastaut (✉)

University of Côte d'Azur, Nice, France e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
R. Zapata-Barrero, I. Awad (eds.), Migrations in the Mediterranean, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42264-5\_18

The history of Marseille is not necessarily that of a welcoming city, but rather of a city which has had to contend with the issue of migration over a very long period of time. The intensity of mixing different migrant populations has produced different types of showcasing, and therein lies the challenge of studying the city. In some situations, it is the rejection of migrant populations that takes prominence, whereas in others it is the welcome. Thus, the city constantly swings between positive and negative representations of its migrant presence. The 1980s and 1990s represented the showcasing of cosmopolitan Marseille, notably through the work of Emile Temime, a leading historian from the city. He is the author of four volumes entitled Migrance, histoire des migrations à Marseille, published between 1989 and 1991, and successfully undertook the vast project of tracing the history of migration in relation to Marseille as far back as the origins of the city, while emphasizing the astonishing diversity of this migration. Until then, migration had been dealt with in various historical texts about Marseille and Provence, but never in a specific way. The study by Emile Temime and his team has provided a solid base of knowledge, and has been supplemented by various scientific works that address, in whole or in part, the question of migration for the city of Marseille alone. The bibliography at the end of this chapter demonstrates the omnipresence of Marseille among researchers addressing this subject. A new generation of researchers, led by Pascal Blanchard and Gilles Boëtsch in 2005 with Marseille Porte sud, which uses the title of an Albert Londres' book, have complemented Emile Temime's work, particularly in terms of iconography, as have all the more detailed approaches proposed by the collection under the direction of Emile Temime and Pierre Milza, Français d'ici, peuples d'ailleurs, which was published by Autrement at the end of the 1990s. Different places and/or nationalities, such as the Belsunce district, the camp at the Grand Arénas, the Comorians and the African peddlers, have been studied over given periods of time. The work of economists, such as Bernard Morel, and sociologists, such as Jocelyne Cesari, Véronique Manry, Jean Viard and Michel Péraldi, is also very useful, and reveals that for the past twenty years, the abundant issues surrounding migration in relation to Marseille have been feeding the interest of human and social sciences. The universities of Côte d'Azur and Marseille have been conducting a range of projects on how Mediterranean cities showcase their relationship with migrants. More recently, new work has supplemented this reflection on migration in Marseille, such as that by Céline Régnard with an original study on nineteenth century Marseille entitled Marseille la violente, and the collective research by Stéphane Mourlane, entitled Les Batailles de Marseille. In 2019, Judith Aziza also wrote a history of Marseille through place. Moreover, a number of research projects are ongoing, for example, MedMed, a website containing the memories from the Mediterranean area since 20081 on various types of media; MiMed (Lieux et territoires des migrations en Méditerranée)2 since 2009, MonuMed

<sup>1</sup> http://www.medmem.eu/

<sup>2</sup> https://mimed.hypotheses.org/

about the contribution of memories and monuments to cities since 2019,3 and more recently, Mars Imperium, a project about imperial Marseille: (post)colonial history and memories nineteenth to twenty-first centuries) between 2021 and 2024 from the TELEMME laboratory in Aix-en-Provence.<sup>4</sup>

# 18.1.1 The Central Role of Marseille in the Management and Showcasing of the Immigrant Presence Over the Long Term

Marseille has made migration an integral part of its identity.5 Foreign nationals and migrant workers from around the world have always been present in the city. This cosmopolitanism is obvious to casual observers across its various contexts.6 Following the great plague of 1720, which devastated Marseille, a merchant noted in 1726: "Although Marseille is in France, it may be perceived as a little Turkey, a little Italy, a little Barbary, or an embodiment of all these countries, both good and bad".

<sup>3</sup> At a time when Europe and the Mediterranean seem to oscillate between collective amnesia and commemorative hypersensitivity, research on memories, on monuments and on the whole process of urban "monumentalization" enables us to analyze the creation of culture. Since 2019, the MonuMed project has been endeavoring to enrich this material, which is essentially multiform, by linking it to geopolitics, history and art history, in order to shed light on the construction of artistic practices and discourses at a time of globalization. The dialogue between researchers and artists constitutes an instrument that will facilitate the reformulation of the achievements of academic efforts, as well as common sense categories.

<sup>4</sup> The Mars-IMPERIUM project ("Imperial Marseille: (post)colonial history and memories 19th– 21st centuries") brings together five joint research units: (UMR) from Aix-Marseille University (IrAsia, IMAF, IREMAM, TELEMMe, LPED) and ten socio-cultural partners (ANOM, Archives municipales de Marseille, Bibliothèque Municipale à Vocation Régionale de Marseille, la Bibliothèque numérique Odyssée, Ancrages, INA-Méditerranée, the Archives de la Chambre de commerce de Marseille, the MuCEM and the Musées de Marseille). The aim of the project is to investigate the imperial history of Marseille as a long-lasting "total social fact" and to present the research results through a web portal showcasing a vast array of resources (web documentary films, virtual exhibitions, heritage walks, archive index) contributed by all the consortium members. Situated at the crossroads of the latest research in imperial history and ICT enhanced social sciences and humanities, Mars-IMPERIUM will enable the Aix-Marseille University to position itself in the fields of Global History and Digital Humanities, to promote and enhance the university's scientific heritage and its social visibility, to intensify its relationship with the main socio-cultural partners of its environment, to dynamically rethink the way social sciences and humanities are structured, and to act as a catalyst for international cooperation on these topical issues.

<sup>5</sup> Legend has it that Phocaea, a Greek maritime city in Asia Minor, created a trading post known as Massalia around the sixth century B.C.: the leader of the Phocaean expedition, Protis, married the daughter of the king of Segobrigia, Gyptis. It is hence a couple, consisting of a native and a foreigner, which founded the city. According to Herodotus, when the Persians wanted to seize Phocaea, the inhabitants took refuge in Massalia and hence populated it definitively. 6 For example, Philippe Joutard, "Marseille cosmopolite. Mythes et réalités" in Hommes et migra-

tions, n°1092, 1986.

At the end of the eighteenth century, half of the population was not Marseillais in origin: among the main groups of foreign nationals were Italians (Genovese and Piemontese for the most part) and Gavots (peasants from the Alpine valleys), as well as Spaniards, Greeks and Levantines (a term that covers Syrians, Greeks and Armenians). A 1754 painting by Joseph Vernet, Intérieur du port de Marseille, which is kept in the Musée de la Marine, Paris, shows a colorful crowd on the Canebière, the central avenue of Marseille.

#### 18.2 Marseille, Diversity as a Historical Landscape

During the French Revolution, the cosmopolitan nature of the city is reflected in the revolutionary discourse of 1792–93, which often denounced "bands of foreigners" led by counter-revolutionaries: "Marseille is the city where we constantly see the ferment of the scum hurled forth from the prisons of Genoa, Piemonte, Sicily, the whole of Italy and Spain, and finally, the archipelago of Barbary. This is the deplorable flaw of our geographical position and our commercial relations". 7 We must also add the Mamelukes at the time of Napoleon 1st. In 1844, Flora Tristan, a French observer at Le Tour de France mentioned the same phenomenon: "The more I see of Marseille, the more I dislike it. The city is not French. Here there is a ragbag of nations: Italians, Greeks, Turks, Africans, and all those from the Levantine coast. Have they done bad business here?". 8 Later, in 1922, the journalist Ludovic Naudeau wrote of "a formidable workshop where the human races are constantly condensed, mixed and condensed again" 9 in L'Illustration, while in 1927, the great reporter, Albert Londres, in his article Marseille porte du Sud, pointed out the same reality: "Do you want to see Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia? I'll take you to rue des Chapeliers. Here you'll find the "gourbis", the "Bicots" and the "mouquères". Stay off the footpath, and if you want to avoid a fight, don't talk to their women (...)". 10 In confirmation of these observations, statistical sources remind us that the city of Marseille has welcomed different national groups over time: poor Italians and Greeks from the end of the nineteenth century, Russian emigrants in 1917, Armenians in 1915 and 1923, Spanish refugees after 1936, North Africans during the interwar period, Africans after 1945, and "Pieds-Noirs" after 1962. The creation of the industrial port of Fos-sur-Mer, which coincided with the end of the French empire in the early 1960s, created a strong attraction for foreign nationals and made Marseille a real metropolis.

The dividing lines between people have not necessarily been drawn according to their membership of a particular national or religious group. The social and

<sup>7</sup> Michel Vovelle, De la cave au grenier, Québec, Fleury, 1981. 8 Flora Tristan, Le tour de France, journal 1843–<sup>44</sup>, Maspero, Paris, 1980, rééd. 9 Ludovic Naudeau, L'Illustration, 21 October 1922. 10 Albert Londres, Marseille, porte du Sud, Paris, Editions de France, 1927.

professional divides that have become significantly more pronounced in contemporary times have forced us to question certain community ties. If the city is denoted by migrants from North Africa, who have arrived relatively recently and who are generally not very wealthy, it is because this population has partially covered up, or even erased, the traces left by the previous migrant populations, especially in the city center, where the buildings are often in a dilapidated state. If you linger in the streets, you will see Tunisian restaurants and Algerian cafés, bazaars, and Armenian and Lebanese stores; you will pass from a former Roman Catholic church to Jewish and Muslim places of worship, all close to each other. These are obvious signs, even if they are generally fragile and fleeting, of an ancient coexistence, born from the settlement of successive migratory waves that have left their mark on the city, but whose particularities often fade with the years.<sup>11</sup>

In the nineteenth century, the importance of migrants became decisive in a Marseillais system based on the precariousness of employment and the low qualifications of employees. The port was a source of raw materials for a French industry which was in constant expansion. This is why Marseille became the natural outlet for the Mediterranean, as it sat along a shipping corridor between East and West, and hence benefited from the development of the Suez Canal. The economic system of the city operated solely according to the existence of a cheap and renewable workforce, for example, from 1830 to 1860, the city's growth rate averaged 3% per year. Marseille was both a place to bring in and a place from which to send out. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, goods arrived on the Quai de la Rive Neuve, but were then stored in warehouses so that they could be shipped on. People were the same: they were also brought in and shipped on, sometimes covertly.

The city and its port can be considered as both a passageway and a fixed abode for the migrant population. Emile Temime insists on the transit function of the city: it is a crossroads, and the port is the epicenter of industrial life, supported by the figure of the docker whose role evolves throughout contemporary history. Although the growth of port activity played an important part in the development of a migratory movement towards the city, the tremendous acceleration of this trend occurred during the nineteenth century because of numerous advances in communication techniques which generated the setting up of new continental links. Marseille was therefore a city of two dimensional migration. On the one hand, the departure of Europeans to America had begun in previous centuries, but increased considerably from 1830 to 1840. This East-West movement progressively affected the entire Mediterranean world, and even though Marseille, which was competing with Le Havre, was not the only port to benefit from this migration, it became a major hub. On the other hand, the constitution of the colonial empire provoked a movement of populations towards Algeria, then Tunisia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina and Morocco.

<sup>11</sup> Emile Temime, "Des solidarités anciennes au brassage culturel", in Confluence Méditerranée, n° 10, Spring 1994.

#### 18.3 The Making of an Image: Cosmopolitan Marseille

Accompanying the new maritime routes were new forms of relations which came about after national companies set up in Marseille and opened lines to other continents, thus ensuring a worldwide influence for the city. From 1850 onwards, the growth of the port was remarkable, as 50 million Europeans emigrated between 1800 and 1914. Although Northern Europe provided the majority of these emigrants, the Mediterranean basin also contributed. The Italian and Iberian peninsulas saw large contingents leave for America, particularly Latin America. 6.5 million Italians, mostly from the Mezzogiorno, emigrated between 1851 and 1910. Very early on, the Levantines participated in the migratory movement, and although Marseille could not claim to be a source of emigrants from Northern and Eastern Europe, it was a logical and unavoidable stopover point when it comes to people on the move from the Mediterranean towards the New World.

All this may give the impression that Marseille was only ever a stopover point, but the reality is different, as by its very presence, the ebb and flow of migration helped develop the local economy. Emigrants were the driving force behind the prosperity of the shipping companies, holding maintenance and service jobs in the port and providing a living for the city's hoteliers and merchants, not to mention the intermediaries and traffickers of all kinds who offered the passing traveler a wide variety of services. The growth of Marseille, as well as its unique character, cannot be understood without reference to this continuous flow of people from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. The journey to the New World was not a one-time event: after leaving from Constantinople, Beirut and Alexandria, the Levantines would stop over in Italian ports or in Marseille. It was then possible for them to reach the Baltic and North Sea ports by train. Marseille was therefore in competition with Genoa, Livorno, and even Hamburg, Antwerp and Le Havre. However, certain shipping companies established themselves in the port, and opened transatlantic lines so as to be able to keep a tight control of the migration chain. From the Second Empire onwards, the French State sought to organize the flows of people crowding into the country's major ports, as there was a concern that a floating population could be a potential source of disorder. The State also wanted to ensure that the national economy would benefit from the consequences of this movement. An important decree of 1855 imposed duties on the shipping agencies in terms of hygiene and quotas, and hence "emigration commissioners" were appointed, initially in the North, and then in Marseille as of 1878. The commissioner's job was to inspect each ship in order to verify that the emigrants would be traveling in decent conditions. The archives show that these conditions were not always decent: there are numerous complaints from unfortunate emigrants, indicating the dubious and often degrading practices of the carriers, which could be compared to human trafficking. From the point of departure to the point of arrival, the emigrant risked being held for ransom, and sometimes even raped or killed.

Nevertheless, Marseille was not restricted to the role of a transit port in the globalized trade network that was being developed in the nineteenth century.<sup>12</sup> The movements of people caused ramifications, insofar as some of these populations, for very different reasons, settled permanently or were permanently housed, hence accentuating the cosmopolitanism of the city. The great migratory currents that traversed the city-port in the nineteenth century brought together groups from very different backgrounds, and included both the established communities and the communities who were passing through. The former comprised a large number of Italians, but also "People from the North", such as Germans, Swiss, Belgians, Dutch and even Scandinavians, some of whom had already been present in Marseille since the seventeenth century, as well as Sephardic Jews and Armenians who had settled under the Ancien Régime, and Levantines who had arrived after 1789. All of this international migration was combined with domestic migration, often involving Gavots13 and Corsicans who had been attracted by the port activity.

The very nature of the city changed dramatically from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, although the old city was not completely replaced. It was at this time that the city expanded in an anarchic way to be able to adapt to its current function; at the same time it experienced significant demographic growth. Based on data collected by Emile Temime and Renée Lopez, in particular data from the 1851 census, which show the details of the distribution of the various foreign communities in the city (10% of the total population), a brief geography of the migrant settlements reveals a number of strong trends. The city was divided into three parts: (1) the furnished quarters of the wealthy neighborhoods, which housed a composite population, the majority of whom were characterized by a certain material affluence, (2) the garrisons of the Grand Puits district, which covered part of Old Marseille and housed workers from the working classes, and (3) a mass of underprivileged people living in particularly precarious conditions on the outskirts of the city in the extramural territory of Marseille.

More specifically, different writings by Emile Temime on Belsunce, and by Anne Sportiello on the Vieux-Port, have highlighted a logic of "ethnically-dominated neighborhoods" in the urban fabric of Marseille: a mosaic of small "villages", or a "city of 111 neighborhoods". This fragmentation reflects a grouping of populations belonging to national and/or religious groups. New monographic research would make it possible to refine our knowledge of migration on this scale through ethnological studies based on life stories and oral archives.

This phenomenon did not prevent the development of meeting places and neighborhoods, for example, in the arteries of the Panier district, and in particular the rue des Chapeliers, the study of different sources, such as census tables and police reports, brings to light a zone of intercultural sociability. On the footpaths, in the cafés, in the shops, at the washhouse, and at the Place de Lenche where women had

<sup>12</sup> Suzanne Berger, Notre Première Mondialisation: leçons d'un échec oublié, Paris, Seuil, 2003. 13 Michel Vovelle, "Gavots et Italiens: les Alpes et leur bordure dans la population marseillaise au XVIIIe siècle", Provence Historique, 1977.

their market stalls, people from different countries met and chatted. Albeit that the Italian population was present everywhere, but especially around the port and in the extra-mural Northern districts, the Swiss and German populations were concentrated in the bourgeois part of the city. Emile Temime emphasizes the permanence of the distribution of foreign nationals in the city, notably on the basis of social distinction, and hence, over and above ethnic affiliations, the other two major forms of settlement were that of higher and lower income populations. The higher income group consisted of traders, shipowners, brokers, port masters and industrialists, whereas the more numerous lower income group includes the migrant workers.

# 18.3.1 The Cosmopolitanism of Marseille in the Face of Postcolonial Events

Evidence displays that these were the realities of cosmopolitanism in Marseilles, and indeed, other French Mediterranean cities experienced similar patterns of population mixing. However, the reality of cosmopolitanism ignores the imaginary and consciousness of the lived experience, and its links to the feelings of the population, including its communal elites. After decolonization, the presence of North African populations became a manifold issue with multiple consequences. As the Mediterranean capital of migration, Marseille is the city to which all eyes turn when deploring racism or when considering interculturality. Therefore, as in the past, the postcolonial situation of Marseille compelled the city and its inhabitants to become acutely aware of cosmopolitanism, for better or for worse.

#### 18.4 Marseille and the Shock of Racism (1970s)

At the beginning of the 1970s, the advocates of a Marseillais identity were attempting to place cosmopolitanism at the center of shared local values. The argument was that the Marseillais inhabitants were traditionally welcoming and willing to accept the mixing of populations. In 1972, the anthropologist, Francis Lesme, a specialist in migration, saw his city as the place of "living together" par excellence.14 He maintained that every migrant was sure to find a roof over his or her head and food in the home of a "brother or sister", especially in the Porte d'Aix neighborhood, which he considered to be the most intercultural place in Marseille: "People manage to get along (...) this neighborhood has gradually taken on an international vocation, which it lives up to today and which is its raison d'être (...) Israelis, Arabs, Africans, Italians, French citizens from modest backgrounds... live together. It is their complementarity that gives the district its dynamism". The

<sup>14</sup>Provence, bulletin de l'association des anciens élèves, Marseille, n°4, May 1972.

cosmopolitanism of the Belsunce-Porte d'Aix district appeared to be a specific asset for the city of Marseille, attracting visitors and the curious alike, who came at the weekend from other districts and communes to shop or participate in festivals and cultural events.

Several local texts and brochures published at the turn of the 1970s went beyond a simple viewpoint to present the city of Marseille as essentially cosmopolitan: a study by Dr. Joseph Alliez, a psychiatrist from Marseille, on "L'Homme provençal", 15 an investigation by the Le Provençal journalist Constant Vautravers, Marseille équilibre du Sud, an article by Jean Contrucci, editor-in-chief of Provence-magazine and writer on the "Marseille personality" 16 in the Tout Marseille review, and above all, a brochure, L'Homme de Marseille, published by Le Pêcheur d'hommes and promoted by the Marseilles Diocesan Center. Envisaging the existence of "l'âme de Marseille" (soul of the city) gave rise to the constructed image of a tolerant city enriched by a secular mixing of populations: "Is there not a Marseillais coloring that marks the sensibility, the behavior and the reactions of these millions of people crowded in the narrow perimeter of our hills facing the sea (...) the soul of Marseille is the history of the city that has left behind some deposit, silt or humus that interferes with the multiple influences on the present form of our collective unconscious". 17 According to the same brochure, which was widely distributed in the city and in the Provence region, Marseille was a "crossroads of the world": "all the Mediterranean is there: Marseille is the first Corsican city, the second Armenian city of France, a large Italian agglomeration, one of the first Pied-Noir cities, an important Hellenic colony, a real kasbah and an African capital". There was a feeling that the whole world was represented in this kaleidoscopic urban space, and the tolerance of the Marseillais was self-evident: "Metropolis or cosmopolis? This human cocktail is our strength; it saves us from sclerosis; it gives us a never-ending supply of imagination". In short, this portrait led to a definitive statement: "the Marseillais is not racist, at least not congenitally. But he or she is, however, a racist from the point of view of crime". If most of the vectors for the construction of the Marseillais identity were traditionally the prerogative of the socialist/communist left and Christian militants, economic and conservative circles also made their contribution at that time. The consensus favored the saturation of this discourse, and thereby ignored certain harmful aspects of Marseille's cosmopolitanism, retaining only a watered-down reflection. Convincing public opinion conveniently avoided taking into consideration the more painful realities of the city's relationship with migrants, as studied by Claire Paris through the analysis of the image of the "North

<sup>15</sup> Joseph Alliez, "L'Homme provençal", in Marseille, revue municipales, n°75, 1968, 16 Jean Contrucci, "Enquête sur la personnalité marseillaise", Tout Marseille, 1st, 15th, 22nd and 29th March 1971.

<sup>17</sup>L'Homme de Marseille publication du Pêcheur d'hommes, Centre diocésain marseillais, 1st semester 1972.

African" in the daily Le Provençal between 1970 and 1974.18 The context of the "shock of decolonization", which deeply marked the city of Marseille when it occurred and which continued into the early 1970s, offers a major key to understanding the changes to the Marseillais identity in terms of tolerance.

Any optimism was swept away by the racist outbreak of 1973.19 The murder on August 25 in the city center of streetcar worker Emile Guerlache by a mentally ill Algerian worker, Salah Bougrine, triggered an outbreak of xenophobia which had not been seen in France since the end of the Second World War. There was a very real prospect of ethnic confrontation, which was not helped by incitement in the form of leaflets, press conferences and articles in the local press, in particular in the columns of Le Méridional under the pen of its editor, Gabriel Domenech. In one month, a dozen North Africans were victims of racist attacks in the city. The real targets were Algerian, as the still raw resentment and hatred arising from the loss of French Algeria could now be expressed in a different context which was just as sensitive to the relationship with the Other. The "ratonnades" (racist attacks), which were modeled on those carried out during the Algerian war, reanimated certain former actors of the conflict who had been struggling to accept its epilogue. The consequences of this xenophobic agitation went far beyond the local framework20 : the French government was obliged to condemn the drama unfolding on its soil, while Houari Boumedienne, the Algerian president, decided, in an expression of discontent, to suspend emigration to France as long as the safety of Algerian nationals was not assured.

The cosmopolitanism of Marseille suddenly seemed disturbing and dangerous. In an attempt to find explanations, observers and experts put forward the idea of exceeding a "seuil de tolerance" (threshold of tolerance),21 i.e. racism was inevitable because there were too many immigrants in Marseille. Far from typifying the utopian vision of a city of different nationalities living in harmony, the racist outbreak, which was accompanied by a murderous attack against the Algerian consulate on December 14, 1973 (4 dead and more than 30 wounded) by the Charles Martel Club, an extreme right-wing group, fueled a totally negative image of harmonious mixing. In the national press, a number of articles began to speak of Marseille as the "capital of racism". The city had become undignified and a sort of isolate within the Hexagon, allowing the rest of the country to ease its conscience. The charge was so strong that Jean Rambaud from Le Monde attempted to mitigate the discredit poured on the city of Marseille with the headline: "If Marseille were racist, it would not exist..."; "All the same, Marseille and its thousand-year-old tradition of racial and

<sup>18</sup> Claire Paris, Le Nord-africain dans les quotidiens provençaux (1970–1974), mémoire de maîtrise, University of Avignon, 2001.

<sup>19</sup> Yvan Gastaut, "La flambée raciste de 1973", in Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, third trimester 1993. 20 Le Monde, 1st September 1973. 21 This notion is used with quotation marks insofar as it is not based on any scientific research, but

rather on an ideological argument that claims to be scientific.

religious tolerance. Marseille, the cosmopolitan, has suddenly become racist. Shouldn't we do more than treat it as an anathema?". The events in Marseille shocked the public to such an extent that an introspection on racism began. Suddenly, the phenomenon seemed to be of an unsuspected magnitude in France. The question, "Are the French racist?" emerged in the media.22 The image of a worrying cosmopolitanism kept the benevolent speeches on the welcoming nature of the people of Marseille tucked away in filing cabinets for several years. From 1973 onwards, in a context of economic crisis that made immigrant workers undesirable, the city was considered to be a potential site for intercommunity confrontation. The local authorities, which had been convinced by the "threshold of tolerance" argument, paid attention to the problem of cohabitation between French nationals and migrants by elaborating a coherent housing policy. In 1974, the mayor, Gaston Defferre, commissioned a survey on the issue of slum clearance and the improvement of housing for migrants. Concerted action between the city and the new Secretary of State for Immigrant Workers led to the signing of a "program contract" in December 1975 in favor of migrants, and represented the first steps of the city's future policy on migration.

# 18.5 "Proud to be Marseillais" and Citywide Action: Promoting Positive Cosmopolitanism in the 1990s

According to numerous articles in the press, Marseille was "sick of its immigrants" 23 : racist murders, xenophobic behavior on the part of police officers and cab drivers, attacks such as the one at the Gare Saint-Charles in 1982, which was attributed to Muslim fundamentalists, and campaigns linking insecurity and immigration from 1983 onwards. However, some Marseillais residents, generally representing left-wing and Christian thinking, refused to give in to catastrophism. A symposium organized by the UFCV (Union Française des Centres de Vacances) and the University of Provence in May 1986, entitled Marseille cosmopolite, gave the floor to local academics Philippe Joutard, Lucien Tirone and Alain Hayot, along with representatives of the different communities, to remind the audience that the Marseillais identity was based on mixing populations. In November 1986, a group of associations distributed leaflets and posters on the theme of Marseille, city of immigration, which was relayed by the local press, but above all, a large demonstration organized for June 23, 1987, consisted of 25,000 people, including Lionel Jospin and Jack Lang, on the Canebière under the banner of "Marseille fraternité",a collective of 120 associations whose aim was to shatter the racist image of the city: "Because we can no longer stand Marseille being presented as the capital of racism;

<sup>22</sup>Le Nouvel Observateur, 3rd September et Paris Match, 4th September 1973. 23 La revue de l'union française des centres de vacances, n°227, May 1986, dossier, "Marseille, malade de ses immigrés".

because Marseille is worth more than these extreme right-wing politicians who only know how to reject, exclude and banish; because we believe that it is in Marseille today that we must affirm the values of equal rights and fraternity (...), together for fraternity in Marseille". 24 There was a clear desire to reclaim cosmopolitanism as a positive value in the Phocaean identity. Imbued with political meaning, the version of cosmopolitanism defended by the progressive thinkers close to the Socialist Party, was one of integration, which featured prominently in both national and local programs. After the death of the emblematic socialist mayor, Gaston Defferre, in 1986, the electoral victory of Robert Vigouroux, a professor of medicine, in the 1989 municipal elections was largely built on the values of a cosmopolitanism based on tolerance. As early as 1990, the new mayor decided to set up a specific structure in the form of an association, "Marseille Espérance", which aim was to promote intercultural encounters and avoid racial tensions. The association regularly brought together representatives of the different religious communities to engage in a dialogue about the social and cultural nature of the management of the city. However, the context was not very favorable: terrorist attacks and the debate over the wearing of the headscarf led to a rise in the fear of Islam; there were concerns about the Middle East, and there was the issue of the "banlieues" (suburbs).

What Robert Vigouroux wanted was for the people of Marseille to see themselves first and foremost as being from the city: "I am not in favor of integration at any price. The important thing is to have the common goal of being "Marseillais"". 25 The initiative was a success: "Marseille Espérance" became a regulatory body which was respected by the people of Marseille, and always called upon when local, national or international events risked provoking community tensions. However, the city's cosmopolitanism proved difficult to manage, and progress remained limited, for example, problems surrounding the mosque were not resolved, and the presence of migrant populations on electoral lists remained rare. In addition, racism persisted, as illustrated by the tragic death of a 17-year-old Comorian, Ibrahim Ali, on February 21, 1995, at the hands of National Front supporters. Nevertheless, during the 1990s, the image of Marseille evolved differently from this violent reality. Through the cumulative effect of cultural productions, political will and the input from associations, the city assumed openness and tolerance, giving its cosmopolitanism an opportunity to thrive.

The promotion of "mixing" has helped to forge a Marseillais identity based on particularism and tolerance, for example, the slogan "Proud to be Marseillais" invites people to place themselves on the margins of their national identity. Marseille was also being presented as cosmopolitan again via national media, and what had begun without much success in the early 1970s found a much stronger echo twenty years later in a more favorable context. Among these efforts, besides the works of Emile Temime quoted above, we have to mention the success of the detective novels of Jean-Claude Izzo who told the adventures of Fabio Montale, a police officer in a

<sup>24</sup>Le Provençal, 11th June 1987. 25 Le Monde, 27th September 1993.

diverse Marseille.26 In 1999, in the novel Le soleil des mourants, the author evokes the wanderings of a homeless man who comes to die in Marseille because "here it looks like it could be anywhere". 27 Robert Guédiguian's films, including Marius et Jeannette, which was released in 1998, were equally successful in resonating with the French public, whereas they had previously been shunned. A few years earlier, in 1993, Bertrand Blier's 1, 2, 3 Soleil presented a fable of miscegenation in Marseille, as did director Karim Dridi's Bye Bye in 1997.  Television also made its contribution, notably through the thematic evening, 1, 2, 3 Marseille, shown on Canal+ in October 1999, which included a documentary on positive intercultural relations entitled Tellement Marseille.

Olympique de Marseille, the soccer club which won the UEFA Champions League in 1993 with Bernard Tapie as club president, crystallized local opinion. The matches at the Velodrome stadium gave the opportunity for scenes of fraternization in the stands which represented a truly positive cosmopolitanism. Christian Bromberger's studies on supporter groups in Marseille during the 1990s indicate that intercommunity tensions tended to fade at the Velodrome Stadium. Among the seven main fan groups, the "Winners" based their existence on "interethnic fraternity" and solidarity. In 1998, during the World Cup, several matches were scheduled in Marseille: during the Tunisia-England match, Marseille supporters fraternized with Tunisian supporters even though clashes were breaking out in other parts of the stadium.

Festivals also showcased Marseille's "mixing". Massalia, a festival financed in large part by the city in June 1999, was organized to commemorate the city's 2600th anniversary. Every component of local cosmopolitanism was brought together: 6000 artists of all nationalities offered performances as diverse as oriental dances, hip-hop, rap, Provençal songs, techno, African percussion, Corsican polyphonies and French variety as a way of affirming their pride in being Marseillais. The success of Massalia was made possible through the efforts of artists, teachers and city hall employees, all of whom volunteered their time. It was the occasion for Jean Contrucci to publish, alongside Roger Duchêne, a history of Marseille with a special emphasis on the mix of cultures. This solidly organized collection helped to present the city of Marseille as a real "laboratory for cohabitation between communities". As Michel Samson, a journalist from Le Monde, notes: "The major question that Marseille is asking is how do we achieve cohabitation between communities? As a frontier city, it has been welcoming the world's most miserable and most adventurous for centuries, willy-nilly. It must therefore invent and reinvent a style of cohabitation with each new wave of immigration, and above all, reflect on how to

<sup>26</sup> Jean-Claude Izzo (1946–2000), Total Khéops, Paris, Gallimard, "Série noire", 1995; Chourmo, Paris, Gallimard, "Série noire", 1996; Soléa, Paris, Gallimard, "Série noire", 1998. 27 Jean-Claude Izzo, Le soleil des mourants, Paris, Flammarion, 1999.

integrate people from other economic, social, cultural and religious worlds". 28 The same Michel Samson had already noted in 1998 that "the Marseille identity is to welcome the Other". 29

In the post-colonial context, the mixing of populations has been the object of a political and cultural investment to construct an identity in the delicate context of a Mediterranean undergoing constant transformation. The image of "cosmopolitan Marseille" is as much about welcoming foreign nationals as it is about racism. Since 1962, these two sides of cosmopolitanism have collided and succeeded each other according to the circumstances. At times, racism has triggered intercultural tensions and conflicts, whereas at others, the welcoming nature of the city has led to intercultural harmony and wellbeing. Indeed, the cosmopolitanism of this Phocaean city has a dual foundation: there is the reality, which is based on precise and rigorous indicators demonstrating an effective mixing of populations during a given period and in a given space, and there is the imaginary, which brings into play a process of identity creation. Since the modernization of part of the city, the appearance of the Mucem Museum (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations) in 2013, the year of the "European Capital of Culture" label, and the arrival in 2020 of a new municipal team under the left-wing mayor, Benoit Payan, the representations of the city are gradually evolving, but the cosmopolitanism of Marseille remains blurred between the image of economic modernization and the altogether different image of neighborhoods trapped in precariousness.<sup>30</sup>

Yvan Gastaut is involved in the Jean Monnet Network as representative of the URMIS, France. Lecturer in History, University of Côte d'Azur, Nice. He works in the laboratory URMIS, The Migrations and Society Research Unit, based in Nice and also in Paris VII. He is a member of the National Museum of History of Immigration in Paris Advisory Committee and also a fellow in the French Institute of Migration Convergences, Paris. His main line of research is the issue of migration in the Mediterranean area between the nineteenth and the twenty-first century. In particular, Yvan Gastaut is interested in questions of representation imaginaries, sport, identity, stereotypes that flow between the two Mediterranean shores, racism vs antiracism, public opinion and memory conflicts. He was the director of a Program of Agence Nationale de la Recherche in France "Ecrans et Inégalité" (ECRIN 2013–17) about the image of "Arabic" people in TV, cinema and internet (1962-2001). He is teaching a Master in Migration in Nice and CIFE formation (Nice-Tunis-Istanbul) as well as Master in Migration (ORMES) in Agadir University. Yvan Gastaut has 25 years of experience on the issue of representation of migration. Mediterranean has been taken as a space of reference in his research. Themes related to his current research: History of migrations in the nineteenth and twentieth century in the Mediterranean area – Intercultural relations in the Mediterranean: diplomacy, politics, and culture – Racism and anti-racism/Rejection and hospitality – Representation of the 'others'/public opinion - Media and Migration in the Mediterranean – Sport and Identity.

<sup>28</sup>Le Monde, article by Michel Samson, 22nd June 1999. 29 Le Monde, "Vivre Marseille", 15th October 1998. 30 Gilles Suzanne, "La controverse du cosmopolitisme marseillais", in Terrains & travaux, vol. 13, n°2, 2007, pp. 149–168.

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# Chapter 19 Infrastructure Development and Environmental Change: A Case Study of Forced (Im)mobility in the Mhamid Oasis (Southern Morocco)

Karolina Sobczak-Szelc

# 19.1 Introduction

Migration from areas on the Southern Shore of the Mediterranean usually are perceived as a result of historical connections enforced by economics and politics (De Haas, 2007; Lahlou, 2021). The reasons for this phenomenon, however, are much more complex and interlinked not only with those issues but also with the implications of climate change and the less obvious consequences of development investments visible through environmental and social changes (de Haas, 2001; Sobczak, 2008, 2012). Projects such as highways, mines, and urban infrastructure are significant drivers of displacement and forced migration (Randell, 2016). In fragile, semi-arid and arid areas, attention should be given to the impact of hydropower infrastructure investments.

Various groups perceive the significance of large investments differently. The positive impact of these projects is appreciated mostly by actors outside the area, such as industries, mega-cities and even countries. Those living in the affected territory face, however, most of the negative consequences (McCully, 2001; Sneddon & Fox, 2008; WCD, 2000). Urban or national access to electricity typically is a higher priority than the needs of fishers, farmers, and peasant subsistence agriculture. Such inequality of values makes the results of negotiations over potential compensation and benefit-sharing asymmetrical (Duarte-Abadía et al., 2015; Martinez-Alier, 2014).

K. Sobczak-Szelc (✉)

Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw (UW), Warsaw, Poland

Centre for Advanced Studies of Population and Religion, Cracow University of Economics, Kraków, Poland e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
The literature describing the influence of hydro-power investments usually focuses on societies living in close proximity to the affected area and indicate consequences such as a decline in fish stocks, episodes of fish kills, loss of habitat due to the influx of workers during construction, loss of inter-generational transmission of traditional farming knowledge (Hanna et al., 2016), or the developmentinduced forced migration of inhabitants (Hitchcock, 2015; Randell, 2016). Some publications describe how dam-induced alterations of river flows affect the livelihoods of those living downstream (e.g. Richter et al., 2010) and those who are pushed or forced to move due to further changes taking place in the natural and social environments, not always in the direct vicinity of the investment (Beirne, 2014). People who are displaced due to construction of the dam and filling of the reservoir often receive compensation meant to help them settle in a new region (Randell, 2016; Vaughan, 2020). However, Cernea (2008) indicated that compensation for those resettled and displaced from affected areas is insufficient and called for investments additional to compensation, financed from benefits generated by the projects that require resettlement. Also, more and more research calls for long-term benefit-sharing (Cernea, 2008), though, again, the focus here is mostly on populations living in close proximity to the investment (Schulz & Skinner, 2022), leaving those affected in distant places without adequate support. Therefore, the chapter proposes a new approach in benefit-sharing called extended benefit-sharing, where the perception of locality is extended to the environment and communities that, despite being further from the investment areas, share the project's negative consequences (cf. Vanclay, 2002).

Growing hydropower production causes changes in both the social and natural environments and pushes populations to migrate (Kirchherr & Charles, 2016). Responding to the need for better attuning the environmental change-migration nexus 'to the actual practice and needs of those affected' (Wiegel et al., 2019, p. 2), I intentionally use the term 'mobility' instead of 'migration'. To fully capture the reality of such cases, however, the theme of immobility is also discussed. Contrary to mobility, immobility has more of a binary perspective, 'either someone chooses to stay or is forced to stay, which is too simplistic to capture the complexity of the real world' (Zickgraf, 2021, pp. 125–126, see also Mallick & Schanze, 2020). An approach in which a 'mobilities perspective centres on the practices, motives, and experiences of mobility1 and immobility in the context of environmental change' allows for a deeper understanding of (non)movement itself (Wiegel et al., 2021, p. 11).

This chapter discusses ideas around development-caused changes in the social and natural environments and their complex relationship influencing (im)mobility with the example of changes and behaviours triggered in Mhamid Oasis in Southern Morocco by the construction of the Mansour Eddahbi Dam. A deeper understanding

<sup>1</sup> I use the term 'mobility' for all types of movement: forced and voluntary, internal and international. Only in the case of more relevant situations, terms such as 'relocation', 'displacement', or 'migration' are used.

of past and current mobility trends caused by the dam can make it possible to predict patterns of future population mobility in the Mediterranean and implement adequate policies to manage challenges caused by such investments.

The chapter is structured as follows. The first section below shows the broader context of large dam and hydropower investments that trigger environmental, economic, social, and cultural transformations. It also proposes a conceptual framework for analysing the role of such developments and their environmental, social, and economic changes in an extended understanding of locality. The subsequent part describes research methods, followed by a description of the environmental and socio-economic transformations caused by the Mansour Eddahbi Dam in Mhamid. This is followed by a results section, which is dedicated to research conducted in the investigated area. Discussion and conclusions close the chapter.

# 19.2 Hydropower Infrastructure and Benefit-Sharing

The consequences of environmental change are often perceived as a major reason for migration in many regions of the world (Black et al., 2011; Entzinger & Scholten, 2022; Ionesco et al., 2017). Less attention is paid to development projects, although 'approximately 300 million people have been involuntarily displaced from their homes' by such investments, with over a quarter of them displaced by large dam constructions worldwide (Yue-fang et al., 2021, pp. 3511–3512). A variety of papers describe the results of the construction of large-scale water infrastructure (e.g. Hanna et al., 2016, Li et al., 2013; Wu & Liu, 2017), as well as the effects of expected changes in the environment and life conditions of the affected population (Sayektiningsih & Hayati, 2021). Apart from directly causing the resettlement of inhabitants of the area flooded for the reservoir, large-scale infrastructure also has a huge social and environmental impact (Duarte-Abadía et al., 2015; Molle & Floch, 2008). Its most significant aspects are the change of hydrological regimes, which irreversibly influences the life of local communities. Its significant impact on livelihoods is seen not only in the loss of residence and resettlements of inhabitants but also through the loss of access to areas of arable land as well as the various resources needed for grazing, agriculture, or fuel (Hitchcock, 2015; Ryser, 2019).

The World Commission on Dams (active between 1998 and 2000) evaluated that approximately 50,000 large dams have displaced 40–80 million people globally (Randell, 2016; Scudder, 2005). Most of those investments were described as having a balanced (50%) or negative (44–46%) social impact (Kirchherr & Charles, 2016). The limited positive impact was usually related to infrastructure, such as improved flood control and increased electricity production (Kirchherr et al., 2016; Schulz & Adams, 2019). Nowadays, dams, particularly those generating electricity, have again become an investment hotspot (Kirchherr & Charles, 2016) and are perceived as a climate change adaptation strategy and an important part of the new 'green economy' (Sneddon & Fox, 2008; Swyngedouw, 2014).

The construction of dams usually impacts communities living both up and downstream (Beirne, 2014). Those inhabiting deliberately flooded areas usually face displacement. Those living in areas below the dam may benefit from irrigation water and flood protection, however, the impact is not clearly positive. It often correlates with the destruction and/or enclosure of resources, which are local common goods (Blaser & de la Cadena, 2017), and results in an underestimated impact on local populations (Hitchcock, 2015). It was estimated that by 2009, 472 million people living downstream of dams were affected by their construction (Richter et al., 2010) or suffered from insufficient water for irrigation, changes in soil fertility, or an increase in erosion (Beirne, 2014). This is justified by the greater national good, i.e., electricity or extensive exploitation of natural resources, which are a national common good (Blaser & de la Cadena, 2017; Ryser, 2019). Control over nature is presented as progress and civilisational (Duarte-Abadía et al., 2015), yet the threat that people living downstream will be excluded from this development is a violation of human rights (World Commission on Dams, 2000). Therefore, their participation in 'benefit-sharing is a logical consequence of such normative considerations' (Schulz & Skinner, 2022, p. 7).

To mitigate the negative consequences of such investments, affected populations receive compensation. However, this approach is often criticised because 'compensation alone cannot mitigate the impoverishment risks and resettlement should be treated as a development opportunity for affected population' (Yue-fang et al., 2021, p. 3512). Compensation should outlast the project implantation and enable the affected population to take part in decision-making regarding the division of profits from the investment even a few years after the investment. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the 'time value' of the consequences and benefits of hydropower projects, which most often go to stakeholders instead of toward new settlements established after the relocation or displacement of residents (Schulz & Skinner, 2022; World Commission on Dams, 2000). Such an approach demands, however, policy that incorporates the different needs of people affected by the investment to support either their adaptation strategies or the decision to move (Thornton et al., 2021).

In Morocco, the pressure to obtain the energy received from renewable sources is high as well. New solar energy plants are established alongside previously built big dams, such as those on the Dades-Draa or Todra-Ziz rivers. More recently, they have been followed by big solar power plants, such as Noor I, II, and III, established near the Mansour Eddahbi Reservoir on the Dades-Draa river. This case, like the others previously discussed, has consequences for areas located even 300 km farther downstream. In this context, it is important to discuss dam-induced changes occurring in area of the oasis located below the dam in a way conceived as outcomes of socio-environmental interaction processes through descriptions of residents' everyday life experiences and to show the need for distant benefit-sharing.

#### 19.3 Methodology

This chapter relies on research carried out in the Mhamid Oasis in Southern Morocco (Fig. 19.1). The author undertook this research in 2004. Since then, both the environment and inhabitants of the oasis have been investigated with the use of different methods grounded in physical and social geography. Most important for this chapter is the research carried out between 2015 and 2019. The analysis was started with extensive desk research on relevant social and environmental contexts to understand the natural conditions as well as historical and social backgrounds of the investigated area and society. The literature review was followed by quantitative and qualitative research.

#### 19.3.1 Quantitative Research

The quantitative part of the research was divided into two stages. The first was a micro-questionnaire conducted in 120 households of the oasis. This allowed to select 48 households for an extended questionnaire interview with the heads of households. Although the number of households investigated in the second stage was influenced by the low response rate, the team made every attempt to ensure that chosen

Fig. 19.1 Location of field research. (Prepared by. P. Jaczewski)

households differed in the number of inhabitants, size of owned and cultivated land, type of environmental hazards affecting agriculture, share of income from agriculture in total household earnings, as well as the presence of internal and international migrants among household members. Trained local interviewers helped implement PAPIs (paper and pen personal interviews).

### 19.3.2 Qualitative Research

The aim of the qualitative study was to understand the relationships between the environment, regional development and migration. Preliminary analysis of the results of the questionnaire allowed us to pinpoint the households with the highest value regarding environmental factors causing limitations in income from agriculture. In-depth interviews were carried out with 12 household heads of families and/or adult children, then the level of saturation was reached. Farms were selected based on their location in various ksars,2 differentiated in terms of area of arable land, income obtained from agriculture, and number of farm members. As part of the interview, questions were asked about changes in the natural environment and their impact on agriculture and income obtained from it, alternative sources of revenue for households, migration of farm members, and whether and how it was related to limitations caused by the natural environment.

The team conducting the research comprised a social and physical geographer and a local gatekeeper, who also acted as interpreter. The interviews were conducted in Darija and/or in French with an interpreter. Due to the very traditional cultural approach of Mhamid inhabitants, interviews were not recorded, but meticulous notes were taken and subsequently analysed using AtlasTi.

The team also worked within the target area performing non-participatory observation, compiling photo documentation, etc. Changes to the surface land cover were additionally analysed based on Landsat TM/ETM + data.

The use of a variety of methods and data approached resulted in a multidimensional analysis that allowed for an understanding of the correlation between different factors and complemented the existing data with a bottom-up perspective.

<sup>2</sup> In North Africa, a ksar is a fortified village, usually with adjacent buildings, a mosque, and a granary. In Mhamid oasis, there were six ksars, after which parts of the oasis were named.

### 19.4 Area Description

#### 19.4.1 The Environment and Its Changes