| FT-279088-21 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Kristin Gee Hickman | Representations of Black Migrants in the Moroccan National Imaginary | 6/1/2022 - 7/31/2022 | $6,000.00 | Kristin | Gee | Hickman | | | | University of Mississippi | University | MS | 38677-1848 | USA | 2021 | Cultural Anthropology | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research and writing leading to an article and eventually a book on the perception of Blackness in Morocco from the late 19th century to the present.
This project proposes to rewrite the standard account of Moroccan nationalism by beginning with its racialized borders. Specifically, I investigate how different representations of Black migrants have variously marked the shifting outer edges of Moroccan national identity from the nineteenth century to the present. In contemporary Morocco, the term “migrant” is strongly linked to the figure of the “illegal” West African traveling through Morocco en route to Europe. This project reinscribes this figure within a longer history of Black migrants who have been traversing Morocco for generations. I focus on five migrant figures: the sub-Saharan pilgrim, “Senegalese” soldier, Black anti-colonial activist, West African exchange student, and “illegal” African migrant. I then ask: How have Moroccans variously positioned these figures vis-à-vis the Moroccan nation? What do these shifting representations of otherness tell us about Moroccans’ own struggles with defining their national identity? |