Franco-era electric infrastructure renovated in the 1980s by former Moroccan King Hassan II, Akchour region, Morocco. Photo by author, 2017

anthropology and human sciences

A. George Bajalia / Department of Anthropology / Assistant Professor / Wesleyan University

ph.d, Columbia University 2021/m.phil Columbia University 2017/m.a. Columbia University 2016/b.a Northwestern University 2011

keywords: Morocco; North Africa; Morocco-Spain borderlands, Morocco-Algeria borderlands; migration; mobility; infrastructure; political economy 

Manuscript Title: Waiting at the Border: Language, Labor, and Infrastructure in Northern Morocco

Research Abstract// Even as the numbers of migrants waiting in North Africa to continue their journeys to Europe continue to grow, the social and political consequences of this time spent “en route” remains marginal to conversations around migration across the Mediterranean. There is a focus on migrants’ movement through space, with a focus on origin and destination, presumed to be Europe, but not much attention paid to the time in between. Rather than centering on how borders regulate, impede, and allow or not, migratory flow, and what happens when European borders are crossed, Bajalia’s research focuses on another of the predominant phenomena to which borders give rise: waiting. This dissertation emerges from the social worlds and subjective transformations that take place in and around the borderlands of the Strait of Gibraltar. These worlds include communities of West African migrants who have become immigrants in Morocco, Moroccan and Spanish day-laborers who work as commodity porters moving back and forth between Morocco and Spain, and activist and mutual aid networks that have emerged around the rapidly growing immigrant community in Tangier, Morocco. Lives lived while waiting, whether in the city of Tangier among im/migrants or in the commodity warehouses that abut the border between Spanish Ceuta and Morocco, form consequential habits that sediment into social life and become fields for potential political claims grounded in communal sentiments. As such, this research explores the consequences of these communal sentiments across the many borders of the Strait of Gibraltar. It does so through a critical ethnographic analysis exploring the emergent languages, labors, and infrastructures of belonging and difference that emerge among immigrant and migrant communities in Tangier, Morocco and Ceuta, Spain that draws on theories of metapragmatic discourse analysis, infrastructural flow and breakdown, and borderland political economies. When seen through the lens of waiting, understanding the growth and transformations of migratory dynamics and border politics in the region means paying more attention to this time spent “en route” and its consequences beyond just the regulation of access to spatial territories.

THIS RESEARCH SUPPORTED BY: Fulbright-Hays DDRA / Council of American Overseas Research Center - Mellon Foundation Mediterranean Regional Research Fellowship / the American Institute Maghrib Studies / the Middle East Institute at Columbia University / the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University