Morocco: A Forced Stepping Stone To Illegal African Immigration To The European ‘Eldorado’ – Analysis

Abstract

This essay examines Morocco’s structural role as a transit country for Sub-Saharan African migrants seeking irregular entry into Europe. It argues that Morocco functions as a “forced stepping stone” — a geopolitically imposed buffer zone rather than a destination of choice — shaped by the convergence of European externalization policies, bilateral security cooperation, asymmetric development trajectories, and the collapse of governance in migrant-sending states. Drawing on political sociology, migration studies, postcolonial theory, and humanitarian frameworks, the essay analyzes the historical genealogy of Moroccan transit migration; the policy architecture of EU-Morocco cooperation; the lived experiences of stranded migrants; the securitization of borders; Morocco’s domestic policy responses including two regularization campaigns; and the psychosocial consequences of prolonged liminality. The essay concludes that durable solutions require a fundamental reorientation of international cooperation toward development-centered and rights-based paradigms rather than purely securitized border management.

1. Introduction

The geography of global inequality is nowhere more starkly legible than at the Strait of Gibraltar, where the African and European continents are separated by a mere fourteen kilometers of water yet divided by an economic chasm of historic proportions. For thousands of Sub-Saharan African migrants, this narrow passage represents the terminus of journeys spanning thousands of kilometers, undertaken at tremendous personal risk, motivated by the aspiration to access what is widely perceived across the African continent as the European “Eldorado” — a prosperous, stable, and rights-respecting space of opportunity (Andersson, 2014; Brachet, 2012; Collyer, 2007). Morocco stands at this threshold, and its role in the geography of contemporary migration has become one of the defining features of both North African politics and European border governance.

Morocco’s position as a major transit country for irregular migration is not accidental, nor is it freely chosen by the Moroccan state. It is, rather, a geopolitically imposed condition — the result of deliberate European policy choices that have progressively offshored border control responsibilities to neighboring states through a web of bilateral agreements, financial incentives, and diplomatic pressures (Collyer, 2016; Lavenex & Uçarer, 2004; Wolff, 2014). In this sense, Morocco functions as what this essay terms a “forced stepping stone”: a space through which migrants must pass and in which they are increasingly compelled to remain, not because Morocco offers the conditions for durable settlement but because European closure has removed the option of onward movement (Carling, 2002; de Haas, 2008).

The human dimensions of this dynamic are profound. Tens of thousands of Sub-Saharan migrants — from Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among many others — are at any given time stranded in Morocco in conditions of considerable precarity (Médecins Sans Frontières, 2020; UNHCR, 2022). They inhabit informal settlements in forested areas near Ceuta and Melilla, in urban neighborhoods of Rabat, Casablanca, Oujda, and Tangier, and along desert routes. They face racism, exploitation, police violence, detention, and the psychological burden of indefinite suspension between departure and arrival (Düvell, 2012; Lahlou, 2018). Their plight illuminates not merely a Moroccan policy problem but a systemic failure of global migration governance rooted in the asymmetries of geopolitical power.

This essay proceeds through seven analytically distinct but interconnected sections. It first traces the historical and structural origins of Sub-Saharan transit migration through Morocco. It then analyzes the architecture of EU-Morocco cooperation in migration management and its externalizing logic. A third section examines the securitization of Morocco’s borders and its consequences for migrants. The fourth section addresses Morocco’s domestic policy responses, including its regularization campaigns of 2014 and 2017. The fifth section examines the lived experiences and psychosocial dimensions of migrant liminality. The sixth section situates Morocco’s migration challenge within the broader political economy of North-South inequality. The essay concludes by evaluating prospective pathways toward more just and effective migration governance

2. Historical and Structural Origins of Sub-Saharan Transit Migration Through Morocco

Morocco’s emergence as a transit migration corridor cannot be understood outside its historical relationships with both Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Since pre-colonial times, trans-Saharan trade and movement connected the Maghreb with the Sahel and West Africa, with Morocco occupying a strategic nodal position in networks of commerce, Islamic learning, and human mobility (Lydon, 2009; McDougall & Scheele, 2012). The caravan routes linking Fez, Marrakesh, and Sijilmassa to Timbuktu, Kano, and beyond were among the most consequential arteries of the pre-modern world. This longstanding connectivity between Morocco and Sub-Saharan Africa provides a deep historical context for contemporary migration flows, though the political economy of those flows has been radically transformed by colonialism, decolonization, and globalization.

The contemporary phenomenon of large-scale Sub-Saharan transit migration through Morocco is predominantly a post-1990s development, driven by the interaction of several structural forces. On the supply side, the post-Cold War period witnessed the fragmentation of several West and Central African states, the expansion of armed conflicts, and the failure of structural adjustment programs to generate inclusive development (Adepoju, 2006; Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2014). The progressive exclusion of Sub-Saharan workers from Gulf labor markets, the decline of intra-African labor migration circuits, and the saturation of urban informal economies in Dakar, Abidjan, Bamako, and Conakry generated surplus populations with diminished local opportunity structures and heightened incentives for long-distance migration (de Haas, 2007).

On the demand side, the structural transformation of Southern European labor markets — particularly in agriculture, construction, and domestic care — created persistent demand for low-wage migrant labor that domestic workers were unwilling to fill (Arango, 2000; King, 2000). This demand, combined with the liberalization of travel between African Economic Community (ECOWAS) member states, created conditions under which migration through the Sahara and Maghreb toward Europe became a rational if risky livelihood strategy for millions of West and Central Africans (Carling, 2007; Hein de Haas, 2008).

Morocco’s geographic position made it an inevitable staging point in this migratory system. Its proximity to Spain — the closest EU member state to Africa — and the presence of Spanish territorial enclaves on Moroccan soil (Ceuta and Melilla) created powerful pull factors for migrants converging on the kingdom from the south and east (Cuttitta, 2014; Ferrer-Gallardo, 2008). The Oujda corridor from Algeria, the Atlantic coast from Laâyoune and Dakhla in the Western Sahara, and the Mediterranean coast between Tangier and Nador became the primary geographic funnels through which migration pressure has been channeled (Alioua, 2011; Collyer, 2007).

A crucial inflection point came in the mid-1990s and early 2000s with the progressive tightening of European border controls, particularly through the operationalization of the Schengen Area and the reinforcement of sea and land borders. As legal pathways contracted and border surveillance intensified on the central Mediterranean and Balkan routes, the Morocco-Spain corridor gained relative salience as a migration pathway (Boswell, 2003; Hein de Haas, 2008). The tragic events of September 2005, when thousands of migrants attempted to scale the fences of Ceuta and Melilla in coordinated mass crossings — leaving at least fourteen dead according to documented accounts — marked a watershed moment that crystallized the political salience of the Morocco transit corridor for both European and Moroccan policymakers (Andersson, 2014; Ferrer-Gallardo, 2008).

3. The Architecture of EU-Morocco Migration Cooperation and the Logic of Externalization

The transformation of Morocco into a formal buffer zone in European border governance is the product of a deliberate and sustained policy architecture constructed over more than two decades of bilateral negotiations and multilateral frameworks. This architecture is characterized by what scholars of EU migration policy have termed “externalization” — the strategy of projecting European border control functions beyond the formal territorial boundaries of the EU through agreements with third countries (Betts, 2011; Lavenex & Uçarer, 2004; Wolff, 2014). In the Moroccan case, externalization has taken multiple institutional forms and has been embedded in the broader context of EU-Morocco association relations.

The EU-Morocco Association Agreement of 1996, which entered into force in 2000, established the formal framework for privileged political and economic relations between the Kingdom and the European Union. While ostensibly focused on trade liberalization and regulatory convergence, the Association Agreement created channels through which migration management became an increasingly central element of the partnership (Lahlou, 2018; Wolff, 2014). The EU’s 2000 Tampere Agenda and subsequent Justice and Home Affairs policy developments explicitly integrated migration cooperation with third countries as a strategic objective, framing Morocco and other Maghrebi states as essential partners in the “management” of unwanted migratory flows (Collyer, 2016).

The most significant formalization of Morocco’s buffer-zone role came with the 2013 EU-Morocco Mobility Partnership, which established a comprehensive framework for cooperation on migration, asylum, and border management (Khachani, 2016; Wolff, 2014). The Mobility Partnership’s asymmetry is revealing: while it includes provisions for legal mobility of Moroccan nationals to Europe and cooperation on development-linked migration governance, its operational architecture has been predominantly security-oriented, focused on enhancing Morocco’s capacity to intercept, detain, and return irregular migrants before they reach European territory (de Haas, 2014; Lahlou, 2018).

Substantial European financial transfers have operationalized this partnership. Through successive iterations of the European Neighbourhood Instrument, the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), and direct bilateral funding, Morocco has received hundreds of millions of euros designated for border surveillance technology, coastguard capacity building, detention infrastructure, and migration management institutions (Carrera et al., 2016; Frontex, 2022). The EUTF for Africa, established in 2015 in the wake of the so-called European migration crisis, allocated over €500 million to Morocco between 2015 and 2021 for migration-related programming, making Morocco one of the largest single recipients of European migration management assistance globally (Chtatou, 2023, 13 septembre  ; European Commission, 2021).

Spain-Morocco bilateral relations have constituted a particularly intensive locus of migration cooperation. The 1992 Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborliness, and Cooperation between Spain and Morocco explicitly included joint management of irregular migration as a domain of cooperation. The readmission agreements negotiated in the early 2000s, though never fully ratified as a comprehensive instrument, established operational protocols for the return and expulsion of irregular migrants apprehended in Spanish territory or territorial waters (Ferrer-Gallardo, 2008; Saddiki, 2010). Spain’s SIVE (Sistema Integrado de Vigilancia Exterior) electronic surveillance system, deployed along the southern coastline and the Strait of Gibraltar, has been complemented by joint naval patrols and intelligence sharing between the Guardia Civil and the Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie (Carling, 2007; Cuttitta, 2014).

Critics of this policy architecture have consistently argued that European externalization strategies violate both the letter and spirit of international refugee law by preventing persons with asylum claims from reaching EU territory where those claims could be adjudicated (Betts & Loescher, 2011; Hathaway, 2005). The principle of non-refoulement, enshrined in Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, is arguably undermined when European states fund and operationally support the interception of mixed migration flows — including refugees and asylum seekers — in third-country territory by security forces with limited or no asylum processing capacity (Collyer, 2016; Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2011). Morocco, which acceded to the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol in 1956 and 1971 respectively, has itself been accused of treating all irregular Sub-Saharan migrants as security threats rather than potential asylum seekers deserving protection (Human Rights Watch, 2014; Lahlou, 2018).

4. Securitization of Borders and Its Consequences for Migrants

The dominant frame through which both European and Moroccan authorities have approached Sub-Saharan transit migration is that of securitization — the discursive and institutional process through which migration is constructed as a security threat requiring exceptional measures beyond the normal routines of immigration management (Bigo, 2002; Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998; Huysmans, 2006). This securitization frame has profound consequences for the experiences of migrants within Morocco’s territory and at its borders, generating a repertoire of state responses — surveillance, detention, violence, mass expulsion — that systematically disregard the humanitarian dimensions of migration and the legal entitlements of migrants as persons.

Morocco’s border enforcement apparatus has expanded dramatically since the mid-2000s, driven by the combination of domestic political will and European technical and financial support (Alioua, 2011; Frontex, 2022). The Royal Gendarmerie and the Auxiliary Forces have been deployed in force along the northern border zones, particularly in the forests surrounding Ceuta and Melilla, where migrant encampments have been periodically dismantled in large-scale operations (Médecins Sans Frontières, 2020; Human Rights Watch, 2014). Migrants apprehended in the north have been subjected to what human rights organizations have documented as a systematic practice of “push-backs” to the Algerian and sub-Saharan borders — summary expulsions conducted without legal procedure, identification, or screening for protection needs (Amnesty International, 2015; Human Rights Watch, 2014).

The Oujda-Maghnia corridor on the Moroccan-Algerian border has been a particularly acute site of rights violations. Médecins Sans Frontières (2020) documented systematic violence against Sub-Saharan migrants in this area, including beatings, theft of documents and personal effects, and abandonment in desert areas without water or food. The proximity of this zone to the Algerian border, and the occasional coordination between Moroccan and Algerian security forces in expelling migrants, has created a situation in which migrants are effectively bounced between two states with neither offering protection or legal status (Collyer, 2007; MSF, 2020). Algeria has itself been implicated in mass expulsions of Sub-Saharan migrants through its southwestern borders into Niger, constituting what UNHCR (2022) has described as a humanitarian emergency in the Assamaka transit zone.

The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla represent the most spectacular theaters of securitized border enforcement. The construction of triple-layer fencing systems — reaching six meters in height, equipped with razor wire, motion sensors, and surveillance cameras — has transformed these enclaves into fortified outposts of European territorial sovereignty embedded within Moroccan geography (Ferrer-Gallardo, 2008; Saddiki, 2010). The periodic mass-crossing attempts by migrants — in which groups of several hundred to several thousand converge on the fences in coordinated surges — have been met with joint Moroccan-Spanish responses involving water cannon, rubber bullets, and physical force (Andersson, 2014; Human Rights Watch, 2014). The events of June 2022, in which at least twenty-three migrants died and hundreds were injured during a crossing attempt at the Nador-Melilla border, drew international condemnation and illustrated the lethal dimensions of the securitized border regime (Amnesty International, 2022).

Maritime migration through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Atlantic coast to the Canary Islands represents an equally dangerous dimension of the securitized migration landscape (Carling, 2007; Gabrielli, 2015). The deployment of Frontex’s HERA and Indalo operations in collaboration with Moroccan and Mauritanian coastguards has significantly increased interception capacity on these routes. At the same time, the displacement of migration routes by enforcement pressure has pushed migrants onto increasingly dangerous maritime itineraries, contributing to a systematic pattern of drownings and disappearances that the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project has estimated at thousands of deaths per year across the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic approaches (IOM, 2023; Médecins Sans Frontières, 2020).

5. Morocco’s Domestic Policy Responses: From Exclusion to Conditional Inclusion

Morocco’s domestic response to the presence of large numbers of Sub-Saharan migrants on its territory has undergone a significant evolution over the past decade, moving from a predominantly exclusionary and securitized approach toward a more nuanced — if still substantially constrained — policy framework that incorporates humanitarian and development dimensions. This evolution has been driven by a combination of international pressure, civil society advocacy, the recommendations of the National Human Rights Council (CNDH), and the strategic interests of Morocco in positioning itself as a responsible regional actor in migration governance (Chtatou, 2023, 13 septembre; Khachani, 2016; Lahlou, 2018).

Prior to 2013, Morocco’s legal framework for migration was governed primarily by Law 02-03 of 2003 on the entry and residence of foreigners and irregular migration — a law that critics characterized as primarily repressive and focused on criminalization of irregular presence rather than protection of migrants’ rights (de Haas, 2014; Human Rights Watch, 2014). The law established criminal penalties for irregular entry, facilitation of irregular migration, and, controversially, for departure from Morocco without authorization — a provision that critics argued effectively criminalized migrants’ own attempts to continue onward toward Europe (Alioua, 2011; Lahlou, 2018).

The policy watershed came in 2013, when King Mohammed VI’s government announced a fundamental review of Moroccan migration policy following a critical report by the CNDH (2013) documenting violations of migrants’ rights and calling for a rights-based approach to migration governance. The CNDH report recommended regularization of migrants in irregular situations, integration programs, access to social services, and alignment of national legislation with international human rights and refugee law standards (CNDH, 2013; Khachani, 2016). In response, Morocco launched its first large-scale regularization campaign between January and December 2014.

The 2014 regularization campaign resulted in the regularization of approximately 18,000 migrants out of an estimated 27,000 applicants — a relatively modest figure given estimates of the total irregular Sub-Saharan population in Morocco, which range from 30,000 to 80,000 depending on methodology and period (de Haas, 2014; Khachani, 2016; UNHCR, 2022). Eligibility criteria included proof of five years of continuous residence, or two years of residence combined with evidence of employment, marriage to a Moroccan national, or parenthood of a Moroccan-born child. A second regularization campaign in 2017 yielded approximately 23,000 additional regularizations, bringing the total to over 50,000 individuals who obtained some form of legal status (IOM, 2018; Khachani, 2016).

Morocco also developed a new National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum, announced in 2014, which set out an ambitious programmatic framework organized around three pillars: migration governance and legal framework reform; integration of migrants into Moroccan society; and management of the migration phenomenon at the national and regional levels (Kingdom of Morocco, 2014; Lahlou, 2018). The strategy envisioned access to public education for migrant children, access to health services, vocational training for regularized migrants, and the establishment of dedicated reception and orientation centers for migrants and asylum seekers.

Implementation has, however, lagged considerably behind the programmatic ambitions of the 2014 strategy. UNHCR (2022) has reported persistent barriers to registration for asylum seekers, inadequate capacity in reception facilities, and continued vulnerability to arbitrary detention and expulsion even for migrants with pending UNHCR registration files. Civil society organizations including the Groupe Antiraciste de Défense et d’Accompagnement des Étrangers et Migrants (GADEM) have documented continuing incidents of collective expulsion, abuse by security forces, and denial of access to public services despite regularized status (GADEM, 2020; Lahlou, 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the already limited service infrastructure for migrants, with lockdowns disproportionately affecting those in precarious urban settlements without access to income support or public health services (UNHCR, 2020).

6. Lived Experiences and the Psychosocial Dimensions of Migrant Liminality

Beyond the institutional architecture of migration governance lies the irreducible human reality of individuals living in prolonged states of liminality — suspended between places of origin they cannot return to and destinations they cannot reach, in a present that offers neither security nor dignity. The concept of liminality, drawn originally from anthropological ritual theory and applied to migration by scholars including Turner (1969) and Malkki (1995), captures the condition of structural in-betweenness experienced by migrants stranded in transit spaces: they are no longer fully of their place of origin yet are not incorporated into the society of transit or destination (Collyer, 2007; Düvell, 2012; Schapendonk, 2012).

Sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco inhabit this liminal space across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Legally, they exist in a gray zone of uncertain status — some regularized, many not, and many in the process of claiming or awaiting UNHCR refugee status determination. Spatially, they are concentrated in areas of urban marginality in Morocco’s northern cities and in encampments in wooded areas near border zones, excluded from full participation in civic and economic life. Temporally, they experience what Carling (2002) has termed “involuntary immobility” — a condition in which the aspiration to move forward is blocked by external constraints, producing a temporal experience of suspension, frustration, and psychological attrition (Schapendonk, 2012; Turner, 1969).

The psychological and mental health consequences of this condition are severe and well-documented. Studies conducted among Sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco have found high prevalence rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety disorders, and somatoform conditions attributable to the cumulative trauma of dangerous Saharan journeys, violence at the hands of security forces, sexual violence — which affects women and men in the migrant population with disturbing frequency — and the chronic stress of legal precarity and social exclusion (Médecins Sans Frontières, 2020; Nickerson et al., 2011). MSF’s mental health teams working in Morocco have documented that many patients present with trauma histories spanning multiple episodes across the migration journey — from violence in countries of origin, to abuse by smugglers across the Sahara, to brutality at the borders of Morocco — creating complex, layered trauma profiles that exceed the capacity of standard humanitarian mental health interventions (MSF, 2020; Silove, Ventevogel, & Rees, 2017).

Social relations within stranded migrant communities are shaped by both solidarity and tension. National and ethnic networks provide crucial mutual support structures — sharing information about border opportunities, pooling resources to pay smugglers or survive urban poverty, providing emotional support and collective religious practice (Alioua, 2011; Schapendonk, 2012). At the same time, competition for limited resources, mistrust, and the predatory practices of some smuggling networks generate intra-community conflict. Gender relations within these communities are frequently marked by hierarchy and violence, with women migrants subject to sexual exploitation by both criminal networks and, as documented by human rights organizations, by some male community members (Médecins Sans Frontières, 2020; Moreno Nieto, 2013).

Relations between Sub-Saharan migrants and Moroccan society are characterized by complex ambivalence. Morocco has its own significant history of emigration, with approximately five million Moroccans living abroad — predominantly in Europe — and with remittances constituting a major contribution to national income (de Haas, 2007; HCP, 2021). This shared experience of emigration generates some degree of solidarity and identification with Sub-Saharan migrants among segments of the Moroccan population. At the same time, documented incidents of racism, housing discrimination, exclusion from labor markets, and verbal and physical abuse by members of the Moroccan public reflect the persistence of anti-Black racism rooted in historically constructed hierarchies of race and social status that predate the contemporary migration phenomenon (Lahlou, 2018; Moreno Nieto, 2013; Sadiqi, 2019).

7. The Political Economy of Global Inequality and the Root Causes of Transit Migration

Any adequate analysis of Morocco’s position as a transit migration corridor must situate the phenomenon within the structural context of global inequality that generates the imperative to migrate in the first place. The migration of Sub-Saharan Africans toward Europe is not primarily a product of individual irrationality, cultural propensity for movement, or demographic pressure — explanations that figure prominently in populist and some academic discourse — but is rather a rational response to structural conditions of dispossession, limited opportunity, and political insecurity that are themselves deeply connected to the historical and contemporary operations of the global political economy (Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2014; de Haas, 2010; Massey et al., 2002).

The colonial legacies that structured the resource extraction, labor migration patterns, and administrative architectures of West and Central African states have not been dissolved by formal decolonization but have been reconfigured through the postcolonial international economic order (Mamdani, 1996; Mkandawire, 2005). The structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Sub-Saharan African states from the 1980s onward systematically dismantled public service infrastructure, reduced agricultural subsidies, and integrated African economies into global markets on terms unfavorable to domestic producers — generating fiscal crises, urban unemployment, and rural impoverishment that are among the most significant structural drivers of emigration (Adepoju, 2006; Harvey, 2005; Mkandawire, 2005).

The persistence of armed conflict in the Sahel — a region accounting for a substantial proportion of Sub-Saharan migrants transiting Morocco — reflects another dimension of the structural causation of migration. The proliferation of armed non-state actors in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and the Lake Chad Basin has displaced millions of people, collapsed agricultural and pastoral livelihoods, and created security vacuums in which criminal economies including arms and human trafficking flourish (Chauzal & van Damme, 2015; International Crisis Group, 2022). The French military intervention in the Sahel (Operation Barkhane) and subsequent international frameworks have been unable to reverse the deterioration of security conditions in the region, while debates about the geopolitical dimensions of the Sahel crisis — including the role of climate change in desertification and pastoral conflict — point toward structural vulnerabilities that will continue to generate migration pressure for the foreseeable future (Boas & Torheim, 2013; IPCC, 2022).

Climate change constitutes an increasingly significant, though analytically contested, driver of migration from Sub-Saharan Africa (Black et al., 2011; Rigaud et al., 2018). The progressive desertification of the Sahel, erratic rainfall patterns affecting rain-fed agriculture, sea-level rise threatening coastal communities in West Africa, and the intensification of extreme weather events are systematically undermining the material bases of rural livelihoods in the principal migrant-sending regions (IPCC, 2022; Rigaud et al., 2018). World Bank projections suggest that between 68 and 216 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa could become internal climate migrants by 2050 under medium-to-high emissions scenarios — a proportion of whom will subsequently become international migrants, including toward North Africa and Europe (Rigaud et al., 2018). The failure of international climate negotiations to secure commitments commensurate with these projections from major emitting states represents a form of structural violence against Sub-Saharan populations who have contributed minimally to anthropogenic climate change yet bear disproportionate consequences (Chtatou, 2026, June 15).

The economic and demographic complementarities between Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe that could theoretically support more orderly forms of labor migration have been systematically foreclosed by European immigration policies oriented toward restriction (Arango, 2000; de Haas, 2010). The aging demographic structure of European societies, the labor shortages documented across multiple economic sectors, and the fiscal requirements of sustaining welfare states with shrinking working-age populations all suggest structural demand for migrant labor that could theoretically be met through legal channels (Arango, 2000; Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2014). The political and public opinion dynamics of European immigration politics have, however, consistently prevented the development of legal migration pathways commensurate with either structural demand or humanitarian obligations — producing instead the paradox of high demand for irregular migrant labor coexisting with elaborate and costly mechanisms for preventing irregular migration (de Haas, 2008; Massey et al., 2002).

8. Conclusion: Toward Rights-Based and Development-Centered Migration Governance 

Morocco’s role as a forced stepping stone in Sub-Saharan African migration to Europe is neither natural nor inevitable. It is the product of specific political choices — by European states, by Moroccan authorities, and by the international community — that have prioritized border security and migration containment over the human rights of migrants, the development needs of migrant-sending states, and the long-term sustainability of migration governance regimes. The evidence reviewed in this essay demonstrates that the securitization paradigm that has dominated EU-Morocco migration cooperation for two decades has generated significant humanitarian costs — in the form of violence at borders, deaths at sea, psychological devastation in transit communities, and the reproduction of racist social hierarchies — without achieving its stated objectives of reducing irregular migration pressure on European territory (Chtatou, 2026, June 15).

The arguments for a fundamental reorientation of approach are compelling and draw support from multiple analytical traditions. From the perspective of human rights law, the systematic denial of asylum screening, the commission of violence against migrants, and the practices of collective expulsion documented in Morocco constitute violations of jus cogens norms and treaty obligations that cannot be justified by reference to state security interests (Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2011; Hathaway, 2005). From the perspective of migration studies, the evidence that border enforcement displaces but does not reduce migration flows — pushing migrants onto more dangerous and indirect routes while generating profits for smuggling networks — suggests that the securitization paradigm is not only unjust but counterproductive on its own terms (Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2014; de Haas, 2008; Massey et al., 2002).

Durable alternatives must address both the structural drivers of migration in Sub-Saharan Africa and the policy architecture that traps migrants in Morocco’s territory. On the structural side, this requires a genuine commitment by European states and international financial institutions to development cooperation frameworks that support inclusive economic growth, agricultural transformation, social protection systems, and conflict resolution in migrant-sending regions — not as a pretext for migration management but as an ethical obligation rooted in historical responsibility for the conditions that generate migration pressure (Adepoju, 2006; de Haas, 2010; Mkandawire, 2005). The Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs and analogous frameworks have to date fallen far short of the transformative investment required to alter structural conditions in the Sahel and West Africa.

On the policy architecture side, a rights-based approach requires the development of legal migration pathways commensurate with both the labor market needs of European economies and the aspirations of Sub-Saharan populations — including seasonal agricultural labor schemes, skills recognition frameworks, and family reunification provisions that reduce the incentive for irregular migration (Carling, 2002; de Haas, 2010). It requires the establishment of robust asylum and refugee status determination capacity in Morocco itself, supported by UNHCR and the European Union, with genuine durable solutions — resettlement, voluntary return, or local integration — for those recognized as refugees rather than indefinite limbo (Betts & Loescher, 2011; UNHCR, 2022). It requires accountability mechanisms for border violence, including independent monitoring of border operations and investigation and prosecution of documented abuses by security forces (Amnesty International, 2022; Human Rights Watch, 2014).

Morocco, for its part, occupies a position of strategic leverage that it has not fully exploited to demand a more equitable distribution of responsibilities from European partners. The 2014 National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum and the two regularization campaigns represent genuine steps toward a more rights-consistent approach, but their implementation has been constrained by resource limitations, institutional capacity deficits, and the competing pressure of European demands for border enforcement (Chtatou, 2026, June 15; Khachani, 2016; Lahlou, 2018). Morocco’s evolving positioning as a continental African leader — symbolized by its re-accession to the African Union in 2017 and its active role in the Marrakesh Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration — creates opportunities to reframe its approach to transit migration in terms consistent with African solidarity rather than European proxy enforcement (Kingdom of Morocco, 2018).

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, adopted in Marrakesh in December 2018, provides a normative framework — non-binding but politically significant — that articulates principles of shared responsibility, rights protection, and development-centered migration governance (United Nations, 2018). Morocco’s role as host of the Compact’s adoption conference reflects its aspirations to leadership in global migration governance. The gap between these normative aspirations and the operational realities documented in this essay represents both a measure of the work that remains to be done and a political resource that Moroccan civil society, UNHCR, and international human rights organizations can leverage in advocacy for policy reform.

In conclusion, Morocco’s status as a forced stepping stone in the geography of Sub-Saharan African migration to Europe reflects a conjuncture of geographic determinism, geopolitical imposition, and policy failure at multiple scales. The tens of thousands of migrants stranded in Morocco’s urban margins and border zones are not merely a management challenge but are bearers of rights, aspirations, and histories that demand recognition and response. A migration governance architecture worthy of the normative commitments encoded in international law must begin from this recognition — and must evaluate policy choices not by the metric of how effectively they contain human movement, but by the standard of how fully they protect human dignity.

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