The Spanish-Moroccan border zone on the periphery of the European Union is part of the EU-European mechanism of border and migration control in the Mediterranean which has increasingly spread to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The euphoric cries of some migrants as they pass these physical borders and the way that others are violently turned back by Spanish and Moroccan border guards show the heartless nature of this regime as well as the crisis it faces and the search for solutions. Global migratory movements, with many different causes, turned Morocco and Spain into diverse cosmopolitan societies. They have been shaped by the changing and renewed movements of migrants, along with the effects of diverse encounters between supposedly sedentary national residents and migrant actorxs. This article focuses on some forms of solidarian collaboration which have arisen in this area in recent years. It examines the assemblage of the main actorxs in social struggles fought by migrants and “natives” who establish local alliances, like the migrants’ trade union ODT-I in the Moroccan city of Rabat and the “Platform for People Affected by Mortgages” (PAH) in the Spanish city of Murcia. From a critical and postcolonial standpoint, this ethnographic study analyzes the power relations, the related hegemonic and minority discourses and the practices of a powerful (counter) knowledge by the protagonistxs. It concludes that those movements and diverse struggles for civil rights represent a challenge, from below, to the dominant political and discursive project of the European Union (EU) and form part of the establishment of another concept of contemporary Europe which is plural and democratic. © 2018, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota Colombia. All rights reserved.

Spanish-Moroccan border zone. Author: Social networks Migrant movements Solidarity Thesaurus: European Union Social struggle

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