Digital Tides: A Genealogy of Social Media Influence on Morocco-Ceuta Migration Waves.

Recently, many videos on Moroccan social media pages have begun to share videos about all kinds of water navigation methods, from handmade boats, surfing boards, and zodiacs from Decathlon to inflated truck tire tubes, from makeshift boats to zodiac engines. Videos on TikTok and Facebook reels spread beyond control during the months of August and September 2024 holding a promise for the Moroccan clandestine migrants to be shipped from the shores of Fnideq to Ceuta. Since 2021, a paradigm shift in illegal migration strategy has surfaced, often fueled and directed by social media users that orchestrate a simultaneous and aggressive attempt at crossing into Ceuta, a phenomenon reaching its climax on the 15^th of September 2024. In this paper, I see that the spectacle of 15/09 is a phenomenon born out of the May 2021 mass migration incident. Though there have been significant attempts at irregular migration through Ceuta or Melilla, the scale noticed mid-May 2021 as an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 Moroccans attempted to swim or walk across the sea to Ceuta at low tide was unprecedented. In this paper, I look at the genealogy of the 15/09 as a spectacle that was only made possible through social media. I will come to terms with the events leading to the 15/09 and their respective social media footprint that was transformed into a national call for action whereby all who wished to border to Spain were invited to rendez-vous in Fnideq. As local journalists reported from the north, TikTok and Facebook became inundated with footage and interviews of the harraga (illegal migrants), deeply suntanned, visibly distressed, their young faces heavy with the burden of dreams long carried.