Positioning the Migrant Self in the Story-World of Human Trafficking of Sub-Saharan Africans in Morocco

This article examines the positioning of the migrant self in the story-world by elaborating on the unsettling experiences of human trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans in Morocco. Analysing the discursive construction of their identities as black bodies aiming to get to Europe through the Spanish enclave of Melila, the article aims to reconstruct the migrants’ dissolved selves in how they narrate and tell their stories of pain and suffering in the captivity of traffickers and smugglers in Morocco. Through storytelling, this article argues, migrant suffering is translated into narrative. By engaging with a theoretical framework that explores translation as a tool for narration, the article reflects on how the storytelling of the sub-Saharan Africans trafficked in Morocco grants the migrants’ subjective agency hence prompting readers to engage with their painful experiences. Data in this study is gathered through digitalised memory and narration of trafficking by survivors on YouTube a public website requiring free registration only by those who wish to comment or post videos. Thus, research question attended to in this article asks how the experiences of human trafficking are storied in YouTube videos from a victims’ perspective.