Opportunities and Restrictions in the Moroccan Immigration and Asylum Policy: Ambivalence, Sovereignty, Caution and Constraints.

The dynamic of the New Immigration and Asylum Policy (NPIA), launched in 2013, positioned Morocco as the initiator of an ambitious programme of reforms to its immigration policy and calls for the construction of new paradigms on international and African migration. More than ten years later, a review of the effects of the reforms undertaken, the evolution of discourse on immigration to and from Morocco, and the perspectives for access to residency, particularly for foreign workers, those involved in family migration or refugees, challenges the Kingdom's position as a country of immigration. Most immigrants and refugees have little access to the procedures for obtaining residency and asylum in the country. Although immigration is limited, the focus is still largely on so-called transit migration to Europe. However, despite the constraints, procedures do exist and are accessible, under certain conditions, to certain categories of foreigners, who are thus authorised to settle in the country. Looking at the issues of access to rights and procedures will give us a better understanding of the constraints, opportunities and changes in immigration and asylum policy in Morocco in recent years. By moving away from the view that Moroccan migration policy is the result of the externalisation of European policies, or that there is a lack of governance, this paper seeks, from a Moroccan perspective, to look beyond the publicised policy, the procedures as they are deployed in an ordinary and more discreet way to highlight certain orientations of immigration governance, constraints or issues of access to residency on the territory which imply the admission of certain categories of foreigners and the exclusion of others, the stabilisation for some or maintenance in the precariousness of residency for others.