The Nexus of Migration, Climate and Gender in the Light of Moroccan Internal Mobility Narratives

The aim of this contribution is to examine the climate-migration-gender nexus through the lens of Moroccan internal mobility, to grasp the spatio-temporal scales of these movements, and their lived experience in the context of climate change. The extreme meteorological phenomena (droughts, floods) that Morocco has experienced, affecting land productivity and the sustainability of livelihoods (Bassou, 2016), lead us to question the weight of environmental factors in driving internal mobility (Gemmene, 2009) in an attempt to shed light on the reconfiguration of migratory trajectories and projects while accounting for gendered inequalities and migration autonomy (Mezzadra, 2004). As a counterpoint to instrumental or securitarian approaches to migration, we favour a decentralized approach and the infra-political prism (Scott, 1990). Through the analysis of biographical narratives of locally displaced individuals and families, we explore how perceptions of climate variability interact with migration decisions. Drawing on focus groups and interviews conducted in several villages in the Taliouine region (Souss Massa) affected by water scarcity as well as with young men and women having left for bigger cities such as Agadir and Casablanca, we seek to shed light on who is able and who is willing to undertake such internal mobilities, and for what reasons, as well as to understand whether immobility is voluntary. We equally rely on an immersive ethnography conducted with internal migrants and territorial intermediary bodies (village associations, agricultural cooperatives, NGOs, political actors). Particular attention will be paid to the gendered dimensions of this internal mobility and their articulation with ecofeminist struggles (Hache, 2016) allowing us to interrogate gendered, classist and racialized processes (Maazouz and Lépinard, 2021) so as to understand how gendered inequalities in land ownership and usage relate to specific mobility practices and how in turn these mobilities affect gender relations in the villages of origin.