Cultural Interaction between Sub-Saharan Migrants and the Local Population in the Period of Liminality

Cultural interaction between sub- Saharan migrants and the local population in

the period of liminality

Khadija Boussena1

Moroccan migration policy has been configured as a result of national and international changes and development, moving from being a country of emigration to a country of immigration, receiving a migratory flow from Sub-Saharan Africa. Morocco has to resort to security borders reinforcement and to holding talks with the European countries. Stranded in Morocco, and experiencing multiple hardships in a situation of liminality, Sub-Saharan migrants find themselves in a state of tension between difficult integration tentative in the host society and the impossibility to return to the country of origin.

The situation of liminality leads migrants to position themselves between two identities, one local and the other from their land of origin. In other words, they are” neither here nor there”. Liminality encourages sub-Saharan migrants to work towards a social organization in which forms and dynamics of interaction and in particular cultural interaction with the local population get woven on a daily basis. Migrants adopt strategies and mechanisms through identity negotiations to confront or alleviate the constraints and challenges of liminality, through a process of both producing and constructing a hybrid identity.

Migrants internalize the Moroccan local culture by appropriating its values and norms. The interference of two different cultures triggers acculturation, which refers to the reconstruction of an identity, resulting from this liminal cultural interaction. Liminality is inseparable from a negotiable stability, linked to a transitional phase, in which the migrant strives to seize the opportunity to cross over the European shore, a corollary phase with a negotiable change of identity.

Key words: Liminality, Cultural interaction, Identity, Acculturation, Sub-Saharan migration.

1 Doctorate in sociology from Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Dhar El Mhraz.