Collective Action As an Instrument of Control? the Case of Employment-Focused Movements in Morocco

Contentious action in coercive settings has been given different explanations. The level of repression, the stock of legitimacy of authorities and the prospects of efficacy have been mobilized as explicative variables. In this paper, we will propose an alternative framework in order to understand some cases of contentious action in North Africa. Our framework is built around the possibility for collective action to be used as a regulation instrument by governmental authorities, concerned about the control of social unrest.  

This explication applies to some examples of collective action targeting material goals. We consider that material-focused movements can not be simply described as corporatist phenomena, since they invoke arguments about the fairness of resources distribution among different categories in a given society. But the materiality of the pretended goals plays a key role in our analysis: we argue that it is the result of a process of construction and definition of the movement's targets. The fact of claiming a material goal explains a great deal of the viability of a contentious movement in a coercive setting.  

We will focus on two examples of employment-oriented movements in Morocco: the  "unemployed graduates" collective action and the collective demand of jobs in the Office Chérifien des Phosphates, in Khouribga. Both cases differ in terms of geographical setting (the first one is national, while the second is regional), but they deploy an analogous discourse towards government authorities. Both cases differ also in terms of efficacy. Since the mobilization of the unemployed graduates appears more efficient than the OCP one (in terms of obtained jobs), this difference allows us to test our assumption about the "regulation instrument" status of contentious action.

This research is based on ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews in Rabat and Khouribga, between 2005 and 2012.