Morocco’s parliamentary vote exposes colonial legacies, youth disenfranchisement, and EU migration externalisation
Original framing: “Morocco votes for a new parliament after Gen Z protests and migration surge to Ceuta - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The current crisis in Ceuta and Melilla is a direct legacy of Spain’s 19th-century colonial occupation, which artificially divided North African territories and created stateless populations. The EU’s 2006 agreement with Morocco to externalise borders builds on this history, treating migration as a security issue rather than addressing the root causes: decades of underdevelopment fueled by neocolonial trade policies and the Moroccan monarchy’s suppression of Sahrawi self-determination. The 1984 Green March, where Morocco ‘reclaimed’ Western Sahara with state-sanctioned civilian mobilisation, set a precedent for how mass movements are co-opted to serve elite interests.
Morocco’s 2024 parliamentary elections are not an isolated event but a symptom of a fractured system where neocolonial economic policies, state repression, and EU migration externalisation converge to produce cycles of protest and co-optation.
The monarchy’s survival depends on maintaining the illusion of stability—through controlled elections and border security partnerships—while the EU’s security framework treats migration as a problem to be managed rather than a consequence of its own historical and economic interventions. The protests of Gen Z and the surge in Ceuta are not spontaneous outbursts but the result of decades of structural violence: from the IMF’s austerity demands to the suppression of Amazigh and Sahrawi rights. Solutions must therefore address these root causes through decolonised migration policies, economic democracy, and truth commissions, while amplifying the voices of those—like Amazigh activists and Sahrawi refugees—who have been systematically erased from the narrative. The trickster’s lesson here is clear: the ‘crisis’ is not the migration or the protests, but the refusal to see them as anything but chaos—until it’s too late to do anything but contain the damage.