Lecture Series: The Hirak Protests and the Diaspora

In 2017, Morocco witnessed the largest social protests since the so-called 'Arab Spring'. Unlike then, the focal points now lay in the marginalized rural periphery, especially in the Rif, the Mediterranean coastal region in the North. Here, a massive protest movement, the Hirak ar-Rif, formed after the death of a poor fishmonger in the port city Alhoceima, who had allegedly died on orders from corrupt police officers, in October 2016. In open assemblies, the movement elaborated a manifesto that first and foremost brought forward very detailed socio-economic demands. Some of these demands, like the demand of the establishment of a hospital with an cancer treatment center, point to colonial history: The cancer rate in the Rif – apparently the highest in the Morocco – is most likely a result of remnants of mustard gas that the Spanish army deployed massively in the war against the Rif Republic (1921 – 1926). Proclaimed by its charismatic leader Abdelkrim al-Khattabi, the Rif Republic was not only the first anti-colonial nationalist project on the African continent, it also challenged the authority of the Moroccan sultan.

Abdelkrim's portrait and the banner of the Rif Republic were omnipresent at the Hirak protests, and the vigils and demonstrations of its supporters in Europe. The movement thus not only points to the current realities of authoritarianism and socio-economic exclusion at the national periphery, but also to the long-lasting material and political effects of colonial rule, as well as to the collective memory of political alternatives. Likewise, it illustrates the complex socio-economic entanglements and political imaginaries that migration processes across the Mediterranean produce: Since its inception, Hirak has been mobilizing the Moroccan diaspora in Europe to a much higher degree than the 'Arab Spring' protests in 2011, not least because the Rif is the Moroccan region with the highest quota of migration to Europe.

Based on life story interviews with Hirak activists in Morocco and Hirak supporters in Europe, this lecture takes the movement as a case in point to look into the relationship between transnational migration and political socialization, and the political relevance of the dynamic overlay of different national, regional, and local identities and identifications.

Presenter: Christoph H. Schwarz holds a PhD in sociology from Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Currently, he is a visiting researcher at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Chaired by Lisa Anderson, James T. Shotwell Professor Emerita of International Relations at Columbia SIPA.

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