Development to Stay? Cooperation, Biographical Sustainability and Migration Aspirations in Morocco’s Central Rif
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14422/mig.24848.039Keywords:
migration aspirations, rural youth, local development, international cooperation, Morocco, RifAbstract
This article examines the relationship between local development and migration aspirations in Morocco’s Central Rif, drawing on materials selected from a broader multi-sited ethnography (2022-2026) of international development cooperation around Al Hoceima National Park (PNAH): interviews, conversations, observations, and documents. It analyses development-cooperation projects related to small-scale fisheries, rural tourism, training, and territorial valorisation and contrasts them with the evaluations and expectations of young people and local interlocutors. The material shows that training, conservation, and infrastructure may expand capacities without necessarily generating employment, markets, or sufficient reasons to stay. In fisheries, environmental sustainability does not guarantee biographical sustainability; in tourism, producing supply does not ensure demand; and relationships with European actors may themselves become imagined routes to mobility. Migration therefore appears not simply as a failure of development but as a situated way of imagining the future within an unequal field of possibilities.
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