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This paper examines the role played by leaders figures from the Moroccan diaspora as potential instruments of legitimation for the Moroccan state and traditional elites, not just on an international scale and among the Moroccan communities living abroad, but also on a domestic level. Through the case study of specific events that happened to two prominent figures from the Moroccan community in Spain – rapper and songwriter Morad and football player Achraf Hakimi – in 2022, it analyses the legitimation strategies – cooption or coercion – that the Moroccan state employs to ensure that the stance taken in terms of politics and identity, as well as the cultural production, of leaders figures from the diaspora are aligned with its interests and principles at all times.

This paper examines the role played by leaders figures from the Moroccan diaspora as potential instruments of legitimation for the Moroccan state and traditional elites, not just on an international scale and among the Moroccan communities living abroad, but also on a domestic level. Through the case study of specific events that happened to two prominent figures from the Moroccan community in Spain - rapper and songwriter Morad and football player Achraf Hakimi - in 2022, it analyses the legitimation strategies - cooption or coercion - that the Moroccan state employs to ensure that the stance taken in terms of politics and identity, as well as the cultural production, of leaders figures from the diaspora are aligned with its interests and principles at all times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jasmine Revolution has expressed the urgency for political change in several Arab countries. For the first time in Tunisia's history, Tunisians Living Abroad (TLA) were able to vote from their respective countries, under the control of an Independent Electoral Body. In Morocco, the king anticipated the revolution and reformed the constitution basing it upon some universal democratic values in collaboration with political parties. The debate regarding the vote and emigrant representation culminated in the inclusion of four articles on emigrant rights in the new constitution. This article reviews theories of transnationalism and emigrant political participation, which are the major topics of further discussions on legislative and administrative measures for emigrant votes; explores diasporic participation at the two elections in Arab Spring context; and makes a comparative synthesis between the Tunisian and Moroccan progression/regression of democratic quality regarding emigrant political participation. The article's main contribution is that it questions what progress has been made in terms of political participation by the diaspora in both cases – whether there is a genuine desire to expand political opportunities leading to an implementation of real measures, or on the contrary it is all a zero-sum game instrumentalising Tunisia's and Morocco's widely-touted progress to put behind them that difficult stage of the Arab revolutions where civic struggles were transnationalised by the diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, social networking sites emerge as an ideal tool of communication that facilitates interaction among people online. At the same time, in a world that is characterized by massive waves of migration, globalization results in the construction of the Diaspora who seek through new ways to build communities. Within this framework, while traditional media have empowered diaspora members to maintain ties and bonds with their homeland and fellow members, the emergence of social media have offered new opportunities for diasporas to get involved in diasporas identity and community construction. The creation of several diasporas groups on social media like Yabiladi.com and WAFIN.be, respectively in France and Belguim, emphasize the vital role they play in everyday lives of the Diaspora. To study the importance and implications of these online communities for Diaspora members and investigate their online practices, this article carries out a virtual ethnography of the Moroccan community on Yabiladi portal in France. By means of the qualitative approach of interviews, this article aims at justifying whether the online groups of diasporas Moroccans in France can be defined as communities, and whether social networking sites can be considered as an alternative landscape for the Diaspora to create links with other diasporas members. This article, through users’ experience, provides deep understanding of Yabiladi members’ beliefs about the ‘‘community’’ and their online daily practices which enable them to ‘‘imagine’’ it as a community.

Storytelling is one of the oldest ways of giving human experiences a meaning and presenting the world from one's own perspective. Stories are amongst key cultural resources for identity construction. Throughout the history of technologies, storytelling has become highly mediatized, enabling new and more interactive forms of storytelling. The presented research focuses on digital, diasporic love stories that are shared on an online diasporic discussion forum by younger women from the Moroccan diaspora in Germany. Based on a qualitative content analysis of selected story threads, this article argues that these German-speaking stories provide their readers with alternative identity narratives to those in mainstream mass media. This article will demonstrate how through these narratives users interactively negotiate issues related to ethnic identities, religious and cultural values and gender roles on the networked communication space provided by the discussion forums. Considering the limited space for self-representations of migrant Muslim women in the mainstream German mediascape, this self-made form of storytelling and the self-representations that the forums provide seem even more important for the identity construction of young women in the Moroccan diaspora. However, these stories do not always lead to dialogue and peaceful negotiations; they may also lead to deepening of conflicts existing within the diasporic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic study examines how participatory media reshape the life-worlds of members of a Moroccan diaspora community in Istanbul. Based on long-term fieldwork in the Turkish megacity, semi-structured interviews with Moroccan nationals residing in Istanbul alongside evidence from participant observation online and offline are analyzed. The in-depth investigation seeks to more comprehensively understand digital communication within contemporary diasporas. Its findings suggest that the widespread use of participatory media among members of the Moroccan diaspora community in Istanbul facilitates the emergence of a new realm of lived experience in their quotidian life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, social networking sites emerge as an ideal tool of communication that facilitates interaction among people online. At the same time, in a world that is characterized by massive waves of migration, globalization results in the construction of the Diaspora who seek through new ways to build communities. Within this framework, while traditional media have empowered diaspora members to maintain ties and bonds with their homeland and fellow members, the emergence of social media have offered new opportunities for diasporas to get involved in diasporas identity and community construction. The creation of several diasporas groups on social media like Yabiladi.com and WAFIN.be, respectively in France and Belguim, emphasize the vital role they play in everyday lives of the Diaspora. To study the importance and implications of these online communities for Diaspora members and investigate their online practices, this article carries out a virtual ethnography of the Moroccan community on Yabiladi portal in France. By means of the qualitative approach of interviews, this article aims at justifying whether the online groups of diasporas Moroccans in France can be defined as communities, and whether social networking sites can be considered as an alternative landscape for the Diaspora to create links with other diasporas members. This article, through users' experience, provides deep understanding of Yabiladi members' beliefs about the "community" and their online daily practices which enable them to "imagine" it as a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution proposes a discussion of Najat El Hachmi's autobiographical account Jo també sóc catalana (2004) as an enunciatory space from which she explores and constitutes her subjectivity. Considering her interaction with different interpellations from the dominant discourse, the notion of liminality will be tackled under what she calls 'pensament de frontera' (border thinking). Thus, the border works both as a lens to look at the textual representation and as a reification of the enunciatory position she creates. I propose to interpret this position as a play of mirrors which stresses similarity over difference, blurring the opposition 'us' versus 'them'. Nonetheless, this action is not risk-free and the perils of an abyss of uncertainty and failed expectations threaten this positivist stance. Thus, this contribution aims to reflect on the negotiations that hegemonic discourses demand from El Hachmi and how she represents them in her first work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and to what extent are diasporic film cultures influenced by power structures and power shifts? This question is addressed in a twofold case study of Moroccan and Indian film structures in the city of Antwerp (Belgium). The analysis presented here is based on 27 semi-structured interviews with experts such as distributors, exhibitors, social workers, and programming managers. The research results, uncovering a complex model of multileveled power structures, demonstrate that developments in diasporic film cultures are not only dependent on homeland production, but are also crucially influenced by local actors, who determine those developments to a large degree. It is further demonstrated that networks of both legal and informal/illegal transnational and transdiasporic circulation play crucial, intertwining roles. The case studies thus show how diasporic media consumption and film in particular can only fully be grasped when attempting to understand the tension between local environment, its position within transnational networks, and homeland industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Detailed analysis of economic and social remittances transferred by the Moroccan Diaspora living abroad and their multiple effects on the economy, the family and the transformation and democratization of Moroccan society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]