Node 29 - Antenna
Ended
September 2024 - February 2025
Countries: Morocco
Nodes: Rabat, Tanger
Beyond absence: An ethnography of border violence struggles in Morocco.
This report presents the findings of the third research node of the Morocco Antenna of the SOLROUTES project, conducted between September 2024 and February 2025. The study examines how disappearances and deaths at borders generate support relationships and forms of collective mobilization in Morocco through an ethnographic approach.
The research, based on participant observation and unstructured interviews conducted in various Moroccan cities (Rabat, Casablanca, Oujda, Tangier, Tetouan) and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, analyzes the tension between control mechanisms that produce absence and invisibility of deaths and disappearances, and solidarity practices that transform absence into spaces of mobilization and protest.
The central concept of ‘disappearability’ (Laakkonen, 2022) is explored as a structural product of the contemporary border regime, which through processes of illegalization, racialization, and suspension of rights, creates conditions for the disappearance and invisibilization of people on the move. Collaboration with the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI) enabled analysis of the legal dimension of such vulnerability, highlighting how detention and deportation practices in Morocco may constitute forms of enforced disappearance.
The study documents how the processing of absence configures as a process with both intimate and political dimensions, through which family members and travel companions transform the pain of loss into critical reflection on the structural causes of disappearances, inserting individual stories into collective claims for truth and justice.
The research reveals how forms of solidarity emerging from shared experiences of loss must negotiate a highly repressive socio-political context, where access to public space varies according to racial identity and legal status, yet resistance practices emerge that refuse the invisibilization of the disappeared and claim their right to be remembered, searched for, and mourned.
Untraceable: Border practices and enforced disappearance in Morocco
The document “Untraceable: Border practices and enforced disappearance in Morocco” (2025) is a comprehensive research report examining the patterns of detention, deportation, and disappearance affecting migrants in Morocco, resulting from a collaboration between the Association of Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI) and the SOLROUTES research project of the University of Genoa. The report analyzes how migration control policies in Morocco, often implemented in cooperation with European countries (particularly Spain), create conditions for enforced disappearances and human rights violations. It presents findings from field research conducted in October-November 2024, including interviews with civil society actors and migrants.
Key findings include:
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Moroccan authorities systematically detain and internally deport sub-Saharan migrants from border areas and urban centers, affecting even those with legal status or UNHCR protection.
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These practices often constitute enforced disappearances, as migrants are detained without formal procedures, deprived of communication means, and transported to remote areas without notification to families or legal representatives.
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Two emblematic cases are highlighted: the “Melilla massacre” of June 2022, where at least 23 people died and 77 were injured during a border crossing attempt, with 77 people still missing; and the events in Ceuta in September 2024, which resulted in numerous arrests, injuries, and disappearances.
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These practices violate multiple human rights: the right to liberty and security, prohibition of collective expulsions, prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment, right to life, and right to truth.
The study reports that Morocco’s detention and deportation policies creates conditions of “legal violence” that render migrants vulnerable to systematic rights violations, including enforced disappearances.
Read the report in Italian, or English
