In and Out of Morocco: Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown

by David Arthur McMurray

A revealing inquiry into how global culture is lived locally.

Every summer for almost forty years, tens of thousands of Moroccan emigrants from as far away as Norway and Germany descend on the duty-free smugglers' cove/migrant frontier boomtown of Nador, Morocco. David McMurray investigates the local effects of the multiple linkages between Nador and international commodity circuits, and analyzes the profound effect on everyday...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816625077
• ISBN13: 9780816625079
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

academic but readable

even though i don't think much of his theory at the end of chapter six (about the behavior of the border guards) anyone interested in the real morocco will find many interesting stories and analysis here....many of the other reviews are from disgruntled students of the author and hopefully will be erased....

Among the Peripatetic Moroccans

McMurray's book, which is less an ethnological treatise than a window through which the layman can gain insight into the culture of the "Rif" region of northeastern Morocco, is an analysis of "the social and cultural impact of the twin economic activities of smuggling and migration on the people of Nador in the 1980's." That the book is long on interesting anecdote, and short on graphs, statistics and anthropological double talk, is no doubt its saving grace.Not only does McMurray introduce us to many of the colorful characters of Nador--where he did field research in the late 1980's--but he also instills us with sympathy for a people torn between love of their homeland and the lure of Northern Europe, pulling at their desire for economic and personal freedom. Take Haddou, for example, his somewhat ornery landlord, who in spite of being married for about 30 years, has probably spent less that 3 of those years together with his family.Out-migration is in the Moroccan blood. As one US diplomat says, "I hear the Moroccans are the 'Mexicans' of Europe." We learn that before Europe, Algeria was the land of choice for emigration (who would have ever guessed such a thing?). We learn that Spain, formerly a country that Moroccans merely passed through on their way to Germany, France, Holland and Germany, is now becoming a premier final emigration destination, as its GDP moves upward, and as anti-immigrant sentiment grips the colder parts of Europe. Back in Nador, many Nadoris are resentful for the fact that repatriated Moroccans, with repatriated wages, have greatly inflated the cost of local weddings. Not to be outdone, the local Nadoris figure out numerous ways to get back at the "nouveau rich" for rocking the boat of class distinctions.And through it all McMurray juxtaposes the story of his own family--his son Charlie, born into Moroccan society; his wife Joan (a much needed "confidant" for that scoop on womens'issues)--against the varied mosaic of Rifi culture.Speaking of womens' issues, the entire time McMurray is in Nador, he never meets his landlord's wife (obviously because of the sexually segregated nature of Nadori society). Indeed, he hardly meets his landlord for that matter, as the latter is in Germany nearly 11 months of each year. But the conservative nature of Moroccan society can't stop a couple of single women from occasionally dropping by, where they entertain themselves in McMurray's kitchen, smoking, letting their hair down, and (un)knowingly?, giving up valuable information for this book. In all, a good read, with lots of colorful characters and rich dialogue that leaves the reader with a true feeling for the dynamics of life in a tiny country crying out for economic equality. , , ,

McMurray's quirky text

In and Out of Morocco is an account of the many ways migration has impacted a Moroccan border boom town. This is not just any Moroccan town: The place has been practically built by repatriated wages from migrants who've been heading to Europe to work for over forty years. The author also investigates the second most important source of change in the town; namely, smuggling. Together these two forces have had enormous effects on the people of Nador. I had to read the book for a course, but even so, I enjoyed the many different ways McMurray talked about socioeconomic changes. He provided a chapter on a work biography of a Nador migrant which dealt with the hardships imposed on families back home when migrants are away. He also devoted a chapter to the folklore of migration, and another to the way migration has even affected the music of the region. Most interesting for me was the chapter on the ways migrants have upset the status and prestige systems back in Nador; that, and the fascinating chapter on all of the smuggling across the local border with the Spanish North African city of Melilla. I recommend this book to students of anthropology who want to see how varied approaches to the study of migration can be.