“We allow French men to marry German women, our enemies since forever, why would a marriage between a French woman and an Arab (or Moroccan man) be forbidden? ... What can they criticise us for, loving each other too much?” (Letter from Josette, a French woman whose request to move to Morocco with her Moroccan fiancé was refused by the colonial government in November 1945)
“Her grandparents refused to allow my mother to marry my father, because for them he’s an immigrant... But she was madly in love with him and she didn't want to know. So finally her grandparents gave in and they got married.” (Interview with Fatima, a mixed individual with a Moroccan mother and a Palestinian-Jordanian father. Morocco, July, 2020)
1Mixed marriages were increasingly present in Morocco during the early 20th century, a rise that began with the establishment of the French protectorate and continued to grow markedly after independence (Déjeux, 1989). There has been little previous historical study of intimate forms of migration to Morocco during the colonial period (Phipps, 2022). Furthermore, contemporary anthropological studies on mixed marriages in the Moroccan context in the early 21st century (Cauvin Verner, 2016 ; Therrien, 2014a) have not had the opportunity to draw historical comparisons. Mixed marriages in this article does not refer specifically to bi-national or bi-cultural marriages nor to interreligious or interracial marriages. The term refers to any marital relationship that is considered outside of the exogamous rules of marriage by the majority group (Moroccan society). The most significant symbolic boundary may change depending on who is “the other” and could be religion, nationality, culture, or race. In the historic context and for the sake of comparison, we include within “mixed marriages” couples who were in long-term relationships but were unmarried, since many were forbidden from marrying by the colonial authorities. Because of the patterns of historic migration due to colonialism, these were most often between Europeans and Moroccans. We also use the term “marriage migration” to reflect any international migration linked to marriage. This interdisciplinary contribution brings together both history and anthropology to explore social perceptions of mixedness. Our comparison between historical and contemporary anthropological data allows us to argue that gender and racial hierarchies are still significant symbolic boundaries shaping mixed couples and attitudes towards them.
2Following Moroccan independence, mixed marriages provoked fears of cultural neo-imperialism at the most intimate level: through the family (Daoud, 2018). Many considered marriage between Moroccans and forgeigners a threat to a Moroccan culture that had been tightly controlled for decades by France. In a globalised society in the early 21st century, mixedness is now considered a positive phenomenon by many Moroccans (Therrien, 2020b), one that can offer social capital, cultural competences, and increased opportunities. Nevertheless, symbolic boundaries (gendered and racialized hierarchies) continue to influence mixedness and shape mixed couples. This paper aims to contextualize and historicize these shifting patterns and their continuities to better understand the social make-up of mixed couples in contemporary Morocco. We compare the experiences of contemporary mixed couples with attitudes present in the early 20th century to show how these attitudes shifted during the imperial moment, the post-independence period, and throughout today’s globalised world. It is outside the scope of this article to give a fully longue durée study of the arc of mixed marriage throughout the history of Morocco. We offer a comparative approach between the colonial, post-independence and contemporary moment as it would be impossible to study these changes throughout the entire 20th century in enough depth within this article, and hope that future research will build on these gaps.
3This interdisciplinary approach includes a discussion of the emotional motivations behind mixed marriage often overlooked by studies of migration, as well as the “desire for elsewhere” expressed by many of those in mixed marriages and migration for love. This theme of love, which is rarely addressed in existing literature, is nonetheless present in both the historical and anthropological data. We start with an introduction of existing literature on mixedness and mixed marriage in Morocco, first from a historical point of view and then from an anthropological perspective. The opening contextual section sheds light on changes and continuities in the history of marriage migration and attitudes towards mixedness before, during and after Moroccan independence. We then lay out our methodology before the three sections that all address the continuities and changes most influencing mixed couples. Questions of gender, education, race, and religion are raised throughout these three sections.
4Ann Laura Stoler (2004) has observed the relationship between managing intimacy and maintaining colonial power and how maintaining “colonial authority rested on educating the proper distribution of sentiments and desires” in order to maintain ‘white prestige’ and thereby the racial hierarchies of colonial rule (Stoler, 2006, p.2). Emmanuelle Saada (2007) has studied French colonial attitudes towards the children of mixed couples throughout the Empire, including how they could be considered a challenge to colonial authority and national identity because they blurred boundaries established between coloniser and colonised. Other writers have used mixed relationships to explore historic relationships between different cultures. Frantz Fanon criticised the belief that intimacy with a White woman could upset colonial hierarchies, or that it could provide an entry point into French society. He mocked this naive approach by writing that “when my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilisation and dignity and make them mine” (Fanon, 1968, p.45). Here, Fanon is also ironically referencing the tendency to use women and their bodies as metaphors for nations and national boundaries (Baron, 2005), often drawing on fertility and maternal language of “motherlands”, as well as to represent imperial powers (Alessio, 1997). Married to a French woman, Albert Memmi analysed mid-20th century experiences of mixed relationships, particularly the “shock of two cultures within the couple, the resulting heartbreak for both spouses, culminating in madness and catastrophe” (Memmi, 1967). He also acknowledged societal resistance to these unions, describing mixed marriage as “an attempt at an individual salvation within a group conflict” (Memmi, 1966). Memmi’s Agar (1955) also discussed the complications of mixed marriage between French women and North African men under imperial rule, hence the evocative title Strangers for the English translation. Through the story of a marriage between a French Catholic woman and a Jewish Tunisian man who marry in Paris and move to Tunis in the 1950s under the French protectorate, Memmi presents mixed marriage as a constant cultural conflict resulting in bitterness and destruction. Writers like Leïla Slimani and Julie Ricossé have both taken inspiration from experiences of mixed marriage in a Morocco on the brink of independence. Ricossé’s bande dessinée Morocco Jazz (2017) imagines the lives of European women in Casablanca in 1955, one of whom has a Moroccan partner, and Slimani’s novel Le pays des autres (2020) re-imagines her French grandmother’s marriage to her Moroccan grandfather throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. Other scholars have observed historic resistance to mixed marriage from North African communities, who feel they threaten social stability. Jean Déjeux (1989) discussed representations of Franco-Maghrebi marriages in Francophone literature and magazines, concluding that these were often critical as “societies protect and preserve themselves by prohibiting and rejecting the foreigner, the other, to the point of enjoying darkening their image and hiding the value of intercultural encounters” (p.1).
- 2 We capitalise Black and White to reference socially constructed racial categories that respect a sh (...)
5Mixedness in Morocco is also a topic of interest for contemporary sociological and anthropological studies, although this remains an overlooked field of research. Social limitations are a central topic in this literature within a Muslim majority country. Catherine Therrien (2020a) has highlighted the different challenges mixed couples face today regarding Morocco’s religious and socio-legal context. The “desire for elsewhereness” (désir d’ailleurs) has been mentioned as a central element of this family migration (Therrien, 2009). Highlighting the link between tourism and mixed unions, Corrine Cauvin Verner (2016) has drawn links between women’s sexuality, mobility strategies and «sentimental-sexual » migration. She also evokes the “imagination of race” that distinguishes Black2 and White populations. Racial boundaries and classification in 21st century Morocco have also been addressed in connection with social perception of mixed couples (Therrien, 2020b) and identity construction (Gilliéron, 2022 ; 2020), revealing the persistence of white privilege (Lundström, 2014).
6In recent years, new theories have emerged to shed light on experiences of mixedness. Mixed couples are increasingly portrayed in a positive light. Mixedness reflects a pluralist society (Meintel, 2002), a space of creative incorporation (Breger and Hill, 1998), or a long journey, an experience of distancing oneself from the ‘home’ of one’s childhood that produces cultural enrichment and offers an experience of transformation (Therrien, 2014b). Love in interracial relationships is also presented as a force for change. As Maria Root states, “interracial marriage gives us hope that love can transcend some of the barriers that legislation has not. Its power to transform us, one at a time, cannot be underestimated, allowing us to love as a political device” (2001, p.177). As Denis Müller (2000) pointed out more than 20 years ago, love and passion have been overlooked in mixedness studies. This observation is still valid and also applies to migration studies. As Therrien observed more recently, “the counter-flow trajectories of Europeans moving ‘for love’ to Southern countries have been largely overlooked” (2020a, p.1). In the past, mixed couples were thought to disrupt colonial power and today they are thought to disrupt Moroccan social cohesion. Our study shows that white priviledge continues to be a key factor in this form of marriage migration, but also that love continues to provide a way to break down these social hierarchies.
7Marriages between Moroccan and European individuals can be drawn back to Louis XIV, when Sultan Moulay Ismaël requested to marry his daughter as part of negotiations around captured Christians in Meknes. Although Moulay Ismaël explained that she would be allowed religious freedom, Louis XIV refused (Monkachi, 1990). This was followed by Sultan Moulay Slimane’s marriage to a Corsican woman in 1792 and Cherif El Hadj Abdesalam Ben Moulay Ali of Ouazzane’s 1873 marriage to Emily Keene, an English woman (El Yamalahi and Zemmouri, 2001). According to Keene’s memoir, the Cherif was apparently so keen to marry a European to tighten Tangier’s links with Europe that he divorced his previous wife. Their marriage faced little criticism from Moroccans, but this was likely because of the Cherif’s high status. According to Keene, “his social position admitted his taking a European wife, to which may be added that the Koran acknowledged such unions” (Keene, 1911, p.5).
8Mixed marriages grew in popularity with the establishment of the French protectorate in Morocco from 1912, as a result of the first major wave of modern migration to North Africa (Streiff-Fénart, 1990). The European population in Morocco reached 80,000 in 1922 and 162,000 in 1931 (Knibiehler, Emmery, Leguay, 1992, p.42). The 20th century also saw immigration opportunities outside of Morocco, particularly with the mobilisation of North African troops and workers during the war and with post-war international agreements. With colonisers and Moroccans moving between the metropole and North Africa, possibilities for interracial intimacy grew. However, colonial authorities tightly regulated and often prohibited these unions. There were few during the colonial period in North Africa, yet after independence from France (in 1956 for Morocco) these relationships became more popular thanks to travel, emigration, and the anonymous freedom of urban spaces (Déjeux, 1989), as well as the increase of young Moroccan men travelling abroad for university education and highly skilled jobs.
- 3 “The sum of the most doubtful probabilities”. “Le Roi Hassan II et le mariage mixte”, 2008, Maghreb (...)
9Yet with North African countries, independence from France came with severe criticisms of mixed marriage. Streiff-Fénart (1990) describes how, from the beginning of colonisation to the early 1990s, the representation of mixed marriage was either as “a devious enemy infiltration of the nation or as an act of treason against the nation, a subversion of established political and social order or a breach of cohesion and national identity” (Streiff-Fénart, 1990, p.344). Moroccan leader Allal el Fassi considered mixed marriage a tool for colonisers to keep their hold on North African citizens after independence. In a 1974 article in Al-ʻAlam, he noted the popularity of post-independence mixed marriages and argued that Muslim society and families must be protected to keep it pure. Consequently, he felt that mixed children being raised by a foreign mother would damage Muslim values (Déjeux, 1989). Moroccan king Hassan II, decades later in 1996, also commented that mixed marriages would not work because they correspond to “le calcul des probabilités le plus impropable.”3
10Modern transport and communication developments, globalisation and transnationalism have led to increased migration and increases in mixed marriage as a result. Couples in Morocco today are more socially accepted than they were historically, although many mixed couples and their mixed children still face challenges.
11This article is based on information from various sources to provide a comparison between contemporary and historic Moroccan experiences, particularly those during the colonial period and the first years of independence, to historicise the impact of major events in modern Moroccan history on marriage migration. Of particular importance is a 1949 study on mixed marriages, commissioned by the French Residence Générale and held at the French Archives Diplomatiques located in Nantes. This study provides case files for 240 different mixed marriages and partnerships living in Morocco in 1949. We compare this study with other historical sources: research from the 1930s, magazine articles on mixed marriage from the post-indepence period in the 1960s, readers’ letters in reaction to these articles, and various literary resources such as memoirs, novels and plays from the colonial and post-indepence period that provide insight into Moroccan social perception of mixed marriages under French rule and immediately after.
12There are limits to this statistical data. Firstly, this 1949 study by the French colonial government was, by no means, exhaustive. We do not have a list of every single mixed partnership, but a list of the partnerships of which the colonial government was aware. Anne Dhobb (2004), for example, grandmother of Leila Slimani, was living in a mixed marriage near Meknes and was not remarked upon in the study. We also have varying quantities of information for each partnership. This study was conducted by different colonial civil servants in each city. Consequently, some files on each couple are sparser or more detailed than others. For example, some cities, such as Marrakech, provided considerably more information about mixed couples living there. In some cases, we have only names and nationalities of the individuals in the couple, in others their whole life stories. Finally, it is important to remember that the colonial state produced this knowledge and refracted it through their own understanding of Moroccan people, of racial hierarchies, and of Islam.
- 4 32 individuals were living in Morocco at the time of the interview and were interviewed in person i (...)
- 5 Catherine Therrien (2019-2023) ‘Plural identity of mixed children in Morocco: transmission, agency (...)
- 6 Catherine Phipps (2019 to present), “Interracial Sexuality in the French Protectorate in Morocco, ( (...)
- 7 ITHACA Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency: Entangled Narratives Across Europ (...)
13This paper compares this historical data to contemporary anthropological data, collected during fieldwork in Morocco between January 2018 and January 2022, to understand the social perception of marriage migration and the social make-up of mixed couples at different times (pre and post-Moroccan independence): 52 semi-structured interviews conducted over four years with the children of mixed couples (22 men and 30 women from 18 to 60 years old) mainly socialised in Morocco4 and with 12 mixed couples (including the parents of ten of the mixed children we interviewed in the framework of this research). We analyse sociodemographic information derived from these 45 mixed families (some of the 52 mixed individuals were siblings and 20 were parents of participants) to draw comparisons with the colonial study. The data was initially collected in two different research projects, one funded by the Moroccan government on the plural identities of mixed individuals in Morocco5, and the other a doctoral thesis on interracial relationships in French colonial Morocco.6 The European Commission-funded ITHACA project on migration allowed these projects to come together to analyse marriage migration and mixedness in Morocco.7 The next sections explore changes and continuities in mixed couples. We look first at the changing demographic of mixed couples and where they decided to settle, comparing their nationalities, occupations, and different meeting places. We then compare how changing racial hierarchies have impacted which mixed couples were restricted from getting married and whether they could move to Morocco. Finally, we explore reasons for choosing exogamy. This will allow us to show that despite the significant changes within Morocco, gender and racial hierarchies continue to have a major impact on marriage formation and intimate migration paths.
14A first point of comparison is related to the social make-up of mixed couples and can be summarised by these questions: where did the foreign partners in mixed couples come from, where did they meet, what was their occupation, was the couple married, what was the gender split, and why did they settle in Morroco?
- 8 189 women were French, 28 Moroccan, five Spanish, five Belgian, three German and two Polish. There (...)
- 9 It is worth noting that there were no instances of polygamy contained within these case files, prim (...)
15According to the data from French colonial authorities in 1949, there were at least 240 mixed couples in Morocco. Most couples were French women and Moroccan men, but there were also some women from countries like Spain and Belgium, as well as Moroccan women in relationships with European men.8 201 men were Moroccan, 24 came from France, six from Algeria and two from Spain.9 There were men from Switzerland, Germany and Czechoslovakia, as well as one Moroccan man naturalised as French. Several couples were married (149), but almost a third lived together outside of marriage (71). The average married couple had been married since 1940, but many of the non-married couples had been together for years, with nine of them living together for more than 20 years.
- 10 Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes (hereafter CADN), Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, “Note pour Monsi (...)
16The mass mobilisation of Moroccan soldiers and workers in 1949 played a large role in the development and increase of mixed marriages. The study shows that men travelled to France, met European women, and wished to bring them home to Morocco after their time there. Most of the couples listed in the 1949 study were Moroccan men and French women who had met in France while the Moroccan man was working or fighting for the French army during the Second World War. This is, of course, because Moroccan men were much more likely than women to be mobile in the 1940s. This meant that they were more likely to find a foreign spouse abroad. Very few couples met in Morocco. This is understandable as mixed relationships in the French empire were more restricted by French authorities than in the metropole. This is because racial hierarchies were considered more important within colonial societies than in the metropole, as questioning established racial hierarchies could destabilise colonial rule. For the same reason, over half (77) of the 149 married couples were married in metropolitan France. Only 45 couples got married in Morocco because it was easier for mixed couples to marry in metropolitan France than in Morocco, to the point that the French Residence Générale in Morocco repeatedly expressed frustration that mairies in France would allow French women to marry Moroccan men. When discussing the question of “les mariages mixtes”, they even suggested at one point that pamphlets should “be published and distributed to different mairies in France to allow magistrates to enlighten French women wanting to marry Muslim Moroccans”10.
17Major changes in the make-up of mixed marriages in contemporary Morocco are the diversification of the non-Moroccan partners’ origin and the couples’ meeting places. The impact of globalisation and transnationalism on the establishment and experience of mixed families is significant here. As highlighted by Le Gall et al. (2022), in the last decades, opportunities for transnational relationships and occurrences of mixed marriages have multiplied globally due to the intensity of recent migratory flows, the developments in transport and communication technologies, and the process of globalisation. Contemporary anthropological data clearly shows this recent trend. Indeed, the mixed families within the contemporary research (45 households) came from 31 different countries in Europe, Africa, America, Asia, and the Middle East. The diversification of the meeting places also gives important indications about the globalised world in which the contemporary couples now live. Whereas most of the couples within the colonial study met in France, contemporary data shows that mixed couples met all over the world. It also shows that Morocco is no longer strictly a country of emigration, with considerable mobility to former colonizing countries, but also a country of immigration (Berriane and al., 2015). French people still represent the larger group of foreigners in Morocco (Pellegrini, 2016), hence the high number of Franco-Moroccan families in the country. However, there are now migrants settling in Morocco not only from all over Europe and North America, but also from West and Central Africa. This began in the 1970s but has increased significantly since the 1990s (Berriane, 2015). Migrants originally from the broader MENA region are also present in Morocco, some for many generations, but are an understudied area of research in the field of migration. There are also migrants from Asia and South Asia and Central and South America, even if they continue to represent a minority.
- 11 Only one West African was Catholic. The two other Sub-Saharans, who were not Muslim when they arriv (...)
18The connection between the gender split of a mixed couple’s origin and the countries of origin of the foreign partner (the non-Moroccan) indicates the persistence of gender norms in the mobility trajectory. Despite the feminisation of migration in Morocco since the 1980’s (Salih, 2001), most mixed couples included within recent anthropological research were Moroccan men and foreign women. Indeed, 31 out of 45 households were composed of a Moroccan father and a foreign mother, with only 14 households including a Moroccan mother and foreign father. Most Moroccan men within the study were in relationships with European women. Most met their wife in Europe (France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine) while studying (the majority), working, or travelling. Some met their future spouses in Russia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Japan, Turkey, or the United States, which demonstrates the global mobility of these Moroccan men (and of these women who were willing to migrate to Morocco in the framework of marriage migration). Five of these Moroccan men met their European wife in Morocco while she was working or travelling abroad. Apart from one Moroccan woman who had migrated to France with her family at a young age and had met her English husband there, all the Moroccan women in the study met their husband in Morocco. They were in couples with Muslim11 men from the MENA region (Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon) or from West or Central African countries (Cameroun, Niger, Ivory Coast, Mali, Kenya). These men came to Morocco to study and work, although some were born in Morocco to parents or grandparents who had migrated from the MENA region, which highlights Morocco’s role as a country with generations of immigration. Of course, nowadays Moroccan women also travel, study and work abroad despite the constraints of the gender norms that continue to burden them more than their brothers (Gutekunst, 2015 ; Salih, 2001 ; Schmoll, 2007). Eventually, some fall in love with foreign men abroad and decide to get married, but many couples formed by a Moroccan woman and a foreign man decide to settle outside of Morocco, often in their husband’s country or in the third country where they met. We suggest that this can be explained by two factors: religious gender norms (it is legally forbidden for a Moroccan woman to marry a non-Muslim man), and economic reasons (men are still better paid and are often the primary earners).
19This last point explains why the families in the study had decided to settle in Morocco. Their motivations reveal that gender still impacts mobility. When we asked mixed individuals why their parents decided to settle in Morocco, many answered that it was their father’s desire or decision, as did many mixed couples interviewed. They explained that their father’s decision to leave Morocco to study or to work was conceived as a temporary migration without settling permanently. Meeting a foreign wife did not shift this initial intention. The husband’s work is frequently evoked to explain the parents’ settlement in Morocco. The fact that the husband already had a good job that he did not want to leave, that better professional opportunities (upward social mobility, ease for developing a business, etc.) were offered to the couple in Morocco, and that he knew they would be unlikely to find as good a job abroad, was part of their decision to live in Morocco. This is the case of Alice (French) and Marouane (Moroccan) who met in France during their studies in the 1970s and moved to Morocco for a better family life. That Marouane found work as an engineer in Morocco was part of their decision. Indeed, that Morocco is “a land where everything is possible”(Pellegrini, 2016) and that it offers a “better quality of life” (Virkama and al., 2011) is also crucial in determining the country of settlement for many foreigners and returning migrants. Amir specified that his father had more professional opportunities in Morocco; after studying in Austria (where he met his wife), his father found a senior position in the Moroccan civil service and they decided to settle in Morocco. This was also the case for Soukaina’s father, who met his wife in Ukraine and convinced her to come to Morocco as he had opened a pharmacy after university. Many couples who met in Morocco also decided where to live based on the husband’s professional opportunities. Amnay’s father did not want to settle in France as he “didn’t like the culture” and was already working in Morocco. Amnay’s French mother happily agreed to join Amnay’s father in Morocco. Hiba, the child of a Franco-Moroccan couple, and her Nigerian husband Djibril decided to settle in Morocco not by choice, but because Djibril could stabilise his migration status there having left his country and entered Morocco “irregularly”. Similarly, Fatima’s father, a Palestinian refugee to Jordan, found a job as a mathematics professor in a Moroccan university. The social class and professions of the Moroccan men also explain this position. None of the men in mixed marriages were low-skilled workers, contrary to the historical data. Many were professors, pharmacists, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, architects, dentists, in the military, or civil servants. The only two Moroccan men who met their wife abroad before Moroccan independence met them in Spain, one during military training and the other (a farmer) while travelling there. All the other Moroccan men met their wife during the post-independence period and all the descendants of these mixed couples were born between 1960 and 2003. It should be noted that many of the foreign women who migrated to Morocco with their spouses were also not low-skilled workers and most found a middle-class job (professors, teachers, dentists, embassy staff, etc.). Social class and profession are crucial to understanding the make-up of mixedness. Most of the 26 couples who met outside of Morocco did so because of the husband’s temporary highly skilled migration: 17 had gone abroad to study, five for an internship or to work, and four were on holiday. This prevalence of highly skilled migrants in contemporary mixed marriages is a major change in the history of marriage migration compared to the early 20th century. Education and social class are crucial factors to consider when analysing these changes.
- 12 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, “Demande d’entrée au Maroc de Ruelland”, d’Arcimoles, 15 November 1945
- 13 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, “Repatriement des ménages mixtes”, Guillaume, Rabat, 3 September 1942.
- 14 The necessary paperwork included, but was not limited to: a feuille de renseignement (a form with a (...)
- 15 CADN, Region de Fez, 12MA/238, Directeur de l’intérieur to Chefs de la Région, Rabat, 24 December 1 (...)
20Comparing the mid-20th century and the early 21st century indicates that gender and racial hierarchies continue to shape which types of marriage and migration are permitted in Morocco. Under French imperial rule, even after mixed couples were married, they faced difficulties moving to Morocco. In this period, entry to Morocco was forbidden by French authorities in Morocco “to French women married to Moroccans or wanting to marry Moroccans.”12 According to General Nogues, France’s Resident General of Morocco, “this Residence officially opposes visa requests for European wives and partners of Moroccan natives to enter Morocco”.13 As we can see, there were obviously instances where some couples were able to enter the French protectorate, but this would have been a major deterrent to mixed families establishing themselves in Morocco. This discrimination on the part of the colonial state provides the reason for the very high number of unmarried mixed families: the difficulty obtaining the required paperwork.14 There are numerous examples of mixed couples in France and Morocco requesting permission to marry, only to have that permission denied by the colonial authorities. As it considered “these sort of unions as regrettable”, the French Direction de l’Intérieur in Morocco sought to only “provide the necessary administrative documents after as long a delay as possible and not without certain difficulties.”15 Colonial authorities habitually made the administrative process as difficult as possible to prevent mixed marriages. It is not a coincidence that many of the couples listed in the study cited a desire to be married or that they were trying to bring it about. Many of these unmarried households were not unmarried by choice, but as a result of French colonial beliefs about racial hierarchies that refused to allow White women to marry Moroccan men. It is for this reason that they should be considered within a study of mixed marriages, as in most examples they lived together as common-law spouses. It would also have been easier for couples to enter Morocco separately as unmarried individuals instead of a married couple to navigate the visa ban for married couples or couples planning to marry.
- 16 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, “Mariages Mixtes : Français Marocains”, Secrétariat Général du Protect (...)
- 17 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, Marrakech : Fiche de renseignements 16, Marrakech, 23 February 1949, C (...)
21This visa ban for French women married to Moroccan men was highly gendered and came from a place of racialised, patriarchal concern. The French Directeur des Affaires Politiques specified in 1946 that these measures against mixed marriages “aimed to protect French women from the consequences of a marriage with a Moroccan”, because of “Muslim morals and the living conditions for a woman married to a native when the wife comes to live in Morocco”, but categorically explained that “these concerns are not necessary in the case of marriage between a French man and Moroccan woman.”16 We can see that the ban was motivated by the belief that White women needed to be protected by French men from Moroccan men. Marriages between European men and Moroccan women were in the minority (30 of the 240 cases) and all these couples met in Morocco. These were mostly men who had travelled to Morocco as part of the first wave of migration with the establishment of the protectorate and had found local wives there. It is likely they aimed to establish “mariages à la mode du pays”, non-married partnerships with local women to facilitate their lives there, a common practice for French colonisers in Africa (Conklin, 1998). Many of these men were in relationships with considerably younger Moroccan women, a few chose another younger partner every 10 years, and yet some refused to marry a Moroccan Muslim woman or wanted to keep the option of marriage with a French women available.17 Mustapha Jmahri (2022) has studied mixed marriages during the protectorate and the post-independence period in the Doukkala region. He found that relationships between older European men and younger Moroccan women were often seen by local people as “a sort of sexual exploitation” (2022, p.75). Colonial racial hierarchies seem to have been more noticeable in how European men treated Moroccan women than in relationships between Moroccan men and European women.
- 18 However, entry into the Moroccan territory must have been legal if the migrant wants to marry.
22Some of these racial hierarchies continue in migration inequality to Morocco. If mobility from Sub-Saharan and North Africa to Europe has been greatly restricted by the creation of the European Union and different migration regulations since the 1990s (visa requirements to enter the Schengen area, restrictions related to marriage migration, etc.) (De Haas, 2007), migration from the Global North to Morocco is more fluid than during the French protectorate. Foreigners from the Global North just need a valid passport to enter Morocco and can stay as tourists for 90 days. While some African countries have a visa-free agreement with Morocco, many have an obligation to obtain a visa to enter the country. This inequality continues with residence cards. Despite the 02-03 law that applies to every migrant to Morocco and requires them to have a residence card after this three-months has expired, researchers have shown that migration regulation is greatly racialised in Morocco and that authorities often turn a blind eye when it comes to the irregular stay of White Westerners compared to Black Sub-Saharan migrants (Gazzotti, 2021; Therrien, 2016). Social perception of mixedness is also racialised. As shown by Therrien (2020b), even if whiteness and blackness are contextual phenomena (Lundström, 2014) that intersect with gender and social class to draw distinct and complex lines of difference, whiteness continues to be a site of privilege in Morocco. Hiba, mentioned above and whose mother was French and her father Moroccan, found that her family had difficulty accepting their daughter’s marriage to a Black, Catholic, English-speaking Nigerian. Many Moroccan-European mixed individuals mentioned that their mixedness was more positively received compared to that of Sub-Saharan-Moroccan children. In Morocco, marriage migration is easier for individuals from the Global North from both a social and legal standpoint. Although the limitations have changed since the colonial period, hierarchies and constraints still exist in terms of which country’s citizens are able to enter Morocco for marriage migration and how they are viewed by the families they wish to marry into. However, contrary to many European and North American countries, which restrict family migration because of suspicion of false marriages (Odasso, 2016), Morocco facilitates marriage migration as everyone married to a Moroccan can quite easily get their residence card.18
- 19 Conversion for foreign men marrying Moroccan Muslim women wasn’t necessary at the time under French (...)
23Legal and religious restraints are also still reflected in the prevalence of mixed couples who are married. If some couples in the contemporary anthropological element of this study spent a period living outside of marriage, without exception all were married before the birth of their child. Three out of 45 women (two foreigners, one Moroccan) got pregnant before marriage, their reason for formalizing their union. The contemporary religious and legal Moroccan context explains this high rate of marriage. Indeed, the Family Code (the Mudawana) – introduced in 1958 just after independence, modified in 1993, and reformed in 2003 – stipulates that the only marriage certificate recognised legally in Morocco is the acte adoulaire, registered by a traditional notary (adoul). For both men and women, not being recognised as married in the Moroccan context leads to social and legal challenges, such as not being able to register your child at school, not being able to inherit from each other or adopt a child (kafala) for couples who are not both Muslim (Therrien, 2022). If during the French protectorate the visa restrictions were put on foreign women to maintain racial hierarchies, the symbolic boundary has changed today to restrict Moroccan Muslim women with the aim of maintaining religious cohesion. Indeed, in contemporary Morocco the family law stipulates that a Moroccan Muslim woman cannot get married to a non-Muslim man, whereas a Moroccan man can marry any woman from a monotheist religion (Mounir, 2005). Any foreign man who wants to marry a Moroccan Muslim woman must convert to Islam if they want their union to be recognised by Moroccan authorities.19 As argued by Therrien (2020a), preserving the country’s Islamic character and patriarchal structure is at the core of the Moroccan legislative system. A common religion (Islam) lessens these religious and legal boundaries (for example, a Muslim Senegalese person is considered as an insider from a legal and religious point of view). But data shows that “sharing the same religion is not always an element of rapprochement, and that racial categories are difficult symbolic boundaries to overcome in the Moroccan context” (Therrien, 2020a, p.101). Moroccan women who fall in love with non-Muslim men bear the brunt of these gender religious norms, explaining the lower rate of mixed couples composed of a Moroccan woman and a foreign man (in general but particularly those who decided to settle in Morocco) and the lack of openness from Moroccan society towards these couples (Harrami, 2016). The boundaries of what type of mixed marriage are forbidden has changed from the colonial period to post-independence, shifting from prohibiting European women and Moroccan men from establishing mixed families in Morocco to restricting Moroccan women and foreign men. Yet these boundaries continue to rest on constricting the freedom of women and on holding them responsible for religious and racial social cohesion in Morocco.
24The motivation behind choosing to enter into a mixed couple reflects historic changes in education and social class structures, but the primary reason for mixed marriages in Morocco has remained the same over time: a feeling of possibilities. In the early 20th century, education and, increasingly, social class were already key factors determining which Moroccan men sought foreign wives. In his 1933 doctoral thesis “Mixed Marriages in North Africa”, Marcel-Marc Meylan drew parallels between mixed marriages and the colonial education system, observing that «young ‘natives’, raised in the Western way, want to look for a union that meets needs that the women of their race cannot provide for, kept as they are, perhaps despite themselves, in a “moral” condition much lower than theirs » (1933, p.31). He attributed this to the fact that in 1931, primary schools for Muslim Moroccans taught only 2,790 girls, compared to 8,358 boys. In Morocco under French rule, girls could not be educated past the age of 13 (Meylan, 1933, p.31). Yet the nationalist cause took up female education by 1942, as “they wanted to defeat the French at any cost, even if it meant interfering in the family structure” (Mernissi, 1985, p.155). The number of girls in primary school rose from 15,080 in 1947 to 186,330 in 1957 and women gained access to secondary schools from 1945 (Mernissi, 1985, p.155). Female education grew throughout the 20th century but education in general remained unequally skewed towards boys. Mixed marriages between Moroccans and Europeans were most likely if the Moroccan man travelled to Europe. These were often the Moroccan men who had received the most education, making them the Moroccan men who could most easily meet foreign women.
25Examining the 1949 study shows that this has changed over time. Immediately after the Second World War, Moroccans in mixed marriages were not an educated elite. The widespread mobilisation of soldiers and workers in the Second World War meant Moroccans travelled to France in the 1940s on a much wider scale. Many who fought in France or worked in factories returned with a French partner. In the 1930s, around 10% of Moroccan workers in France were in mixed partnerships (Ray, 1938, p.197-200). There were a few educated elites who had studied abroad (accountants, doctors, teachers), but the majority were soldiers, farmers, and tradesmen. According to the 1949 study, almost all could speak French, but many couldn’t read it.
- 20 “Zakya Daoud et les Aïts-Chéris”, Lamalif, 6, October 1966, 25.
- 21 Zakya Daoud, who also founded Lamalif with her husband, is one of the very few foreign spouses who (...)
- 22 “Zakya Daoud et les Aïts-Chéris”, Lamalif, 6, October 1966, 26.
26However, in the 1950s and 1960s mixed marriage was increasingly considered a bourgeois phenomenon “almost always within the intellectual classes: managers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, society’s most visible groups”.20 There are two reasons for this. The first is that as demand for Moroccan soldiers and labourers fell after the Second World War, emigrating to France became associated with higher social classes, particularly those who moved there to study. Secondly, these migrants were from the more influential bourgeois classes, making their movements more noticeable to Moroccan society. Zakya Daoud, the name French journalist Jacqueline Loghlam adopted after gaining Moroccan nationality21 from her Moroccan husband, commented in 1966 that “going to France to gain a diploma, a young Moroccan man comes back with a wife”.22 She reported that before leaving for France, many Moroccans were warned by their families not to get married.
- 23 Jamal al Achgar, “Les Mixtes à Paris”, Lamalif, 6, October 1966, 31.
- 24 Harazem Chkounda, “N’encouragez pas les mariages mixtes”, Lamalif, 6, October 1966, 34-35.
27Articles in the post-independence Moroccan press indicate that some Moroccan men attributed this desire to marry European women to weaknesses in Moroccan women: their lack of education and the need to pay a bride price. These drawbacks reflected a frustration with tradition and a misogyny that was the result of colonialist ideas of “evolved” Muslim women. Ahmed, a Moroccan student interviewed in Paris in 1966 for Moroccan magazine Lamalif, commented that in France “there isn’t a Maghrebi student who arrives without having considered marrying a European”. He showed disdain for Moroccan women, as “a Moroccan man, at least at our level, I’m talking about students, doctors, lawyers, intellectuals, can’t put up with a marriage with Moroccan woman” because she wasn’t “emancipated”.23 In the same issue of Lamalif, journalist Harazam Chkounda stressed that bride prices were « pushing Moroccan men to marry foreigners », pointing out that few civil servants could afford a traditional wedding. Chkounda also mentioned how frequently Moroccan men in mixed marriages complained that Moroccan women were “only superficially progressive”.24 For Chkounda, modern Moroccan men were trapped by gender roles as they suffered from traditionally masculine financial obligations by having to pay the bride price. He considered it to be men who suffered most from the difficulties many Moroccan women faced accessing an education.
- 25 D.K., « Sur les mariages mixtes : Du bien et du Mal », Lamalif, 7, November 1966, 4.
28Other Moroccan men showed similar frustration with a society that seemed both “modern” and “traditional”. A Moroccan man, D.K, wrote to Lamalif to explain that Moroccan men were forced find wives elsewhere because “an educated and cultured young Moroccan woman isn’t that easy to find outside of rich, bourgeois social circles” and these women were inaccessible for young Moroccan men because of bride prices.25 According to him, it was “out of the question for a young intellectual to think of marrying an illiterate woman” as this could “give a complex to the young man”. D.K. also voiced frustration with the traditional marriage system in Morocco, of expensive weddings and bride prices. He observed that many educated young men from “modest” families “preferred to receive a European woman, sometimes from a much lower level than them”. D.K. saw mixed marriages as a way to bypass traditional class hierarchies. Each male contributor understood foreign women as more evolved and mixed marriages as a way for Moroccan men, particularly from upwardly mobile professional classes, to liberate themselves from the gender constraints of paying bride prices. Amy Kallandar has noted similar attitudes in Tunisia in the same period, where mixed marriage was heavily criticised as a threat to tradition, but “Tunisian women were more likely to be blamed for pushing Tunisian men away” through their family’s need for expensive bourgeois displays of wealth (2021, p.225). Fatima Mernissi discussed anger at these constraints among Moroccan men in the early 20th century, for a Moroccan man finding that “he cannot have a woman if he does not pay the bride-price, a sum he often cannot afford until his mid-twenties, if he’s lucky” (1985, p.163). It seems some young men married foreign women to avoid these societal impositions.
- 26 « Les Jeunes Marocains devant le mariage : “Nous sommes tous des cobayes” », Jeune Afrique, 206, 15 (...)
29Some Moroccan women objected. In 1964 Jeune Afrique magazine published the transcript of a roundtable it organised between seven young Moroccans. The attitudes they expressed towards bride prices were gendered, with the four men strongly opposed and the three women in favour. This is understandable, as bride price was originally an insurance against a bad marriage and provided pressure for a husband to treat his wife fairly; she would hopefully take it with her in the case of divorce (Newcomb, 2010). Amina, who had a European mother and Moroccan father, saw bride price as “a question of prestige for the girl and the family.” Furthermore, despite being born from one, Amina objected strongly to mixed marriages, finding them unfair for Moroccan women as “it is generally the more open-minded boys, the most understanding, who marry European women. So Moroccan women lose the chance to evolve. The development of Moroccan women suffers.”26 Amina believed increased social freedoms for Moroccan men, through avoiding paying the bride price or marrying European women, came at the expense of Moroccan women.
30These social tensions were the result of French colonial education policy, which created educated elites and disproportionately favoured boys. It taught a minority of Moroccan men that success meant integrating into French society, as well as preaching that women needed to be “evolved”, but that the tradition and stability of the Moroccan family must be protected by limiting education for Moroccan girls. Education policies for Moroccan girls were primarily manual labour, sweatshops where poor girls toiled for hours; the few lycées for girls prepared them for marriage to educated men (Segalla, 2010). This was the same process of “clochardisation” that Germaine Tillion (1957) observed in Algeria under French rule. French educational policy was designed to create a two-tier system favouring a male Moroccan « elite » minority.
31Farid Faris (1962) observed the results of education inequality on marriage in Le Rempart du Sable. Written in French, this play tells the story of a young interracial couple: Azzouz, a leader in the Moroccan nationalist resistance returned from studying in Paris, and Francine, the daughter of French colons. Their engagement outrages Azzouz’s family. He refuses to marry the woman his father has picked for him, explaining that gender inequalities mean he can’t marry a Moroccan woman because she wouldn’t be as educated as him: “is it my fault if you parents have given your son an education, this tool that rips open science” whilst girls have “the veil, which closes off their face and them from the rest of the world!”. He concludes that as a result “it pains [Moroccan] girls and boys to find themselves together” (Faris, 1962, p.100). Farid Faris understood that some Moroccan men in the 1950s felt uncomfortable with these disparities and so were drawn to foreign women.
32Today, educational gender disparities have changed significantly. Most Moroccan women in urban regions receive schooling and, despite a prevailing gender wage gap, Moroccan women now hold considerably more professional positions than the post-independence period (Newcomb, 2017, p.41 ; Ouardi, 2019). Today Moroccan men marry foreign woman for different reasons to 60 years ago, although there are similarities in the reasons behind entering into a mixed relationship. Research reflects that mixedness provides an opportunity for creativity to those in mixed relationships, who can find within it an alternative way of living. It can also provide a freedom to deconstruct certain cultural models or culturally held beliefs, offering a way to make decisions about their lives (Therrien, 2014b). As Sophie Cadalen (2006) has observed, individuals in mixed couples demonstrate a rejection of fixed places and a desire for difference in their identities and in their daily lives. Mixedness offers a departure from certain social norms. As Therrien notes (2009), the “desire for elsewhereness” also helps understand the contemporary trajectories of mixedness, as does an increasingly globalised world. The “elsewhere” represents a desire for something new, for change and the possibility of expanding one’s horizons.
- 27 Madame B.T., Rabat, “A propos des mariages mixtes”, Lamalif, 7, November 1966, 3.
33This same opening of possibility for those in mixed marriages was felt during the colonial period. Anne Dhobb, who moved to Morocco with her Moroccan husband after they met while he was fighting in Alsace, recognised her desire for an alternate way of life in her memoir, recounting that her father’s reaction to the news she would marry a Moroccan man was that “you’ve never wanted to be like everyone else” (Dhobb, 2004, p.413). Her grand-daughter, Leila Slimani, imagined this (2020, p.28) as Dhobb’s desire to paint herself as a Karen Blixen character in her letters home from Morocco, making others jealous with her adventures. For Slimani’s grandmother, marriage migration to Morocco offered adventure, a reinvention of herself, and a more exciting life than in Mulhouse, France. Other French women showed how mixed marriage expressed a desire for an alternative way of life by marrying Moroccan men as part of the struggle for independence. Madame B.T. wrote to Lamalif to remind readers of mixed marriages during the protectorate that were “both sentimental and idealistic” because of “the young girl’s sincere dedication to her husband’s fight for independence and the construction of his country”, and that these relationships were much more frequent than many people realised.27 For both parties, their mixed relationship was part of building a new Morocco and was a way of creating opportunities for a new way of living.
34A point that emerges from the contemporary period is that for many foreigners in mixed couples, settling in Morocco is linked to a “migration for love”. Catherine, who met Wassim during a trip to Morocco in 1995, has lived there for over 25 years: “I realised that I was in love and I said to myself, I’m not going to go back to France now, I’m going to postpone my return to go to Ouarzazate with him for a while.” Similarly, Fatima’s parents (Palestinian/Moroccan) met at university in Morocco in the 19’0s. He was a professor and she was his student: “She always sat in the front row, she has blue eyes and he has dark eyes, so he fell in love with her (laughs).” In 1991, Yasser left Brazil, where he had studied dentistry and where he met Tatiana. She remembers: “That was when we graduated. And he went on holiday to Spain, on the way back to Morocco. And that gave me a lot of grief. I thought, well, what am I going to do? He’s on the other side of the ocean and it was so strong that I wrote a letter: I’ve tried to forget you, but I can’t. So can we think about meeting again or something? And he was doing the same thing. At the same time as my letter arrived at his house, his letter arrived at mine”.
- 28 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, Jeanne Hugendobler to “Monsieur le Sultan du Maroc”, Guebwilier, 19 Ja (...)
- 29 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, Josette Gayaud to “Monsier-le-Sultan”, Villefranche, 2 November 1945.
- 30 CADN, Maroc DI, 1MA/200/421, Mariage mixte : Richard-Benzekry Haim, Nogues to Préfet du Rhône, 13 M (...)
35Migration for love was also the product of mixed marriages in the 1940s. Heavily pregnant, Jeanne Hugendobler in Alsace wrote to Sultan Mohammed V to beg him to help her husband, Abdelkader, stay in France: “I am a poor girl with a sick mother, I have nobody in the world apart from him, I love him with all of my heart… if he can’t get the authorisation to stay here, then death is the only other path for our two souls.”28 As we saw in the opening quote, in 1945, Josette Gayaud also wrote to Mohammed V to beg him to intervene and allow her to travel to Casablanca to marry her fiancé Benhachir. Josette was unable to understand why they weren’t able to be together: “What can we be criticised of? Loving each other too much…? I’m ready to follow my fiancé to Casablanca so we’re not separated.”29 Yet it was because this migration was for love that these marriage visas were refused, because of the political possibility of interracial love (Root, 2001). French colonial authorities tried to prohibit these relationships in Morocco because they were considered “dangerous to French prestige, since they are incompatible with the dignity that Europeans should uphold in North Africa, particularly French citizens for the Protector state”.30 Interracial relationships threatened the French colonial order in Morocco because of the strength of this love. Because “the desires to transgress interracial sexual boundaries threatened colonial hierarchies” (Phipps, 2022, p.238), the new political possibilities offered by interracial relationships meant that this migration for love could be considered a threat. In post-independence contemporary Morocco, mixed marriages are no longer considered a threat to political power. Nevertheless, as we have seen in the previous sections, gender and racial hierarchies are still symbolic boundaries shaping mixed couples and attitudes towards them.
36This paper compares social perception and influences on current mixed couples with attitudes present in the early 20th century. This comparison shows that social perception of mixed couples has shifted from a fear of neo-imperialism to a feeling of opportunities in a globalised world, but significant symbolic boundaries (gender and race) continue to shape mixed couples and attitudes towards them. Our research indicates similarities in what it means and has meant to be in a mixed couple in Morocco over the last century. Women are still held responsible for maintaining social cohesion. What has changed is that they were previously supposed to uphold colonial authority and now are supposed to maintain religious and familial norms. Gender also continues to be the defining trait for the make-up and the movement of mixed couples: couples in Morocco are still mainly Moroccan men and foreign women. This is because migration continues to mostly operate in the same way: Moroccan men travel abroad and return to Morocco with a foreign woman. The 20th century showed changes in the social class of those entering into mixed marriage, which were an increasingly bourgeois phenomenon among a certain generation of educated Moroccan men, but it remains the case that mixed couples still primarily decide where to settle based on the husband’s job and decision, as gender inequality means men have better professional opportunities. Racial hierarchies also persist concerning the countries from which migrants are welcomed and perceived in Morocco, and these continue to favour countries with majority white populations. And yet another significant continuity is at the heart of these marriages, the sentiment behind their relationship and their motivation for their migration to Morocco: a “desire for elsewhereness” (Therrien, 2009). Couples continue to fall in love overseas and be drawn to Morocco because of a sense of possibility, both for their relationship and their migration to Morocco. It was this possibility that meant many mixed marriages were prohibited during the colonial period. Mixed relationships offer an opportunity to re-examine ways of living and Morocco provides a space to make a new life, but they are also deeply intimate relationships built on emotional attachment.
37There are, of course, a significant number of changes. The countries from which mixed couples originate has diversified enormously due to globalisation. Morocco changed from a colonised country to one of emigration following independence, but today has become a country of immigration for people from throughout the world. Mixed couples are considerably more likely to be educated, including the women thanks to considerable growth in female education and professional opportunities. Many couples meet abroad as the result of highly skilled migration, in contrast to migration for manual labour at the beginning of the 20th century, and many settle in Morocco because of the professional possibilities the country offers. Moroccan authorities today also favour marriage for mixed couples and facilitate gaining the residency permit (if the couple respect the Family Code and the migration legal procedures), in stark contrast to attempts by colonial authorities to ban mixed couples from entering Morocco. Social perception of marriage migration has also significantly changed. During the colonial period mixed families were directly targeted as a threat by colonial authorities. In the period of independence, mixed marriage was tied to ideas of male emancipation and “modernity” , it was seen as providing men with a way to escape traditional masculine gender roles such as paying the bride price. This desire to escape was criticised by Moroccan women. In today’s globalised world, mixedness is considered an asset that offers social capital, cultural competences and increased opportunities. Nevertheless, contemporary anthropological data shows that persisting gender and racial boundaries shaped mixed couples. Social class and education are also factors increasingly associated with mixed marriages in Morocco throughout the 20th century. The impact of racial and gender boundaries upon identity transmission and construction for mixed individuals remains to be explored in our next research paper. An anthropological and historical approach to these questions provides a broader lens to see these changes and continuities over time. This allows us to draw back the contemporary experiences of mixedness to reconsider elements of the past and provide deeper insight into the historical data by comparing these shared experiences. This enriches considerably our understanding of experiences and social perception of contemporary marriage migration to Morocco.