A Bit More Detail

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On the evening of October 28, a garbage truck crushed Moroccan fish-seller Mohsen Fikri to death in al-Hoceima city in Morocco’s Rif as he tried to protect his produce. A month has passed since the incident, but protests are still ongoing in the city. While investigations seem to be at a standstill, protesters in al-Hoceima continued their action against the authorities, end of last week. They demanded the punishment of the culprits in this crime, which they believe is premeditated, instead of offering scapegoats to alleviate the pressure in the streets. The protesters were referring to some employees and garbage collectors whom the authorities arrested on the grounds of being implicated in Fikri’s killing.

The flame of public anger in al-Hoceima city is still burning, although the situation has relatively calmed down in other Moroccan cities. In fact, relations between the Makhzen a.k.a the federal state and al-Hoceima city, or the Moroccan Rif in general, have been shaky for decades.

The protests started out with slogans demanding a transparent and impartial investigation to expose the circumstances of Fikri’s death. But they soon escalated into calls for a comprehensive trial of the political regime as a whole, its politics and its behavior towards a marginalized region that has been deliberately shunned from the state’s general policies. This reaction did not come as a surprise. In fact, by exploring the Rif’s rebellious history against the authorities, one realizes that the crushing of Fikri was an opportunity to evoke this painful past and the feelings of oppression, disdain and discrimination that are deeply-rooted in the consciousness of Rifians since the country’s nominal independence in 1956.

Between 1958 and 1959, an uprising broke out as a natural reaction to the behavior of the new authorities that rose to power as a result of the Aix-Les-Bains negotiations. These authorities disbanded the Moroccan Army of Liberation and killed many of its men, in addition to oppressing, abducting, and torturing their opponents, especially sympathizers with the military leader Mohammed Bin Abd El-Karim El-Khattabi and those espousing his thought. Many Rifians were also forbidden from participating in regulating their region’s affairs or contributing to the rule of their country. They were not integrated in the different governments that were formed during the years 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1958.

The uprising was fiercely oppressed by the army, even using aircrafts flown by French pilots. Hundreds were killed and thousands were arrested and wounded. Abd El-Karim estimated the number of detainees in the wake of the Rif uprising at 8420. After that, the region was under a tight economic and security blockade until the January 1984 uprising that erupted as a result of the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in Morocco. The January uprising, which students in several Rifian cities spearheaded, was also violently oppressed by the authorities of King Hassan II who gave a famous speech in the wake of the incidents which claimed the lives of many and wounded others. In his speech, he described Rifians as “scum” and other slurs that are still engraved in their memories. One cannot ignore the sporadic events that Rifians lived through during the so-called “new era” such as the al-Hoceima earthquake in 2004 and the arson of five men in 2011 inside a bank in the city during the February 20 protests.

These are busy times for Nissem Bittan, a Jewish jewellery salesman in the heart of the old city of Houmt Souk. Customers keep walking into his shop, which seems to be constructed solely out of lavishly plastered ceilings and walls and handcarved wooden showcases.

The customers dig deep in their pockets and take out jewels and gold they want to sell. It’s just before Eid al-Adha and people on Djerba are running out of money. On the island just off the coast of Tunisia tourism is the main source of income, but it became almost non-existent after terrorists hit the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March and the beaches of Sousse in June, leaving almost 60 dead in total.

“People don’t have money but they still want to buy a sheep for their family (as part of the Eid tradition). So they sell their jewelry to us,” says Bittan, a 52-year-old in shorts and a striped shirt who was born and raised on Djerba.

Bittan runs one of the many jewellery stores in the old city of Houmt Souk, the small capital of Djerba. In those narrow streets, Jews and Muslim merchants have been working side by side for centuries, relatively secluded from the outside world. He has Muslim friends, Bittan says, although they don’t really come over to each others houses for dinner a lot and "there are certainly no inter-marriages" between the two religious groups. “In Tunis that might happen... maybe,” he says. “The Jews there are a bit more liberal. But here, no. It’s a religious thing, we don’t blend. But we still respect each other.”

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• At Acts of Minor Treason, Andrew Barton argues in favour of some sort of Canadian government outreach to the Canadian diaspora.


• Border Thinking's Laura Agustín argues that sociological research on international migration of sex workers needs to be carried out more impartially in the context of globalization and migration.


• Eastern Approaches observes that economic crisis has really hurt the Belarusian traders smuggling goods into their country from Poland.


• Far Outliers has two grim posts on interwar Ukraine, the first on the ways in which Hitler and Stalin saw Ukraine as necessary for the fulfillment of their plans, the second recounting the great famine of the 1930s.


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews a book on the noxious but increasingly common tendency to hire interns instead of workers.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis comments on the increasingly common interest of unions in establishing transnational links, i.e. the United States with Canada and Mexico.


• Personal Reflection's Jim Belshaw argues that the recent visit of William and Kate to Canada was made in part with the aim of promoting Canadian national unity and the Canadian-ness of Québec.


• At The Power and the Money, Noel Maurer comments on the war in Libya, noting the non-involvement of Egypt and Tunisia, the role of France in the light of domestic politics, the rebel-Berber alliance, and more.


• Slap Upside the Head celebrates the news that Ontario Roman Catholic schools have to allow GLBT support groups, gay-straight alliances in all but name.

Les déplacements de la population algérienne de la colonie vers la métropole remonte à la fin des années 1870 soit quelques années suivant le débarquement des troupes coloniales françaises en Algérie. Issue principalement de la région de Kabylie, cette migration est essentiellement provoquée par le bouleversement de la structure économique et sociale algérienne. En effet, l’imposition du système colonial avec son lot d’expropriations et de dépossessions foncières au profit des colons a engendré la déstructuration de l’économie traditionnelle algérienne, d’une part. Et d’autre part, l’appauvrissement et la paupérisation des paysans algériens. « De l’état pastoral et patriarcal, où il n’y avait ni riches, ni pauvres, la société algérienne, déchue de ses bases économiques et brisée dans ses structures internes tendait à se stratifier selon une autre hiérarchie : multiplication du nombre des petits propriétaires et fellahs, sans terre, transformations de ces derniers d’abord en khemas (métayers) puis en ouvriers agricoles », écrivent A. Sayad et A. Gillette.

[. . .]

Les émigrés de cette première génération qui venaient de Kabylie étaient essentiellement concentrés « dans les mines et les usines du Nord-Pas de Calais, dans les raffineries et les ports marseillais et dans les entreprises parisiennes ». Ces hommes étaient des « émissaires délégués par leurs familles et par le groupe pour une mission précise, limitée dans le temps », analyse A. Sayad. Et selon M. Harzoune, « les communautés villageoises ont maîtrisé la noria des migrations, organisant les départs et les retours qui intervenaient généralement après un court séjour en France ». Ainsi, les hommes qui traversaient la mer pour vendre leur force de travail en France « étaient sélectionnés par le groupe selon les principes de l’habitus paysans ». De ce fait, l’émigration prenait « l’aspect d’une entreprise collective, décidée et programmée par la communauté paysanne ». Et étant essentiellement « contrôlés » par le groupe et « soumis » au monde paysan, ces déplacements étaient « ordonnés », « provisoires » et « limités dans le temps parce que limités dans –leurs- objectifs ». Ils avaient pour mission et pour fonction de « sauvegarder et de soutenir l’ordre paysan et de lui donner ainsi les moyens de se perpétuer en tant que tel ».

The movement of population of the colony of Algeria to the mainland began in the late 1870s, a few years after the landing of French colonial troops in Algeria. Issuing mainly from the region of Kabylie, this migration was mainly caused by the disruption of the economic and social structure of Algeria. Indeed, the imposition of the colonial system with its share of expropriation and dispossession of land to settlers led to the disintegration of the traditional economy of Algeria on one hand, and on the other hand caused the impoverishment and the impoverishment of Algerian farmers. "In the pastoral and patriarchal state, where there was neither rich nor poor, Algerian society, deprived of its economic foundations and broken in its internal structures tended to stratify according to another hierarchy: increasing the number of small fellahs and owners, landless, transformations of the latter first into Khemais (sharecroppers) and then farm workers," write A. Sayad and A. Gillette.

[. . .]

The first generation of emigrants who came from Kabylia were mainly concentrated "in the mines and mills of the Nord-Pas de Calais, in refineries and the ports of Marseilles and in Paris businesses." These men were "emissaries delegated by their families fora specific, time-limited mission, limited in time," says A. Sayad. M. Harzoune said, "The village communities have mastered the flux migration, arranging departures and returns that generally occurred after a short stay in France." Thus, men who crossed the sea to sell their labor in France "were selected by the group according to the principles of peasant habits." As a result, emigration took "the appearance of a collective enterprise, decided and planned by the peasant community." And being essentially "controlled" by the group and "subject" in the farming world, these movements were "ordained", "provisional" and "limited in time because of their limitedobjectives." They had the mission and function of "protecting and supporting the farmer and giving the grioup the means to perpetuate themselves."