3.2 From Morocco to Europe

• Aardrijkskunde
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 2

3.2 From Morocco to Europe

Learning objectives

After studying this section, you will be able to:

• Describe push and pull factors for economic migrants.
• Describe the pattern of how Moroccan migrants have come to Europe.

Noura’s grandfather migrated from Taznakht to Casablanca.

A typical village in the deserts of Morocco.

Talking point: Cities are often defined as having many pull factors, but what can be push factors for cities?

Many Moroccan former guest workers and their families are still living in Europe.

A remittance is a transfer of money, often by a foreign worker to an individual in their home country. 

Numbers of guest workers per country and the percentage of these that have returned to their country.

Family reunification

When a migrant worker has his or her partner and children move to the country where he or she works.

Family formation

If a migrant worker seeks a partner in his or her home country and has the new partner migrate to the country where he or she works.

No more Moroccan migrants?

What’s in the family?

The children of your parent’s brothers and sisters are your cousins. There is no Dutch translation for the word ‘cousins’. We speak about ‘neven en nichten’, in that case. In English you only talk about nephews and nieces, when you want to specifically point out how many boys and girls there are in your group of cousins. For example, you might have six cousins: of these, two are nephews (male) and four are nieces (female). If your cousins have children themselves, these are your second cousins.

Moroccans living together

Because of shared cultural connections, many Moroccans started to live together in specific neighbourhoods. You can still recognise these areas today. For example, 39% of the inhabitants in the neighbourhood ‘Kanaleneiland’ in Utrecht has a Moroccan background. You only find these neighbourhoods with many immigrants in the bigger cities of the Netherlands.

Not everybody is happy with this situation, as it doesn’t stimulate the integration of immigrants into Dutch society. Others see it as a positive example of the Dutch multicultural society. This is a common topic in the Dutch and European politics nowadays.

Dutch prime minister Rutte visiting the Schilderswijk in The Hague, a neighbourhood with many Moroccan inhabitants.

Essence

Guest workers from Morocco arrived in the Netherlands at the end of the 1960s. Most of them first migrated from the countryside of Morocco to its bigger cities, before then migrating to Europe. At first, the guest workers went without their family, but family reunification took place for many, a few years later. Other guest workers found a wife in Morocco and then brought her over. Many migrated Moroccans, as well as their families, still live in the Netherlands. The pull factors of a better economy, job opportunities and facilities attracted these economic migrants away from their homes. Where they used to live, push factors triggered them to leave.

Look at the planner in Teams for the exercises you have to do!