Field Train Students, CSOs & Officials in Morocco

One of the most iconic sites of Marrakech is the medina, where the bustle and excitement of thousands of tourists and locals is prevalent daily. Rows upon rows of souks line curving alleys with merchants who sell pottery, silver rings adorned with large gems and fresh fruit juice. The Jamaa el-Fnaa Square epitomizes the hectic energy of the medina; snake charmers, street performers, sunglass sellers and fruit stands sell products straight from the sidewalk.

Street vendors are one of the more visible sectors among a vast undocumented labor force in Morocco. The informal sector, also known as the shadow economy and informal economy, refers to any economy and labor that is not taxed or monitored by the government.

Measuring the informal economy is extremely difficult; there is no official data, and individuals who work in this sector try tohide their profit. The informal sector constitutes anywhere from30-40% of the GDP. The informal sector is estimated to employ anywhere from33% toalmost 80% of the Moroccan workforce.

The informal economy is made up of multiple sectors, with8.8% in construction, 51% in trade, 16% in industry and 25% in services. Broken down further, street vendors account for18.1% of informal labor. While the data is highly variable, it is abundantly clear that the informal sector is a crucial aspect of the economy and is many individuals’ sole source of income.

The relationship between the informal sector and development is complex. On one hand, it can promote development by reducing unemployment and promoting local economies. Many informal workers lack access to formal work due to migrant status or a lack of education and skills. However, the informal sector is marked with instability.

Workers are excluded from social security systems such as healthcare, retirement, and insurance. Work conditions are also not monitored, and many workers are subjected to unsafe working conditions, work long hours, and are paid less than minimum wage.

Poverty rates are higher among informal workers;a study on informal work in developing countries found that increased participation in the informal economy is positively correlated with rising poverty rates. Informal workers lack the ability to properly advocate for themselves.85.6% of informal workers were not members of a professional union as of 2014, and unions find it difficult to organize informal workers. On a greater scale, the informal economy costs the state an estimated34 billion dirhams in annual tax dollars lost.

Increased participation in the informal sector is believed to be correlated with Morocco’s rapid urbanization. From 2010 to 2020, Morocco’s urban population increased from58% to 63.3%. However, theformal sector cannot absorb all the added labor force in the market, particularly considering many migrants come from rural areas and may lack the proper education and skills for formal jobs. This leads individuals to seek employment in the informal sector.

The large participation in the informal sector and the lack of financial stability it provides for many workers leads to further consequences and is correlated with residence in informal housing. Informal housing is also referred to as ‘shantytowns,’ and are cheaply and often illegally built communities on the outskirts of cities.

Shantytowns attract individuals living in poverty with low living costs, and are often thefirst stopping point for rural migrants. Shantytowns have strong communities on which individuals can rely on one another, and vibrant cultures. However, they can also be overcrowded and lack access to basic infrastructure such assanitation, transportation and schools.

The government has taken efforts to address issues caused by the informal sector. The Villes Sans Bidonvilles Programme (2004) aimed to eliminate all shantytowns and rehome residents. As of 2022, the program eliminated59 out of 85 documented shantytowns. However, manyindividuals were dissatisfied after being relocated as they lost their social networks and proximity to cities.

King Mohamed 6^th additionally issued instructions to organize, formalize, and supervise street vending activities. Policies included creating a census of street vendors, creating work schedules, and relocating markets to reduce street traffic. However,many street vendors were excluded from the rehabilitation process, and many of the market relocations were in outskirts of the city, reducing the number of customers.

The failure to engage communities in policymaking lead to a failure of both policies to improve the livelihood of informal workers to their maximum extent. It is pertinent to consider the desires and opinions of informal workers and those residing in shantytowns before deciding further policy. As Morocco continues to decentralize, it is likely that future policies will be executed increasingly at the local level.

While demands will vary from different localities, overarching demands include simplifying procedures to be included in the formal sector, increased technical training, access to social systems, and increased security. The informal sector must be taken into consideration when implementing social policies, or such programs may fail to help the people that would benefit greatly from them.

On Monday morning, June 6, the High Atlas Foundation’s office was crowded with young people. Law students from the University Cadi Ayyad who work with the HAF’s legal aid clinic arrived to participate in an identity mapping workshop with the UVA interns. HAF’s Ikbale facilitated our dialogue and ensured that both the Moroccan and American perspectives on identity were represented in our discussion.

Our workshop began with several markers of identity to reflect on: language, age, hometown, role model, socioeconomic class, family, and so on. Ikbale also offered us the opportunity to write our own prompts on the mind maps. My group added a section for our hobbies, our perception of love (though adding it felt too intimate to me), and a section for doodling. Other groups remained truer to the intention of the workshop and added sections for music genres, favorite clothes, and food. Of the prompts Ikbale assigned us, “role model” was the most interesting. I and the other American in my group wrote our mother and father as our role models; all four Moroccans wrote in turn “mysilf, my selfe, mysilfe, my self.” It certainly appeared so, since none of them referred to the others’ spelling of “myself” when writing it.

I was struck that in this society that values family and hospitality so strongly—values that I associate with collectivism and interdependence—all four of our group members rely so solidly upon themselves. I said “they look up to mirrors” when we presented our identity map to the class and the law students all laughed, nodded, and agreed that they are their own role models. We had the opportunity to recognize a cultural phenomenon: Moroccans are self-reliant and see themselves that way.

To me, the value of the workshop comes primarily from the conversations that came after it. The workshop itself was like a trawler: Ikbale, the fisherwoman, sifted through the silt of our self-concepts in search of fish, moments when we could recognize how our identities relate to the world around us. I had such a one with the role model question. Trawlers muddy the water behind them; in the same way, Ikbale muddied the way we interacted with one another after the activity was over. In the wake of the workshop, we were less concerned with how we presented ourselves and instead focused on learning more about others.

At lunch, a group of law students sat with me. One, Karim, asked me about Russia. Are Russians persecuted in the United States? What are your opinions about the war in Ukraine? He expressed his opinions about Russian politics, the Cold War, and NATO in return. We were able to compare our political positionalities, the way we understood war and fatality, and the way we think about the economy. Without the workshop that morning, we would have interacted in clean water, and kept our thoughts in the silt to ourselves. But we were willing to be muddy and talk about topics that would otherwise have been taboo.

The value of the workshop with the Cadi Ayyad students is multidimensional. It fostered intercultural dialogue between two groups of young people, invited us to reflect on ourselves, and encouraged us to recognize what unites us with and differentiates us from others. We considered how we interact with the world: the language we use to learn and build friendships, the cities we grew up in, the socioeconomic class that supported or obstructed our aspirations.

The workshop primed us to connect more deeply with one another. I remember that one of my group members is a criminology major. Another loves his date farm, and showed us photos of his palms, squatting in rows. I am still in touch with Karim. We discuss our pets, migration policies in different countries, and our hardships in a day. We met each other when the water was muddy, so we were able to forge a solid friendship quickly. That is to say, the workshop generated the conditions for us to form intercultural relationships, founded on an empathy for our ideological and experiential diversity. We all came to the HAF office that morning, even if our routes were categorically different.