Transnational Activism: Amazigh Women Between France and Morocco

• In Event: Confronting the Nation-State: A Comparative Transnational Conversation on Women’s Migration, State Power, and Feminist Resistance

Abstract

As French attitudes following the second World War grew more exclusionary toward North Africans generally, and the Moroccan state turned against the autochthonous Amazigh (Berbers) in particular, a migration pattern emerged characterized by low levels of assimilation in France and high levels of economic and cultural connection to “home” by Amazigh labor migrants. On both sides of the Mediterranean, Amazigh women combat their own silencing and economic deprivation by male kin and by the state. This transnational approach draws upon oral interviews with Amazigh women’s rights activists in Morocco and in France.

Presenter

• Adrienne G. Tyrey, Michigan State University