In and Out of Morocco

Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown

2001
Author:

David A. McMurray

A revealing inquiry into how global culture is lived locally.

Every summer for almost forty years, tens of thousands of Moroccan emigrants from as far away as Norway and Germany have descended on the duty-free smugglers’ cove/migrant frontier boomtown of Nador, Morocco. David McMurray investigates the local effects of the multiple linkages between Nador and international commodity circuits, and analyzes the profound effect on everyday life of the free flow of bodies, ideas, and commodities into and out of the region.

A creative and valuable book, In and Out of Morocco successfully transforms the framework in which the traditional ethnographic study of a locale is written.

George Marcus, author of Ethnography through Thick and Thin

Every summer for almost forty years, tens of thousands of Moroccan emigrants from as far away as Norway and Germany descend on the duty-free smugglers’ cove/migrant frontier boomtown of Nador, Morocco. David McMurray investigates the local effects of the multiple linkages between Nador and international commodity circuits, and analyzes the profound effect on everyday life of the free flow of bodies, ideas, and commodities into and out of the region.

Combining immigration and population statistics with street-level ethnography, In and Out of Morocco covers a wide range of topics, including the origin and nature of immigrant nostalgia, the historical evolution of the music of migration in the region, and the influence of migrant wealth on social distinctions in Nador.

Groundbreaking in its attention to the performative aspects of life in a smuggling border zone, the book also analyzes the way in which both migration and smuggling have affected local structures of feeling by contributing to the spread of hyperconsumption. The result is a rare and revealing inquiry into how the global culture is lived locally.

David A. McMurray is assistant professor of anthropology at Oregon State University.

A creative and valuable book, In and Out of Morocco successfully transforms the framework in which the traditional ethnographic study of a locale is written.

George Marcus, author of Ethnography through Thick and Thin

McMurray has succeeded in writing a very readable as well as a highly informative book that contributes importantly to our understanding of the economic forces impinging on modern day Morocco.

L’Esprit Créateur