Alice Elliot. 2021. The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco. Indiana University Press: Indiana. pp.204
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Author | Elsa Mescoli |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13083 |
Review Elliot, A. (2021). The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco. Indiana, Indiana University Press, 204 p. Requested
by Souad Osseiran.
Alice Elliot's “The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco” is a remarkable monograph that presents a thick and rich
ethnographic work, as well as a series of insightful theoretical explorations of migration-related concepts through an
anthropological prism. By scrutinising the emic notion of l-brra, the outside, the author provides a rich overview of
migration discourses and practices and their impact—at different intersecting scales—on the construction of life in
the context studied. The main setting of the research is a rural village (called Zafiah by the author) in the Tadla region
in Morocco, a place of departure—and circulation—of migratory movements towards Europe and more precisely Italy.
The ethnographic work is carried out in this and other complementary places to follow the unfolding of l-brra through
the actions of its social actors, which makes this work “invariably […] multisited, or, rather, multihousehold”.
The book studies Moroccan migration to Europe, embedded in “the country migration biography”, which is
rhythmed by both local and global dynamics. The author focuses on the places where migration originates, studying
it as “an abiding force in the intimacy of everyday life”. More precisely, she studies what migration is for her inter-
locutors (mainly those who have not migrated), and also what it does—how it makes them—in their life. Although
“the absence of migrants' voices can be seen as a shortcoming of the book” (21), studying migration through the
articulation of presence/absence (and being/not being related to this articulation), is a way of giving new meaning to
Sayad's (1999) classical theorisations.
The book is divided into six chapters, each introducing a facet of the complex matrix of dynamics in which the
notion of l-brra materializes and operates in Zafiah and revealing “the striking place migration has come to occupy in
people's lives in contemporary Morocco” (4). Chapter 1 is devoted to the analysis of the ways in which l-brra “directly
and indirectly modulat[es] local regimes of time”, with a particular focus on the impact of the rhythms of migrant's
returns and (re)departures on kinship relations and intimate bodily practices. In chapter 2, the author studies the
transformative power of l-brra on individual and social subjectivities, i.e. its capacity to shape people's ways of being
and acting. In chapter 3, she takes this analysis further by exploring how women married to migrants “grapple with
the everyday practicalities of absence and waiting” (24) and how these dynamics “permeat[e] the understandings of
themselves as gendered subjects” (23), demonstrating that “l-brra engenders specific subjectivities and relations not
only for those who leave but also for those who stay” (73). This reflection is continued in Chapter 4 by focusing on
the younger generation of unmarried women, specifically university students who imagine themselves to be – and,
therefore, act to become - “specific kinds of modern, gendered, and pious subjects in and through l-brra” (25). The
ethnographic study and conceptual analysis of the articulation of destiny and human action, especially women's
BOOK REVIEW
DOI: 10.1111/imig.13083
Received: 7 October 2022 Accepted: 26 October 2022
283
Int Migr. 2022;60:283–285. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig
Alice Elliot. 2021. The Outside: Migration as Life in
Morocco. Indiana University Press: Indiana. pp.204
Elsa Mescoli
CEDEM – Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies, LASC – Laboratory of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Liège,
Faculty of Social Sciences, Liège, Belgium
Email: e.mescoli@uliege.be
© 2022 International Organization for Migration.
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