Nordic Africa Days
Uppsala 5-7 October 2007
Workshop:
Restrictions and Possibilities. The Media in Discourses of
Migration, Citizenship and Belonging in Africa
Moroccan diaspora, Internet and national
imagination. Building a community online
through the Internet portal Yabiladi
by
Amina Loukili
Nordic Africa Days in Uppsala, 5-7 October, 2007
The Nordic Africa Institute
Moroccan diaspora, Internet and national imagination
Building a community online through the Internet portal Yabiladi
Amina Loukili1
Abstract
With large growing communities of immigrants dispersed in different parts of the world,
eager to preserve their identities and cultures, the Internet has become an ideal cost-effective
communication tool that facilitates interaction within the diaspora. As Moroccan immigrants
seek to maintain ties with their homeland, many are increasingly embracing the Internet to
produce and develop a new sense of community where they can create new discourses about
identity, belonging and citizenship. For this purpose, they have established electronic portals,
forums, blogs, online magazines and other electronic networks to maintain connections with
national groups all over the world.
Yabiladi (My Country in Arabic) is one of the most popular Internet portals established by a
group of Moroccan immigrants to foster connections among the Moroccan community. This
paper will study the community building aspects through Yabiladi in particular, on a more
general background of the new possibilities, embedded in the Internet, which did not exist
before for Moroccan immigrants. Tired of the official media’s stonewalling and governmental
censorship, more and more Moroccans turn to Internet, which offers a unique environment
where all kinds of topics can be discussed.
1
Lecturer and Researcher at the media and journalism department of Volda University College
1
Moroccan diaspora, Internet and national imagination
Building a community online through the Internet portal Yabiladi
Introduction
In an era characterized by large-scale migrations and a rapid development of information and
communication technologies, Internet has emerged as the ultimate tool to create the right
conditions for immigrants to foster communications with fellow citizens and develop their
sense of community (Karim 2003). The characteristics of Internet, supposed to be a
decentralized, participatory, unregulated and egalitarian medium would also allow voices of
minorities excluded from mainstream media both abroad and at home to be heard. The virtues
of Internet are not limited to the opening of new possibilities for gaining higher visibility and
strengthening a sense of community but it has also contributed to the emergence of a
transnational public sphere where communities dispersed in different geographical locations
exchange freely points of views and ideas and debate them without fearing the restrictions of
traditional media or the arbitrariness of censorship (see for example Appadurai 1996, Bernal
2006, Parham 2004, Yang 2003) .
This paper seeks to explore the following. First it examines the possibilities that the Internet is
offering to the Moroccan immigrants in the context of a portal called Yabiladi from the
vantage point of building a collective identity and strengthening ties both to the homeland and
others in the diaspora. Second it will challenge the traditional theories about Internet as
heralding a new borderless territory of cosmopolitan identities (Bhaba 1994, Negroponte
1995) and will de-mystify the hype over “cyberspace” and its consequences on the
construction of cultural meanings and distinguished narratives. Though the Internet offers a
transnational space, it does not lead to the convergence of cultures abut instead enhance the
possibilities of diversification and pluralism of social practices and beliefs.
Methodology
My research study is based on a long-term observation approach of Yabiladi portal. My
familiarity with French and Moroccan dialect constituted the first and foremost channel of
access to Yabiladi and other websites intended for the Moroccan diaspora discovered
through the use of search engines employing keywords like “Moroccan migrants”, “Morocco,
Diaspora”, “MRE” (Marocains Résidents a l’Etranger) and hyperlinks.2Yabiladi is ranked on
2
I came across handful sites for Moroccan immigrants in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany but I chose to limit
myself to the study of Yabiladi because it is far more popular than other web sites I have visited (Yabiladi
receives approximately 200 000 visits every month).
2
the web as the first popular site visited by Moroccans migrants and offered thus substantial
material to study. The portal has not only a growing popularity online but also off-line. It is
cited in different newspapers as a sprawling virtual community of Moroccans and its founder
Mohamed Ezzouak is mentioned by Tel Quel, a weekly progressive French speaking
Moroccan magazine, as one of the leading figures of Moroccan youth that are exerting
influence in Morocco (Tel Quel 2006). Over six months, I spent considerable time following
the topics discussed in forums, examining the archives, reading articles published in the
portal, posting questions, sitting back and thinking about the dynamics that are driving the
portal. I conducted also in-depth interviews with Yabiladi’s webmaster that provided valuable
answers that I have integrated to my paper and compared to my analysis drawn from months
of observation.
A brief overview of Moroccan migration
The movements of migration have been significantly increasing the last years. Regarding
Morocco, there are no clear figures of Moroccan emigrants and their descendants in the
world. Some journalists and scholars mention over two million and a half Moroccans residing
abroad. Others speak of six to seven million people of Moroccan origin that live today outside
of their country (Vermeren 2002), which is a considerable figure since they represent about 20
per cent of the general Moroccan population. As the figures show, 82 per cent of Moroccan
immigrants established themselves in the European Union. They are the first immigrant
community in Belgium, Italy and Spain. Although Moroccans target a rather large set of
destinations, given the historical ties that bound Morocco to France as a former protectorate,
about 800 000 Moroccans and their descendants live nowadays in France. Other Moroccans
live in North America and Arab countries such as Libya, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates.
Moroccan migration movements have begun in the 1960s when Europe was in need of cheap
labor. Consequently, the first migrants towards Europe were blue collar workers that lacked
academic qualifications and faced language and integration difficulties. In 1967 and 1974,
European countries adopted restrictive policies to stop workers migration given the declining
economic situation (Reniers 1999) but this did not end the migration flows from Morocco to
Europe; family migration followed labor migration. The second group of Moroccan migrants
is students that traveled mostly to Europe and decided to settle. They belong to middle and
upper social classes and many of them have succeeded professionally in host countries and
occupy high-status positions. While for the first group, the reasons of migration might be
attributed to economic reasons –leaving Morocco to increase the income of the household-,
for the second group, political and social-cultural reasons are also important to be taken into
consideration. During the 1980s and 1990s, many Moroccans active within political
organizations and that could not comply with the political oppression under king Hassan II,
emigrated to study in France and other European countries. As for socio-cultural motives,
there has been a great desire among young Moroccans to escape from the Moroccan societal
model where religion and family restrictions are omnipresent (Reniers 1999). The rapid
development of the use of new technologies of information and communication such as
satellite TV channels and the Internet that send tempting images of Western consumption
societies explain the steady desire for Moroccan youth to emigrate to the other side of the
Mediterranean Sea. About 70 per cent of the Moroccan youth dream to emigrate (Alami
2002). For the majority that can not obtain legal documents to cross the borders, they try
Lhrigu (It can be translated to burning the past or the legal identity documents), that is to
3
emigrate illegally by crossing the Gibraltar Detroit packed in pateras3, which result in
massive drowning. Every year hundreds of unfortunate illegal Moroccan emigrants are found
dead in beaches.
Moroccan diaspora and electronic networks
Many scholars argue that the Internet creates new possibilities for people to form deliberative
spaces where they could participate in open public debates. It is said that the Internet
increases the opportunities for dissemination of knowledge and access to information, for
obtaining better jobs and facilitating the life of people. In so far as such claims are plausible,
inequality in Internet access becomes a serious issue. As a general rule, people with high level
of education and high income have easier access to the World Wide Web than those who have
lower income, lower social status and who lack higher education. Additionally, many studies
reveal that ethnicity, gender, age and geographic distribution are decisive factors in the
acquisition of digital skills. White young men, residing in urban areas are more likely to use
the Internet than other social groups (Hoffman and Novak 1998). This of course applies also
to Yabiladi users according to statistics provided by the webmaster: Moroccan immigrants
that participate in Yabiladi are urban, young and educated; 72 per cent are aged between 18
and 40 and 67 per cent of them are highly educated. The first generation of unskilled labor
immigrants has little chance to have access to the Internet compared to the second and third
generations of Moroccan immigrants who went to schools and work as white-collars. By the
same token, the first generation of Moroccan immigrants with high cultural and economic
capital, who benefited from education in the finest universities of Europe and North America
are more likely to go online than Moroccan immigrants from the second and third generations
with a poorer cultural and economic capital. Though Internet, in this regard, may seem to
have restrictive access and reflects the social, economic and cultural gulfs among Moroccan
immigrants, it is still a powerful tool for significant parts of the diasporic communities to
communicate cheaply and sustain effectively social networks.
Ten years ago, Moroccan students around the world could barely build transnational
networks. Today, they are forming significant online communities whether on the Facebook,
Hi5 or MySpace. They use instant messaging, e-mail as cost-effective means to communicate,
raise political issues whether about the state corruption, Western Sahara conflict, the Amazigh
identity or women rights situation as well as to talk about the mundane, which plays a
fundamental role in strengthening the sense of belonging and the national imagination. They
direct blogs followed and commented by their friends. Being myself member of such
networks, I was able to re-establish long-lost friendships from high school ten years after my
last off-line meetings with former classmates based today in Morocco, Spain, the USA and
Canada. Internet has significantly boosted my abilities to create a network with present and
past acquaintances, rediscover lost ties and strengthen new ones; and to the contrary of offline communities that may weaken once their members leave the physical space, online
communities, not anymore restricted by the obligation of the physical presence in a one
common geographical space, seem to be long-lasting and more sustainable as long as there is
reciprocal will, emotional commitment and interest of individuals to maintain the network.
3
Pateras refer to any kind of floating device used to transport illegal emigrants across the straight of Gibraltar.
4
Yabiladi Portal: building a community
The initiative of Yabiladi portal is particularly indicative of the will of the Moroccan diaspora
to build a new form of social groups, have a voice to be heard both at home and in host
countries and preserve the cultural identity of people dispersed in different geographic areas.
In 2002, Mohamed Ezzouak, a second generation Moroccan immigrant, with the help of few
other volunteers, launched from France the first most visited portal site by Moroccan
migrants. By creating Yabiladi, Mohamed Ezzouak sought to create direct connections among
Moroccan immigrants and open up new ways for the Moroccan diaspora to communicate,
share information and develop the feeling of belonging. In an interview to an online African
newspaper Afrik.com Mohamed Ezzouak explained the motives that incited him to create
Yabiladi “Our objective through creating Yabiladi is to federate all Moroccans in the world.
Internet is a powerful tool to meet, have contacts, learn, get informed and entertain” (Berkani
2002).
Yabiladi receives up to 1 million hits per month and more than 12 million pages are visited
during the same period of time. Yabiladi has more than 200 000 registered members. It would
be unwise to give an estimate of the volume of active members since verifiable data is
unfortunately unavailable. Although Yabiladi, in its conception, targets all Moroccan
communities abroad, its main focus has been France and generally European French speaking
countries such as Belgium and Switzerland since French language predominates in most
edited content and forums, and thereby restrict potential participation from other parts of the
world. We can assume also that Moroccans who live in other countries where French is not
spoken, but still were born and grew up in Morocco, have thus access to the site since French
is widely used in Morocco. Statistics provided by the webmaster of Yabiladi show that 50 per
cent of Yabiladi users live in France, 25 per cent of them in Morocco and the rest of users are
based in different geographical locations: Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, Spain etc. There
are relatively small discussion forums within Yabiladi dedicated to Spanish and English
speaking immigrants. Yabiladi, has, in this regard, failed to include communities in other
countries like Netherlands, Italy, Germany, North America and Arab countries.
Yabiladi can be accessed and seen by everyone but only registered members can participate in
forums and chat rooms. As a portal site, Yabiladi fulfills a number of uses: it contains a
directory of web sites, it provides continuing home-made information and links to articles
from both local and international newspapers in different European languages : French,
English, Spanish , Italian and German. The portal provides valuable information on addresses
and contact information of Moroccan consulates and embassies as well as TV programs of the
two national public Moroccan channels La RTM and 2M. It includes a subsection on Koran as
well as a currency converter. It contains up-to-date information about events, conferences and
political and cultural activities in host countries mainly France. The chat room is used to find
suitable partners as much as maintaining cultural links: exchanging Moroccan recipes or
discussing religious beliefs and practices. A large part of the portal is destined to news and
articles related to Morocco and Moroccan immigrants. Interviews conducted by the team of
Mohamed Ezzouak with Moroccan officials such as the minister in charge of migration Nezha
Chkrouni are published to debate the civil rights of immigrants and the efforts of the state to
include them in the political scene and the national development process.
In forums, messages are addressed publicly to the authors of prior postings to comment on
their ideas, add to them, debate them or disagree with them. These forums are controlled by
5
moderators which make sure that Yabiladi conduct chart is respected by forum users. In the
most popular forums such as miscellaneous, Yabiladi users exchange information on all kinds
of issues, from the banalities of everyday life to more serious topics like the political elections
in Morocco, corruption and religion. They also share knowledge on how to cope with and
maximize gains from various institutions (e.g., European consulates in Morocco, police and
social service agencies in host countries). The forum about jokes is quite popular as well. The
most controversial topics remain religion, monarchy in Morocco, homosexuality and interreligious marriages that often generate into long, heated and intense discussions.
The discourses in the forums recreating Islam epitomize the concern of immigrants to retain
their religious heritage that is expressed in their efforts to meet other immigrants to receive
religious education and learn Koran. Within Yabiladi, Ramadan is presented as a focal period
where ‘Moroccaness’ and religious beliefs through traditional dresses, food, and language are
revived. Although in the portal offers a free forum to discuss different subjects and thus a
diversity of discourses is expected, core religious values of migrants as they are practiced are
never questioned. The veil as a religious practice is highly regarded. In the case of second and
third generations of migrants, who face continuous stigmatization of Islam, discussing
critically religion and normative behaviors become synonymous to a betrayal of the
community and the alignment on the host societies’ side perceived as enemies to Islam.
Gender relations within the Moroccan familial and social construct based on patriarchy are
reproduced in Yabiladi. For instance, most of the users defend the importance of women to
remain virgins until their wedding night. Pre-marital sex is perceived as leading to the “wrong
direction” and a sign of the weakening of the Moroccan identity, disrespect to Islam values
and “westernization”. Another example of the pervasiveness of the patriarchal structure:
though in the chart organizing the forums homophobic expressions are theoretically banned,
homophobic comments and insults still profuse in the interactive parts of Yabiladi.
Yabiladi has no commercial content in the forums. The few commercial links within the portal
are related to Morocco: buying a house or airplane tickets to Morocco or attending a concert
by a Moroccan band. A radio broadcasts continuously all types of Moroccan music. The
design of Yabiladi, the visual architecture and the ochre colors used remind of the well-known
Southern Moroccan city Marrakech. Through these different elements, a high loyalty to the
homeland, culture and traditions are present repeatedly. All these Yabiladi components
contribute to the construction of in-group solidarity and the feeling of being at “home”.
Cyberspace, Moroccan diaspora and the national imagination
Scholarship on the origins of nationalism is rather heterogeneous. Whereas Ernest Gellner
attributes the birth of nationalism to the industrialization of society, Benedict Anderson sees
in the emergence of the printing press or what he calls “print capitalism” and the development
of vernacular languages the origins of nationalism (Anderson 1983). To the opposite of “true”
communities where individuals have physical interactions, in imagined communities,
individuals lack face-to-face daily contact, yet they feel strong emotional attachment to the
nation. Images about the nation are created and constructed “It is imagined because the
members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet
them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communities”
(Anderson 1983: 6).
While some Moroccan migrants perceive their identity as a blending of different cultures and
try to rethink and negotiate relentlessly their cultural practices, frequently displaying
6
contradictory feelings and rationales, others identify with an imagined community, drawing
limits between what is Moroccan and what constitutes the ‘Other’. Yabiladi participants use
Internet as a vehicle for strengthening national feelings and forging a sense of belonging to a
national community of Moroccan Muslims scattered around the world that fills the void of a
real, local one. Miller and Slater (2000) point that the Trinidadian immigrants become very
attached to the homeland after using the Internet since it allowed them to keep permanent
interactions with relatives based at home. Internet acts as an open window through which
immigrants recognize and adhere to cultural narratives free to circulate. Far from their
homeland, feeling insecure in their countries of the residence where they often face social and
cultural exclusions, misunderstanding and essentialism, Moroccan immigrants, behind their
screens, can finally meet their fellow citizens. The possibility to discuss problems that
Moroccan immigrants face in host societies in a personal manner in forums and that only
other Moroccan immigrants can understand since they are going through the same
experiences suggests that these social ties have healing characteristics. Problems in
relationships, illnesses, feelings of loneliness are discussed with such empathy. The sense of
sharing the same national background and culture legitimizes the discussions and there is less
fear of being scrutinized from host societies. The potential of Internet in bonding individuals
and creating emotional ties is well documented (Baym 1995, Rheingold 1993, Wellman and
Gullia 1999). In the Moroccan case, isolation in host societies may be very strong since Islam
and Moroccan traditions are quite different from the cultural practices in European and North
American host countries. As cultural differences become more acute, the sense of isolation
increases leading immigrants to look for company and solidarity online, and the more
immigrants are connected, the more Internet use exacerbates the national imagination and the
sense of collective identity. I am not generalizing by arguing that Yabiladi use is a means
through which some of the Moroccan immigrants replace face-to-face interactions and
enclose themselves in a community. However the high number of Yabiladi users and the type
of messages posted in forums led me notice the increasing importance of the Internet as a way
to cope with feelings of displacement and through which migrants construct a sense of
belonging to a transnational community of nationals.
Diasporic public sphere
The news articles centered on matters related to Moroccan diaspora, the flexibility and
interactivity of forums not only contribute to build a structure for how the world is perceived
by Moroccan migrants, but also play a role in the formation of novel communication spaces,
which enable the public presence of socio-cultural representations and collective identities
(Poster 2001). Castells argues that the traditional Habermasian idea of what constitutes a
public sphere is undergoing a deep transformation (Castells 2004). Indeed, the scope of the
Habermasian public sphere that consisted of organs of information and political debate such as
newspapers, as well as institutions of political discussion such as political associations,
parliaments, literary salons, public assemblies, coffee houses, meeting halls, and other public
spaces where socio-political debates took place is expanding at the digital age. Electronic media
are now taking the form of a new “bourgeois public sphere” that mediates between the private
and the public and where individuals gather to discuss public affairs and resist the arbitrary and
oppression of state power. Following the restrictions of access to the site YouTube, where two
videos criticizing the Moroccan monarchy were posted, Mohamed Ezzouak published an acerbic
article 30 May 2007 protesting against the censorship by the publicly owned Moroccan
telecommunications company and Internet provider MarocTelecom. In the article entitled
“Maroc Telecom prefers Porn tube to YouTube”, Mohamed Ezzouak points out the
contradictory attitude of Maroc Telecom that censors YouTube while providing free access to
7
Porn sites, which in a country where the official institutions reiterate tirelessly their attachment to
Islamic traditions, one may assume that the access to such sites is more likely to be restricted
than the access to YouTube.
Moroccan immigrants are using Internet as a technology of freedom to assemble and produce
narratives about history, culture, politics and religion. Traditional media both in host countries
and at home do not allow the existence of such discourses and production of meanings. At
home, stonewalling and censorship are obstacles to expression. Morocco is a country where
the ideals of freedom of speech and freedom to assemble are far from being respected: every
year journalists are sent to prison and obliged to pay huge fines for criticizing the
establishment. Moreover, it is not rare that demonstrators are maltreated by the police during
public assemblies. Whereas in host countries, migrants have limited access to mainstream
media, often perceived as presenting them in an unfavorable way, and feel excluded from the
public discourse.
For the first time in the history of the Moroccan diasporic community, Moroccan migrants can
express themselves within a transnational public sphere where socio-cultural discourses are
not anymore monopolized by the nation-state and where the restrictive press code and other
methods to prevent journalists and citizens from reporting news and commenting freely on the
public affairs are quite impossible to implement. The nation is differentiated from the state
and migrants feel empowerment that enables them to produce narratives about their identity
without necessarily fearing the state encroachments. Internet allows the diaspora to construct
self-directed networks of horizontal communication, bypassing states restrictions and even
opening possibilities to negotiate state power. Yabiladi releases polls that are seriously taken
by the national newspapers and the Moroccan authorities. Moroccan migrants can shape a
public opinion, express their needs and expectations and impinge upon political practice.
Indeed, following the publication of poll results about the disastrous image that Moroccan
migrants have about their consulates in France, the founder of Yabiladi was invited for a
meeting by the ambassador and the consuls of France to help rethinking the public relations of
the Moroccan consulates, which is a clear sign that state representatives start recognizing the
influence and power of electronic networks in forming a transnational Moroccan public
opinion.
Apart from forums and news articles posted in Yabiladi, Mohamed Ezzouak launched in July
2004 a satirical newspaper online called La Gachette du Maroc as a reaction to an article
hostile to Moroccan emigrants in the national newspaper La Gazette du Maroc. Though the
amateur and irregular aspect of this online newspaper should not be ignored, it is still a quite
singular and interesting form of expression attracting Internet users- more than 20 000 copies
of it are downloaded every month. The sole satirical magazine in Morocco Demain had a
short, discontinuous life marked by several interdictions until it was definitely banned in 2003
by the authorities and its director Ali Lmrabet was jailed for three years for “offence against
the monarchy”.4 Like its predecessor, La Gachette du Maroc is, in a light, witty tone, very
critical towards government officials, ill-defined state policies, censorship, Moroccan
institutions and the poor quality of Moroccan press. Though this newspaper has invented new
forms to inform and entertain La Gachette readers and enable Ezzouak and his team to
present views that could not be expressed otherwise, one should not overlook the limitations
that Yabiladi’s webmaster imposes to his magazine : La Gachette has set to itself red-lines
and practices self-censorship regarding certain sensitive issues such as the monarchy, the
4
Ali Lmrabet was freed on 7 January 2004 after a long hunger strike and multiple pressures of the international
community over the Moroccan government.
8
conflict over Western Sahara and religion as if these topics have become traditionally taboos
in the public discourse of migrants. Such persistent fear of the establishment is symptomatic
of highly socialized communities where dominant discourses, even those constructed by the
state, become an indisputable part of the Moroccan national imaginary. Moroccan migrants do
not dare to discuss them openly to not break away from the deeply entrenched sense of
collectivity in such communications networks.
Hybrid recovering of the Darija in the public sphere
While being the language of nearly 30 million people in Morocco, the Moroccan dialect more
commonly referred to as Darija, different in its pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary from
the standard Arabic and much influenced by Berber, French and Spanish, has always been
perceived as a language of low prestige and officially cast out from formal communications of
governmental and other public institutions. In Morocco, the languages used in traditional
media are modern standard Arabic and French, both these two languages are not mother
tongues of Moroccans. The state has always supported the strategy of marginalizing local
languages like Berber5 and Darija, resulting in a schizophrenic attitude of Moroccans towards
their native language: they have developed a love-hate relationship with Darija, they use it
enthusiastically as a mark of group identity, but feel uneasy about it being a “vulgar”
language not to be used publicly. In Yabiladi, though French predominates in the portal,
Darija use in forums occurs in isolated, irregular switches and is more widely employed in
chat rooms and in parts of Yabiladi related to artistic expression such as Hikayat Al Ghorba
(stories of migration), a section including poems about the homeland and the feeling of
longing.
Michel Foucault has long emphasized the intimate relationship between language and power.
Words are far from being neutral. In the Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault (1969) argues
that systems of thought and knowledge are not objective, but rather governed by rules, beyond
those of grammar, that exert a certain form of power beneath the consciousness of social
groups and that restrict the possibilities of thought and ideas during a given historical period
and within a specific field. As French and standard Arabic are languages of the economic and
political elites, the Moroccan state imposes them as official languages to be taught in schools
and used in public media, and thereby controls the discursive formations that govern thought
and talk about the Moroccan national identity. Bourdieu refers to this unequal power relations
as “symbolic violence” orchestrated by the state as it makes individuals mistakenly believe
that standard Arabic and French are truly superior to Darija and the different Berber dialects,
the languages spoken by the majority of Moroccans, rather than an arbitrary distinction
afforded social significance (Bourdieu 1991). Cyberspace enables Moroccans to overcome the
institutional obstacles that are erected against their dialect and normalizes its use. Chat rooms
and creative spaces of Yabiladi act as a powerful instrument for the recuperation of the
language, Darija, which convenes specific types of discourses, create a national imagery,
build meanings and empower the Moroccan collective identity independent from the control
tools of the state. In this regard, Kearny believes that the transnational migrants ‘escape the
power of the nation-state to inform their sense of collective identity” (1991:59). The use of
Darija in Yabiladi has strong socio-cultural connotations and is very symbolic of the
construction of a true community of Moroccans that use their vernacular tongue in the
electronic public sphere as a clear marker of identity and as a sign of authenticity.
5
The state’s attitude has started changing recently regarding the different Berber languages. The Amazigh
activists were able to overturn legal bans on teaching Berber, make Berber languages used in media and achieve
the creation of the royal institute of Amazigh culture in 2001.
9
The use of language by diasporas in electronic networks may also be of the interest of
linguists. In the paragraph above, I emphasize that Internet obviously enables the Moroccan
community to appropriate Darija in the public space. As Darija has never had transcripted
grammatical rules and is not recognized as a language and taught in educational institutions,
one may assume that its written use may be quite problematic for the community since it is
mainly an oral language. Surprisingly, Moroccan immigrants online adopted a hybrid written
code to express themselves in Darija. Since most of them, do not have keyboard with Arab
letters and even Arab letters do not include some phonemes that exist in Darija, they use
Roman characters that best approximate the Darija letters supplemented with numbers 2, 3, 5,
7 and 9 for coding specific Darija sounds. For instance, the Latin numeral "3" is used to
represent the Arabic letter "‫"( "ع‬ayn"). Moroccan migrants have invented a hybrid way to
make possible the use of their mother-tongue online by transliterating the Darija text into
Latin text. The community has thus built for itself new codes for communicating and
strengthening the feeling of belonging to a community that share the same language.
Al Ghorba: yearning to the homeland
Edward Said presents the exilic experience as “the unhealable rift between a human being and
a native place, between the self and its true home” (Said 1994). Said means by this definition
that migrants experience an exilic state where there is a rupture between the self and the
native place that generates into a never-ending search for the imaginary roots. Al Ghorba in
Moroccan dialect refers to this feeling of strangeness and uprooting that Moroccan migrants
experience in host countries and forms a central thematic in Yabiladi. As stated in the
introduction of this article, I do believe that Internet does not threaten the importance of the
homeland and national imaginary. To the question asked by an online magazine Afrik.com
“why have you created Yabiladi?” The founder of Yabiladi answers “the name of Yabiladi
reflects the feeling of Moroccan immigrants that are very attached to their mother land:
Morocco! Most of first and second generation immigrants dream about going back to work
and invest in Morocco” (Berkani 2002). The will to enter into virtual contact with other
Moroccans is indicative for a longing to the birthplace and the origins. Many of the
immigrants use Yabiladi in order to explore opportunities of finding jobs, investing in the
homeland, buying real-estate and bringing knowledge and expertise needed in the developing
Moroccan economy. The story of Mohamed Ezzouak, a second generation Moroccan
immigrant who returned to Morocco after the success of Yabiladi, mirrors the conception of
the exilic state of many migrants as a temporary experience. In Yabiladi, forums are plentiful
of postings about the possibilities of return. Following a question posted by the webmaster
about whether Yabiladi users are willing some day to go back to Morocco, many expressed
their concerns related to a potential return while others replied enthusiastically that they are
planning in the near future to return to Morocco. Besstame wrote 24 February 2006:
“I want to go back to Morocco Inchallah, I hope that I can construct and spend my last days peacefully there, I hope very soon … I feel that
we are not anymore welcome in France … that marginalizes people from Maghreb and Africa. What disappoints me even more is the
comments of some native French that state “from what are you complaining? If you are not satisfied, you can go back to your country!”
When I hear this kind of sentences, I understand that we have never been at home, even if we were born in France… We are French by legal
documents but not true French to their eyes …”
Though this desire to return to home soon does not translate necessarily into a real return,
nostalgia and the externalization of the feelings of longing to the homeland that Besstame is
expressing in the above sentences help the migrants to cope with feelings of frustration,
aggression and deception. A retrospective idealization of a lost land, unquestioned social
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customs enable them to build a defense against exclusion, racism and disenfranchisement they
encounter in host countries.
Summer returns seem to be a central topic in Yabiladi portal and an important source for
emotional refueling. Many forums revolve about the various ways for traveling back to
Morocco and several discussions are dedicated to finding the cheapest air-plane tickets to fly
back to the homeland. The postings of pictures of Moroccan cities like Agadir, Fes and Rabat
enhance the vividness of the Internet experience for the migrant. The beauty of the homeland
landscapes are erected as an ideal and the scenes from everyday life are glorified, revived and
used as tools to reconstruct, interpret, reconcile and display parts of the migrants’ history and
identity. Pictures reinforce the national imaginary about the homeland though many migrants
would not have visited the physical places displayed in the pictures, which allow the
migrants’ imagined physical presence during absence. As I am writing this article, a new
video service has been included in the portal. The combination of sounds and images about
the homeland, the traumatic experiences of migration and uprooting in clip videos
encompassing stories, narratives and symbols travel through the transnational networks to
form unique public spaces on the World Wide Web.
“Hikayat Al Ghorba” is a special section in Yabiladi that constitutes a display cabinet for a
myriad of poems about the homeland and the feelings of longing. In this way, Yabiladi
disseminates nostalgia narratives and makes them visible to the community. Exile for
migrants is often experienced as a rupture, an end to the existence of patterns previously taken
for granted, the decline of a world of beliefs and certainties. Within Hikayat al Ghorba, the
exile is presented as a tragic state because it is accompanied by the painful loss of smells,
tastes, places, familiar faces, pleasant climate left behind. Hikayat Al Ghorba becomes a
highly emotional space with cathartic functions, a fertile ground for creativity and
imagination. In “From one side to the other” published 7 July 2004, Asmae based in France,
manifests her yearning to Morocco and her sufferance from being away from her home city
Tangiers:
Le pays d'où je viens est particulier
Son soleil, sa chaleur, sa douceur
Je m'y croyais à tout jamais liée
A ma ville que je porte toujours dans mon coeur
Sous ses orangers fleuris aux éclats je riais
Aujourd'hui elle n'entend plus mes pleurs
Son nom longtemps je l'ai crié
Mais mes cris peu à peu sont devenus peur
Des craintes qu'à présent je ne peux nier
...
The country where I come from is special
Its sun, warm and sweetness
I thought that I would be always tied to it
To my city that I always bear in my heart
Under orange trees in bloom I used to burst out laughing
Today it does not hear anymore my crying
I have shouted its name for long
But my crying has become little by little fear
Fears that I can not presently deny
…
The poem is consumed by nostalgia and manifests an acutely romanticized image of the home
“sun, warm, sweetness, flowers” while the current state lived in the host country is the one of
sufferance, fear, loneliness, pain and crying. The creative writing allows Asmae to repossess
her memories, express affects associated with the recall of the orange trees in bloom, the
warm of the sun, the sweetness of the atmosphere and re-inhabit home while away to face the
daily sufferance of uprooting.
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Conclusion
The uses of Yabiladi by the Moroccan diaspora are a good indicator of the diffusion, the
permanence of the cultural specificities in the Internet. Yabiladi provides some of the
symbolic materials to construct a collective identity: types of discourses, language, patterns of
thinking, images, and common collective memories. The construction of identity is based on
preexistent identity but what occurs in Yabiladi is reshaping of identity outside of the
environment of the Moroccan nation-state.
The experience of Yabiladi shows us that the new media can be used not only to challenge the
nation-state but also to extend and consolidate a sense of belonging, offering a freer public
space. Yabiladi has transformed the identity building process that is increasingly dependent on
media. The growing importance of interactive media in a changing and dynamic transnational
world and the development of information and communication technologies where identity
and its relation to the ICTs are having unprecedented interactions need to be rethought. Such
development belies that the process of globalization is creating monolithic cultures but rather
a “pluralizing impact” (Hall 1997) on the formation of collective identities.
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