Street youth groups in Sidi Moussa/Morocco: the everyday resistance of precariousness

Abstract

Street youth groups (syg) in Morocco represent underground urban counterculture where “class conflict” is being fed by lack of opportunities to climb the social ladder. Indefinable and tormenting globalization (Montgomery, 2019; Wacquant, 2009) has psychologically and socially transformed youth into social “victims”/dreamers of a “modern” wellbeing. Social inequalities exacerbated by covid-19 pandemic produced new precarious youths at the margins of “patronaged” neoliberal policies implemented for buying social peace policies. In this context, this paper is based on an ethnographic research with “Tcharmil” Street youth in the neighborhood of Sidi Moussa in Sale, twin city of the Capital Rabat known for urban violence in substandard housing. In this paper, I argue that these “Mcharmlin” youth are resisting marginalization through invading streets and imposing their “subculture” as a “non-movement” (Bayat, 2013) against inequalities. These humans of Sidi Moussa who are young and poor, facing the Atlantic and far from the Capital about 30 minutes behind walled ancient city of Sale of Corsairs, dreaming of a stable life, job and respect from society, living in “Zanqa 0”. Youth refusing nothingness are invading streets which do not have even a name as all streets are numbered from 0 to 14. each narrow street faces the Atlantic either you escape, or you get stuck if you turn your back on the Atlantic.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (erc) under the European Union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 742705