Beyond "Islamists" and "Leftists": Negotiating youth political identities in contemporary Morocco

Abstract

Through an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2016-2017 within activist groups in the University of Meknes (Morocco), this paper explores the meaning that young people give to their political belongings and the way in which they describe themselves as “young activists” in contemporary Morocco, defined as an authoritarian or autocratic regime. This study shows that political participation allows young people to reconfigure their status in a society where the process of democratization was conducted along with the neoliberal transformation of the North African countries, underlining how political commitment can become an important instrument of social mobility, in a country where social policies put in place by the institutions seem ineffective.