Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Moroccan government has occupied parts of Western Sahara for three decades, ample time to win the hearts and minds of the native Sahrawis.The regimes under King Hassan II (d. 1999) and his son, Mohammed VI, have deeply invested the Moroccan state into Western Sahara —financially, militarily and morally. Yet in recent years visible displays of pro-independence sentiment have been on the rise in the Moroccan controlled Western Sahara. These are clear indications thatthe Moroccan government has failed to make citizens out of many Sahrawis. There are numerous reasons — political, economic, socio-cultural — grounding Sahrawi resistance to ‘Moroccanization’.This study, however, focuses on Morocco’s reliance upon physical coercion and political co-optation in Western Sahara. These two keyMoroccan tactics of control, this study argues, have created resistance instead of obedience. This study will show the conditions from whichthe present reality of Sahrawi resistance has emerged by historicizing violence and political manipulation in, first, Moroccan ideology andinfrapolitics and, secondly, in Western Sahara. In demonstrating a direct linkage between Morocco’s recourse to coercion and co-optation,on the one hand, and the Sahrawi opposition it fuels, on the other, this study is thus able to conclude that these two tactics haveundermined Morocco’s efforts to annex Western Sahara.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Religion emerged as a political force in late 1970s and was used as a political instrument to challenge the status quo, a centuries-old monarchy, which draws its legitimacy from Islam.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Dutch lawyers of Moroccan and Turkish origin: How to overcome barriers to success?

Law is one of the institution assisting or impeding the integration of immigrants. Practising lawyers of immigrant origin may play a role as intermediaries between immigrants and the new society. But how do lawyers from immigrant groups get access to the legal profession?
This paper is based on an analysis of extensive biographies of young lawyers and their careers through the Dutch educational system and the law faculties. The paper will focus on the barriers to entry in a Law Faculty as compared barriers for access to the Bar after obtaining their law degree, the strategies the lawyers develop to deal with these barriers and the social effects of those strategies. Do these lawyers actually perceive their role as intermediaries for immigrant group or do they deny or avoid that role?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, I take Ewick and Sibley’s (2002) theory of legal complexity and polyvocality, or the presence of multiple meaning making of the law, as one of the key factors that creates strong and durable legislative systems and apply it to the 2004 case of the Islamic family law reform (Moudawana) in Morocco. I explore Ewick and Silbey’s hypothesis that that the absence of polyvocality increases the likelihood of structural transformation. I argue that this hypothesis seems to be substantiated in the Moroccan law reform efforts.

As a religious law, the main argument the opposition used against reforming the Moudawana rested on the sacredness of the law. Women’s rights activists neutralized this dominant legal discourse, using multiple strategies, including religious, sociological, and human rights justifications, in arguing for reform. In this paper, I show the diverse ways in which activists mobilized the public and created multiple meaning systems, drawing from the transnational human rights, national constitutional, and local religious frameworks, for interpreting the necessity of new law reforms, thus building a broader framework of legality for the new family law. The analysis is based on five personal interviews with Moroccan activists; legal and campaign material analysis; press conference attendance; as well as secondary sources.