Reframing race in the Maghreb

Clandestine migration across the Mediterranean is often discussed for its agitating effects on Europe’s racial anxieties; less acknowledged is the growth of intra-African racism in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Officials in these countries have increasingly demonised sub-Saharan Africans who arrive in the Maghreb en route to Europe, and now even black North Africans describe a climate of heightened racial tension. This article analyses the ways in which black Africans are represented in the contemporary Maghreb. Specifically, I look at print and on-line journalism, novels and films that foreground questions of race to argue that Maghrebi journalists, social media activists, authors and filmmakers are critiquing racism and exposing its neo-colonial underpinnings. Their work is calling for a disciplinary realignment in North African cultural studies that focuses the field as much on ‘Africa’ as it does on ‘North’.