Counter-Narratives about Sub-Saharan Migrant Women in the Digital Public Sphere
Kenza Oumlil
This article looks at counter-narratives of sub-Saharan migrant women in the digital public sphere in Morocco. It aims to highlight the civic engagement of migrant social media activism. Whereas migration and media have been covered in other contexts, this study contributes to the debate in Morocco and North/Sub-Saharan Africa. It will tackle the topic of media migrant representation in Morocco, with a particular focus on women’s representation. It examines Hassan Yemcheu’s YouTube page, on which he uploads videos for the association Planet Migrant. This case study is significant because it provides rare content about the situation of sub-Saharan migrant women in Morocco in a male-dominated narrative space. Planet Migrant’s videos at times focus on migrant women’s entrepreneurship or domestic violence, an outlier from most other migrant narratives in Morocco. The methodology relies on textual analysis (Bainbridge 2010), which is supplemented with insights and comments derived from an interview conducted with Yemcheu about the processes, conditions, and content of his work. It will highlight ways of “talking back” (Hooks 1998) to gain some symbolic digital space through participatory/citizen journalism. Through this media intervention which stands against a backdrop of misinformation and limited coverage, Yemcheu capitalizes on digital storytelling to share stories about fellow migrants. Despite the small social media reach and limited engagement, the selected videos shed light on gender issues for sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco in their struggle to regain some symbolic power and socio-political agency.
