Paper short abstract:

The main purpose of this paper is to understand the practices of clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean Sea of Moroccan youth on the move to Europe. The paper is a photograph about the Melilla living with the reflections of a drawing workshop held with six young harraga.

Paper long abstract:

Young Moroccans, [self] referred to as harraga, are moving to Europe due to their own circumstances and using their own resources. According to the extensive academic literature on the matter, they are a new migratory actor (Gimeno & Rodríguez, 2015; Jiménez Álvarez, 2011; Suárez Navaz, 2004). The Autonomous City of Melilla, a colonial enclave located on the southern border of Europe, has become the shelter for a large number of these harraga, located in a grey area of age between the minority and the majority, which forces them, in many times, to the self-management of their own movement as a resistance, clandestinely crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

The main purpose of this paper is to understand the practices of clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean Sea of Moroccan youth in autonomous movement to Europe. With that purpose, a drawing workshop was held in the streets of this border city with six young harraga. This drawing workshop emerged after extensive fieldwork. The predominance of research techniques that seek a testimonial account exclude from their participation street children, without access to formal education or even illiterate and with drug use that made oral discourse difficult.

This paper does not intend to teach what the clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean Sea and the flight from Melilla mean. It is a photograph about the ways of feeling and thinking of some young men who are on the margins of the margins.