Paper short abstract:

Having as a starting point a family's residential compound in rural Morocco, this paper proposes to look at women's migratory projects across generations, with special attention to how it creates different attachments and investments in their homeland.

Paper long abstract:

Having as a starting point a family's residential compound in rural Morocco, this paper proposes to look at women's migratory projects across generations, with special attention to how it creates different attachments and investments in their homeland. Educational and economic backgrounds as well as matrimonial strategies change through generations and have impacts on women's social position inside the family and in their migratory projects. This influences their emotional and economic investment in the family's residential compound. Women described in this paper have mostly migrated within Moroccan borders which reveals that the relation between migrant trajectories, temporalities and notions of home are not only mediated by transnationalism but also by people's movements within their home country. In Morocco, rural and urban disparities have produced mass movements to the cities on the coast where people seek for a better future, access to education, consumption and economic reliability. At the same time, they see rural Morocco as the cornerstone of their traditions and kin relations. The Lahmar residential compound is a good ethnographic example to show that dwelling and place of belonging are two interrelated concepts that also affect internal migrants, often unappreciated in the study of contemporary migrations.