Liminal Lives? Cameroonians and Ivorians Navigating Marriage in Morocco

Abstract

Migration scholars studying North Africa often argue that Sub-Saharan African migrants are trapped in the region, deprived of fundamental rights, and unable to improve their lives and social status. In the broader migration literature, this condition is often framed as permanent liminality, a transitional phase meant to suspend normal rules and structures for social transformation, but one that becomes enduring for migrants who cannot move on. What rules and structures shape this condition, and whether liminality spans all life domains, often remains unclear. To develop a more nuanced understanding, we analyze liminality in migration through the lens of marriage and legal pluralism. Across Africa, marriage is a key moment of existential transition shaped by formal and informal normative orders, yet intimate life events are rarely examined in North African migration studies. Drawing on fieldwork with migrants from Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire in Morocco, we show that they describe their situation as a “school” where they learn to become responsible adults—Monsieur or Madame—first within their nuclear family and, over time, in the extended family and wider community. Integrating legal pluralism into migration and liminality studies clarifies when and why existential immobility occurs and demonstrates it should not be equated automatically with physical immobility.