Gendering the Nador/Melilla Border

Abstract

This essay first analyzes the construction of a “Muslim Woman Other” as a particular social reality through the dissemination of academic and media discourses, militarization of the border, and the implementation of immigration policies and practices that allow “for the normalization of exclusionary practices,” which the Nijmegen school calls a process of “B/Ordering as Ordering and Othering.” Second, it positions porteadoras’ deaths and risks to their health within the political and the religious order; Muslim Moroccan women operate within strong religious and cultural spaces that dominate their everyday lives. The concept of “bordering and ordering” through “Othering” helps frame the Nador/Melilla border as the site where the “Muslim Woman Other” is constructed either as a de facto trope of victimhood in need of saving or as a national threat transgressing the management and ordering of the border and in need of violent discipline. The militarization of the Nador/Melilla border and implementation of immigration laws have served as major justifications to covertly exploit and cheapen the labor of Moroccan Muslim working-class women through globalized free market economies that erode welfare policies while supporting the free exchange of consumer goods.