Manufacturing Irregular Migration and Migrant Remittances: How the Makhzen Turns Social Misery into a Lifeline for Financing Its Faltering Economy
By: Dr. Hana Saada
ALGIERS – Recent data released by the Bank of Spain (Banco de España) have revealed a profound structural and economic shift in the nature of financial flows generated by Moroccan workers and migrants. Remittances from Spain to Morocco have tripled over the past decade, exceeding €1.589 billion (approximately €1.6 billion) and, on their own, accounting for more than 1% of the Kingdom’s gross domestic product.
These figures, which place Morocco as the second-largest recipient of remittances from Spain after Colombia, reflect far more than mere family solidarity or the natural economic dynamism of the Moroccan diaspora. They lay bare a systematic Makhzen strategy built upon engineering irregular migration and transforming poverty and unemployment into a sustainable source of hard currency, while simultaneously weaponizing Europe’s borders as an instrument of political leverage.
The Economy of Remittances: Mortgaging Development Through the Export of People
Economic indicators confirm that the Moroccan economy suffers from a chronic structural imbalance, manifested in a severe merchandise trade deficit amounting to nearly 18% of GDP. To offset this vulnerability, the Makhzen has come to depend on fragile economic pillars, foremost among them the surplus generated by the services sector—particularly tourism—and the financial remittances of Moroccans living abroad.
The cycle begins with domestic developmental failure. Policies of economic repression, soaring unemployment and the systematic marginalization of strategically important regions—particularly the Rif and northern Morocco—drive thousands of young Moroccans to sever their ties with their homeland. This is where demographic engineering comes into play, through the systematic turning of a blind eye to mass irregular migration and the deliberate facilitation of its routes, exporting despair and social frustration beyond Morocco’s borders.
Those migrants are then transformed into an instrument for absorbing the country’s chronic trade deficit. Annual remittance inflows from Moroccans abroad have surpassed €11 billion, becoming a direct substitute for genuine economic development. The circle is completed through geopolitical manipulation, as the regime alternately opens and closes migration routes in order to exert pressure on Europe and secure additional loans and financial support packages earmarked for “border management.”
Outstripping the Country’s Primary Exports
Reports issued by Morocco’s Foreign Exchange Office (Office des Changes) in 2026 show that remittances from Moroccans residing abroad increased by 10% during the first four months of the current year, exceeding €3.7 billion and overtaking revenues generated by phosphate exports and major industrial sectors.
The Financial Alternative to Developmental Failure
Remittances from Moroccans living abroad (MREs) account annually for approximately 8.5% to 9% of the country’s GDP. Rather than reducing unemployment or building a sustainable industrial and investment base, the Makhzen has chosen to rely on this external lifeline to provide hard currency and sustain the purchasing power of low-income households, thereby averting any potential social explosion at home.
The Geopolitical Engineering of Ceuta: Exporting Crisis to Extract Concessions
The unprecedented wave of mass crossings witnessed at the border of the city of Ceuta in late July and early August 2026—which saw approximately 72,000 people cross the frontier and hundreds of minors driven toward the sea—constitutes a living, on-the-ground manifestation of this Makhzen strategy.
Relieving Explosive Social Pressure
The northern regions and the Rif have long constituted historic flashpoints of discontent against Makhzen rule. By facilitating and opening channels of irregular migration, the regime carries out a process of demographic and political offloading, transforming frustrated young people from a potential force of domestic protest into future entries on the rolls of Moroccans residing abroad, expected in time to channel financial remittances back into the country.
Direct Financial Blackmail of Brussels and Madrid
The latest Ceuta crisis demonstrated that the Makhzen has turned migration into a hybrid instrument of leverage. Every increase in pressure on the European Union’s external borders prompts Western capitals to approve fresh financial assistance packages and enhanced security cooperation under the banner of “border management partnerships.” This enables Rabat to secure dual financial inflows: remittances from newly established migrants on the one hand, and financial support from European governments subjected to migratory pressure on the other.
Demographic and Social Exposure: Stripping the Citizen of Citizenship
Figures released by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) show that the Moroccan community in Spain has risen to approximately 969,000 Moroccan nationals, while more than 1.16 million Moroccan-born individuals currently reside on Spanish territory.
Naturalization and Bridging Structural Shortfalls
The naturalization of more than 42,000 Moroccans in Spain during 2025 alone reflects the long-term settlement of Moroccan families abroad. Yet the Makhzen continues to capitalize even on second- and third-generation emigrants through legislation and institutional mechanisms specifically designed to ensure the uninterrupted flow of their financial resources into Morocco’s banking system, helping the Kingdom contend with mounting public debt.
The Moral Commodification of Childhood
The driving of more than 1,500 minors into the streets of Ceuta and casting them into the sea without protection or care demonstrates that the Makhzen no longer regards the citizen as an individual endowed with rights, but rather as a prospective migrant or a negotiating instrument—a bargaining chip to be cast into the water in order to overwhelm the Spanish neighbour and secure political and financial gains for the ruling establishment.
The unprecedented surge in remittances from Moroccan migrants in Spain, the Middle East and across Europe does not represent an economic success story. It is an indictment of a parasitic economic system that remains dependent on the outside world, its financial architecture sustained by the commerce of human misery and the export of people.
The latest events in Ceuta have demonstrated that the Makhzen now regards irregular migration as an indispensable strategic pillar. It supplies the hard currency needed to cover the country’s chronic trade deficit, relieves domestic pressure by exporting disaffected young people, and, at the same time, furnishes a powerful instrument with which to pressure Spain and the European Union. As long as the regime’s survival remains contingent upon the suffering of its own people at border crossings and along the shores of death, this flawed economic and security model will remain a ticking time bomb.
— 𝐄𝐍𝐃 —
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