Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco

Alice Elliot's book "The Outside" examines migration from the perspective of those who have not yet left, focusing on places of departure and rethinking migration as a deeply relational entity. It challenges dominant understandings of migration and its deadly consequences by centering non-migrants' sharp theorizations and intimate experiences of the outside.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 204 pages
Publication date: 06 April 2021
Publisher: Indiana University Press

In her groundbreaking work, "The Outside," Alice Elliot takes a fresh approach to migration by shifting the focus from arrival to departure and reimagining migration from the perspective of those who have not yet ventured beyond their home communities. Through an in-depth ethnography of towns and villages renowned for their significant emigration to the outside, Elliot intricately weaves together the intricate tapestry of migration's impact on daily life. She reveals how migration operates as a complex bureaucratic machinery, simultaneously administering both hope and despair, as well as as an intimate force that intertwines kinship relations, love, and care. Moreover, Elliot explores migration as an imaginative realm, shaping individuals' self-perceptions and visions for the future. By centering the voices and experiences of non-migrants, who offer insightful theorizations and personal accounts of the outside world, Elliot challenges prevailing notions of migration and its often tragic consequences. She recasts migration as a deeply relational phenomenon, emphasizing the ethnographic, conceptual, and political imagination necessary to understand the constitutive relationship between migration and life. Through her compelling storytelling, Elliot invites readers to explore the multifaceted dimensions of migration and its profound implications for individuals, communities, and societies at large.

Weight: 316g
Dimension: 151 x 228 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780253054746