In February 2018 the Moroccan legislative branch passed the much-awaited law 103.13 on the elimination of violence against women. This short law—eighteen articles in total—in its first clause recognizes and defines an impressive array of different types of gendered violence. However, overall, it falls well short of providing any protection for victims of violence.Footnote 1 The Rabat-based NGO, Mobilizing for Rights Associates (MRA), argues that the law:
Does not create duties or procedures for law enforcement and justice system personnel to address the critical, earlier steps in the law enforcement process, such as the reporting, investigation, and prosecution phases of violence against women cases. Policies and procedures are currently unclear for law enforcement, prosecutors and health services. … [The system] does not address the deficiencies in the current rape and sexual assault laws, for example by criminalizing marital rape or decriminalizing illicit sexual relations. It does not provide for any civil protection or temporary restraining orders or other civil remedies, or establish any specific services or provide concrete support for women survivors of violence.Footnote 2
This article is an ethnographic study of why without such protections and clear procedures the new law will not improve women's access to justice. It argues that without an overhaul of the socioeconomic and political systems, victims will continue to “run from violence to insecurity, as the law does not provide them with shelter, health, or legal advice and assistance.”Footnote 3 I look at poverty as a relationship involving the state, street-level bureaucrats, and low-income women, rather than seeing poverty as a result solely of “cultural practices” (out-of-wedlock pregnancies, underage marriages, domestic violence) or because women lack “human capital” (with low levels of education or skills).Footnote 4 I use the critical race methodology (CRM) of Daniel Solórzano and Tarra Yosso and the feminist research ethics (FRE) of Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True as frameworks for articulating this notion of poverty as a relationship and focus on the experiences of low-income women and their quest for legal and gender justice. These two research practices, although normally not used in conjunction, share a belief that the aim of research is social justice.Footnote 5 As such they share “a set of ethical commitments,” that helps researchers be attentive to several issues. FRE instructs us—researchers—to be cognizant of the language we use to refer to those whom we observe and interview. Rather than labeling them as “research subjects,” Ackerly and True suggest that scholars refer to them as “subject-participants” or “co-researchers,” to acknowledge their active participation in the research, which without their contribution would not be possible.Footnote 6 Thus, the subject of my study comprises the experiences of low-income women with street-level bureaucracy and state law as observed and narrated by them. The conclusion of Solórzano and Yosso is that this practice (and attentiveness to language) “pushes us to humanize quantitative data and to recognize silenced voices in qualitative data.”Footnote 7
CRM provides a framework to “‘counter’ deficit storytelling.”Footnote 8 Both FRE and CRM require researchers to be attentive to the pervasiveness of the “privileged epistemologies”Footnote 9 of those who create “master stories” (also called majoritarian stories or monovocals) such as political elites, NGO workers, or researchers, and the need to juxtapose them with the “experiential knowledge”Footnote 10 of those whose experiences and stories have been distorted, if not silenced, by the creators of master stories. Here, Hsain Ilahiane's definition of al-hogra is useful for explaining not only the limitations of master stories within the Moroccan context but also why non-literacy and poverty affect people's access to justice.Footnote 11 He defines al-hogra as “contempt,” referring to “various daily micro-practices of injustice and indignation visited upon the vulnerable and the powerless of society by dominant groups.”Footnote 12 Common to many urban Moroccan NGO workers and researchers, but also my Moroccan students and urban elites, with whom I have discussed Moroccan politics, is a belief that the country has been unable to progress and democratize because of people's illiteracy and poverty.Footnote 13 Furthermore, elite urban NGOs have been able to create a language and hierarchy of women's experiences.Footnote 14 Low-income women who use the services of such NGOs—literacy classes, listening centers for victims of violence, and shelters—are called beneficiaries rather than constituents, as Stephanie Willman Bordat and Saida Kouzzi have suggested.Footnote 15 They rightly argue that the term “beneficiaries” denotes a clear class-based hierarchy and hence solidifies the distance between the unveiled Francophone NGO women and their poorer, less educated, and hijab-clad counterparts.Footnote 16 Moreover, it is the experiences, political views, and aspirations of these NGO workers that underpin the projects to resocialize and reeducate the “other” women, whose access to justice is denied because, as the master story asserts, they are ignorant of the laws.Footnote 17 In a conversation with a daughter of a well-known Moroccan feminist, after I stated that “just because women are illiterate doesn't mean they are stupid,” she said, “But they don't know what's good for them!” Similarly, Jessica Marie Newman's study of single mother associations in urban Morocco demonstrates how neoliberal ideas about self-help, responsibility, and self-initiative seep into the mentality, training, and expectations of urban NGOs assisting low-income women. Her ethnographic study cogently argues that NGO workers stubbornly focus on “reeducation”Footnote 18 of unwed mothers to teach them to be self-reliable and responsible parents while staying silent on structural obstacles such as poverty, lack of social and familial support, and the continuing stigmatization of unwed mothers, all of which determine women's capacities, regardless of the training they receive while staying at the NGO-run shelters. Such master stories and attitudes provide a very narrow explanation of the complexities of the lived realities of silenced and marginalized populations, such as my subject-participants. As Ackerly and True argue, because feminist-informed research is “self-reflective, critical, political” it enables “the researcher to ‘see’ those people and processes lost in gaps, silences, margins, and peripheries.”Footnote 19
Finally, these two practices require researchers to view not only subject-participants but also situations “in terms of intersecting and overlapping contexts and social forces,” such as gender, income, ability, and historical moment, to name those relevant for the analysis of the cases in this article.Footnote 20 In short, FRE and CRM provide the ethical and theoretical framework within which I can examine how gender, poverty (which includes women's lower socioeconomic class as lack of social capital, their inability to pay for transportation and the legal and administrative fees necessary to access justice, as well as their inability to gain financial independence from their families), non-literacy, and geographical location intersect and impact women's access to justice and search for alternatives. It is through this lens that we see more clearly how limited and limiting the master stories are in explaining the experiences of low-income women and providing solutions for their situations. To paraphrase Kimberle Crenshaw's criticism of (white) feminist theory and politics, Moroccan urban women's rights NGOs too often “claim to reflect women's experience and women's aspirations,” while rarely speaking with or listening to their constituents. “If this is so,” Crenshaw continues, “how can the claims that ‘women are,’ ‘women believe’ and ‘women need’ be made when such claims are inapplicable or unresponsive to the needs, interests and experiences of [low-income] women?”Footnote 21 Women's identity in Morocco, as elsewhere, is neither universal nor static; rather, it is contextual.Footnote 22
In order to capture the needs, interests, and experiences of low-income non-literate women I am using a narrative approach. Narratives, in Margarete Sandelowski's words, are “a framework for understanding the subject and interview data.” She argues that the empirical research has been preoccupied “with obtaining information at the expense of understanding expression,” and that because individuals themselves story their experiences, researchers too have to “rescue” empirical research “from efforts to standardize and scientize [it and reclaim it] as occasions for storytelling.”Footnote 23 The stories in this article are not based on life-history interviews, which seem to be the preferred method for collecting data for this approach. Rather, data collected during my ethnographic fieldwork—participant observation, informal conversations, and formal semi-structured interviews with provincial NGO workers and their constituents—provide the material for the stories.Footnote 24 Attention is given to the experiences of women with bureaucracy, their reception, attitudes toward them as low-income citizens (their lack of social capital, class, and non-literacy) and as women (their gender), and their own understanding and responses to the events I witnessed with them. The three stories chosen for this article are representative of over forty cases that I followed during my fieldwork and about fifty cases kept on file at the Association that I perused. Some had a happy ending, whereas others were unresolved or ongoing. As with any other stories, these research narratives are “composed of a story or fabula, comprised of actions, happenings, settings, discourse or plot.”Footnote 25 This approach helps elucidate the effect of Moroccan legal reforms and, more significantly, challenges the above-described master narratives. Instead, these stories expose a much less visible and less discussed reality of how poverty and non-literacy influence the dealings of street-level bureaucrats with their constituents, of poor infrastructure, and of withering bureaucracy, and also of how women themselves nonetheless manage their lack of human and social capital to access justice.
Before turning to the stories, I will discuss the research methods and setting. This will help contextualize the events and experiences of the women whose stories I narrate.
RESEARCH SETTING AND METHODS
This is an ethnographic study of gender-based violence (GBV). I conducted fieldwork in the provincial town of El Hajeb where I participated in a local NGO (the Association) and its Listening Center for victims of violence (the Center). The Association was established in 2002, “for the promotion of women's rights and reinforcement of their capacities in education, human rights, informal education, education on hygiene and physical support, legal orientation and functional education.”Footnote 26 At the time of my fieldwork, all of their activities were performed by only three women—Jamila, Kenza, and Samira.Footnote 27 The Association was financed by different Moroccan and international partners, but, as Jamila explained, not many were willing to pay for the running costs such as the Internet, electricity, or salaries; partners normally only paid for one-time activities that the Association regularly organized. This meant that Jamila, for example, used her private funds to pay for expenses incurred by the legal accompanying service the Center offered (such as paying for transportation between the Association and various administrative buildings in El Hajeb), and its constituents covered costs for their transportation to and from the Association and for gathering and getting notarized required documents. Despite the fact that the state relies on NGOs to provide essential legal and other assistance to particularly low-income communities, the government does not provide any funding; the women laughed at my innocence when I asked them about it.
I started my fieldwork at the Center in late spring 2015 and finished it in the spring of 2017. In my first year of fieldwork, I visited the Center once a week and was assisted by a student researcher, Sarah Shera, who did her summer internship at the Center.Footnote 28 During this time I also attended various local NGO-led workshops in El Hajeb, Ifrane, and Azrou involving diverse partners, such as medical staff, police and gendarmerie, lawyers, and other NGO workers. The bulk of my participant observation work was completed in the summer of 2016, when for over two months I observed, accompanied, and interviewed constituents of the Center and discussed issues with the two women working there. On average the Center dealt with about twenty to thirty new cases each month, in addition to many repeat cases that required longer-term assistance.
As GBV is an extremely personal and sensitive issue, especially since I was working with victims of violence themselves and also various state officials, I was cognizant of the harm that my presence and questions could have on individual cases. I obtained permission from El Hajeb's police and my university, which also funded my trips and translations of interviews. In addition, on my first day at the Association I met with the women working there to explain my research project and ask if they would be supportive of my presence, questions, and requests to accompany them to various institutions. I did the same with their constituents. In fall 2016 and winter 2017, I conducted additional semi-structured interviews with some of the women whose stories I followed in the summer of 2016.Footnote 29
EL HAJEB
In order to contextualize the stories of the three women, it is important to take a closer look at the socioeconomic situation of the locality in which they resided.Footnote 30 El Hajeb is both a town and a province in the Fes-Meknes region. The province itself encompasses a number of rural communities and municipalities, of which the largest (and most developed) is the town of El Hajeb. The town itself is known for its military base and prostitution. Locals like to mention that the latter is not only tolerated by law enforcement but also encouraged as an activity for soldiers with little to do in an otherwise sleepy area. Many of the sex workers come from Middle Atlas poverty in search of work. According to the Association, whose work at its inception in 2002 focused on providing health and training workshops for sex workers, local authorities have cracked down on prostitution in recent years: however, gainful employment for women (and men) generally remains scarce. There are numerous reasons for this, such as lack of governmental regulation of labor conditions in agriculture (as the main economic activity in the area), service, and the scant industry in and around El Hajeb.
The 2014 census report does not disaggregate employment data to demonstrate how many people work in the mostly unregulated agricultural sector and informal economy, which is where most women (and many men) work.Footnote 31 Official statistics only provide general figures for women's employment in the region at 15.8 percent, with unemployment at 28.2 percent. Most of the women—66.5 percent—included in the employment statistics work as “salaried worker[s] in the private sector,” 13.4 percent are self-employed, and 8.5 percent work in the regulated public sector.Footnote 32 However, Aomar Ibourk reports in an ILO (International Labour Organization) working paper that “virtually all female employment in rural areas is informal, and over 98 percent of all employed women have no social security.”Footnote 33 Furthermore, research on the size of the informal economy in Morocco suggests that “this hidden part of [the] economy constitute[d] 42.9% of the official GDP in 2015.”Footnote 34 In addition, the 2016 HCP (Higher Planning Commission) report of the “national survey on the informal activities in Morocco” focuses merely on labor productivity within the informal economy and its contribution to Morocco's GDP. It concludes that the informal sector “serves a traditional society in transition and one marked by a limited supply of an un- or semi-skilled workforce in the job market.”Footnote 35 Missing from this report and similar analyses is a focus on how employment in such a sector can reproduce poverty and that many people seek work there not because of corruption or because they are averse to paying taxes, as some reports suggest, but simply because they do not have any other viable alternatives.Footnote 36 During my fieldwork, all of the women I met through the Center who worked did so as day laborers in the agricultural sector, or as cleaning staff in cafés, private homes, and administrative buildings. Such employment allowed women and their families to survive, but not much more. Many of these women were family breadwinners as a result of their husbands’ inability or unwillingness to find work; sometimes this was also due to substance abuse, long-term absence, or divorce.Footnote 37 Absent husbands, in particular, caused distress for many women who came to the Center, and they reported not only economic violence but often also legal and psychological violence, as will be discussed.
I now turn to stories of the three women who sought guidance from the Center in navigating the bureaucratic system to access legal justice. These stories elucidate the effects of legal reforms and, more importantly, challenge master narratives in which legal reforms in Morocco are not implemented because of women's ignorance of the law. The following stories expose a much less discussed reality of weak laws that are disconnected from the lived realities, particularly of low-income populations, poor infrastructure, and decaying bureaucracy. They demonstrate how—rather than if—women use law to improve their situations.
DOUAA'S STORY
At the time of my fieldwork in El Hajeb in summer 2016, Douaa was 25 years old and separated from her husband, with two pre–primary school daughters. She was non-literate and one of nine children, only one of whom went to school for a few years. At the age of 20, her family arranged a marriage to a man from a village near Khemisset, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) away from her hometown. “He came at the recommendation of a male friend of the family and people said he was a good person,” Douaa said, as she described the arrangements to me. They did not, however, ask if he had a stable job. Her husband occasionally found work in agriculture, which is why Douaa had to look for seasonal work to survive. She reported that marital problems started when she asked him to get food or buy clothes for their daughters, to which he would reply, “What am I, a souk [weekly market]?!” She also urged him to register their daughters in the Family Booklet so that the children could get vaccinated and registered for school.Footnote 38 This booklet, as Willman Bordat and Kouzzi state,
[Proves] one's legal identity and civil status, and is of utmost importance in one's daily life. It is drafted upon marriage and contains all personal information about the Family Booklet's owner (the husband), his wife/wives, and any children born of the marriage(s). The name, place and date of marriage, divorce, birth, and death of each family member are recorded and, if necessary, modified later. Only one original Family Booklet is issued—in the husband's name, given to him, and deemed his property. A wife, divorced woman, widow or legal tutor may request a legalized copy.Footnote 39
“He didn't take it well that I insisted on getting them registered,” Douaa said, so they fought. He belittled her and called her a whore when she was ill, and [also] as well stole money from her. Eventually he and her mother-in-law sent Douaa back to her mother's house for disobedience.Footnote 40 Douaa explained that “after my girls were born, we were without food or clothing, with nowhere to stay and nowhere to go. We had been staying with my mother-in-law and, the day she decided to kick us out, we left without anything but a blanket to cover ourselves.” Her three married brothers “are not well-to-do either. And even if they were willing to help, who do you think could support three [additional] people? Maybe if I were alone. But how much help can they afford—pay my rent, buy food for us, and so on? They're barely able to support their own children,” she concluded when I asked if anyone in her family could accommodate her and her daughters.
At the time of my fieldwork Douaa was separated from her husband for the second time. She worked as an agricultural worker earning about 50 MAD ($5.20) a day and lived with her mother in El Hajeb. Without a family member to take care of her daughtersFootnote 41 while she was at work, Douaa hired a nanny whom she paid 20 MAD ($2) a day.Footnote 42
Douaa came to the Association for help navigating the administrative system, which, to her, was intimidating, cold, and inaccessible. She knew that her husband was legally obliged to financially provide for her and their daughters, even when she stayed with her mother.Footnote 43 After all, she left her in-laws’ house involuntarily. What she was not aware of was the number of documents she needed to request something to which she was entitled by law. To ask for financial maintenance (nafaqa), women need six documents: a written request containing the names of both the claimant and defendant, their address(es), and the number of children; a certified copy of the marital contract; birth certificates of the children; school certificates of the children (if in school); proof of the financial situation of the defendant; and any additional papers demonstrating costs related to raising the children (hospital or treatment bills, etc.).Footnote 44 The only document Douaa had was her marital contract; this was in such poor condition that Jamila had to tape it together to prevent it from disintegrating. She did not have her daughters’ birth certificates, which is what complicated her case. Jamila suggested that Douaa first register her daughters in the Family Booklet. For this Douaa needed five documents: a written request to register children in the Family Booklet that included the name of the claimant, the claimant's address, the full name of the child, and the birth date and place; a certified copy of the marital contract; a birth certificate from a local authority or hospital; a certificate of live birth; and a certificate of non-registration in the Family Booklet from the Civil Status office. In addition, to file for registration, women have to pay 50 MAD ($5.20) per child. However, in order to start compiling these documents, Douaa needed her identity card (ID), which her husband had taken from her. Thus Jamila told Douaa to first recover the ID.
The next time I saw Douaa, she brought Jamila a written complaint for the public prosecutor requesting authorization for the police to retrieve her ID. It was still morning and the public prosecutor was in session. After a couple of hours of sitting silently in the waiting room of the Association, Jamila collected Douaa and me, and we went to the provincial courthouse. The building looked official; offices we passed were open and unstaffed, despite being stacked with numerous personal files and containing file cabinets without visible locks. The main hallway was narrow and walls were empty, except for a few bulletin boards with notices in Arabic. One of the more prominent notices in bold read, “No to Bribe!” There were not many people waiting in the hall, but all except one were women. This demonstrated that women do use the court. A few officials were loudly chatting and laughing, which prompted Jamila to remark, “And when you look for them, you can't find them in their offices.” We did not have to wait long before being called in. Jamila gave the prosecutor Douaa's file and explained the issue. He read the documents, asked additional questions, some of which were directed to Douaa. Mostly he explained issues and procedures to Jamila, who offered additional information about the case. He asked Douaa if there was violence in the marriage, to which she replied, in a barely audible voice, “No”; this surprised me because she had told me earlier that he verbally assaulted her. Jamila later explained that legally, the only violence that exists is physical violence and that sexual violence can only be prosecuted when accompanied by visible wounds, which have to be medically certified.Footnote 45 Much of the following conversation revolved around him trying to understand why she was unable to obtain such basic documents.Footnote 46 A birth certificate should not be a problem because there is a record at the hospital, he said. But she gave birth at home, she replied. So there should be a midwife, who assisted with births and could confirm these births. And, since she has a copy of her marital contract, the muqaddam has to issue the needed documents, he retorted. He then asked for her ID and she explained that her husband took it from her.Footnote 47 “Why would he do that?” he exclaimed, and she merely shrugged her shoulders. In any case, he continued, this is not a big issue as Douaa can get a new ID by simply paying for it.Footnote 48 He finished the conversation with the suggestion that rather than seeing the muqaddam we go to the qaid who should be able to issue her birth certificates and register her daughters based on the marital contract she had.Footnote 49 He dog-eared the complaint she brought, wrote a message on it authorizing the police to go tell her husband to hand over her ID, signed and stamped the complaint, and gave it back to Douaa.
We returned to my car and drove back up the hill, where we took the road toward Azrou. We parked at the prefecture of El Hajeb to visit both the muqaddam and the qaid. But it was 2:30 p.m. during Ramadan and we found the building empty.Footnote 50 After trying to find an officer, we finally saw one who was still at work. He tried calling the muqaddam but could not reach him. He suggested we come back in three days when the muqaddam had office hours. Jamila turned to us and exclaimed, “Look, it's only 2:30 p.m. and everybody already left! Now imagine these poor ladies who are sent home to bring more documents every time they come and then sent from one end of town to another. It's expensive for them, they get tired of it and so they don't register their children!”
On Thursday at 10:30 a.m., Jamila, Douaa, and I were back at the prefecture. There were mostly men standing in the hallway and outside the building as there were no chairs or benches for people to sit on; offices were staffed and their doors wide open.Footnote 51 The m uqaddam had not yet arrived, we were told. Jamila, visibly annoyed, protested, “We came at 2:30 p.m. and he was gone, we come at 10:30 a.m. and he's not even here yet. … Of course people don't deal with papers when officials don't work or aren't in their offices when they're supposed to be.”
About half an hour later, the muqaddam finally entered the building. He was young looking, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt, with the hood covering his head and in a track suit as if he had just come from his morning jog. I had to ask Jamila twice who he was, as I expected a much more official presence. Jamila was first polite, but her mood changed once she received the same answer as Douaa had during her multiple visits to the muqaddam. He told us that he could not issue this certificate because she needed to bring her husband's ID. “What if I issue the certificate and then the husband comes and claims he's not the father of these two girls?” he asked, and suggested we see the qaid. We waited for a few minutes outside the qaid’s office, Jamila visibly furious with the system. Once in his office, the qaid read the documents and gave the same answer as the muqaddam. Jamila argued back, asserting that the law allowed men and women to register their children. He responded that the law also required either the father's verbal statement that he was the father or his ID. Jamila muttered that the family code was supposed to ameliorate women's rights and make it easier for women to access justice, whereas officials required the impossible: to bring their husband's papers when they cannot even hold on to their own. “How is this making it easier for women?” she asked rhetorically. Jamila then showed the qaid proof of Douaa's husband's paternity in the judge's reply to her 2015 request for financial maintenance.Footnote 52 Not only did the judge's decision mention “his two daughters” but it also listed their two names as part of Douaa's husband's testimony. Persuaded, the qaid asked Douaa under what name she wanted to register the kids. His or hers? Jamila told him that, of course, his name because he was the father and they had been married at the time of conception and birth, as the supporting documents clearly demonstrated. The qaid checked the timing of their marriage and the birth of their first daughter and exclaimed, “But the daughter was born only seven months after the date of marriage! So she conceived illegally!”Footnote 53 The muqaddam, who was also in the office standing by the back wall, winked at the qaid victoriously, as if they had just won the case. Jamila looked at the documents, did her own math and corrected the qaid—the first daughter was born a year and a half after the marriage was contracted. The qaid again looked at the dates and conceded to Jamila, smiling. This example demonstrates the qaid’s lack of legal knowledge; the Family Code, article 154, clearly states that “the paternity of a child is proven by the conjugal bond … if the child is born six months after the marriage contract was concluded.”Footnote 54 It furthermore shows how non-literate women are at the mercy of street-level bureaucrats’ skills and legal knowledge. Had Douaa come alone, she would not only have been denied registration of her daughters but she could have been stigmatized, if not prosecuted, for having children outside wedlock.
The qaid’s mood changed, and he became much friendlier. He asked Douaa again what family name she wanted to give to her daughters and she showed him the health booklet of her oldest daughter which contained the daughter's full name, including the father's last name. The qaid then called the muqaddam in Khemisset, where her husband resided. He gave the muqaddam on the phone the name of her husband, but they needed more information about him, which Douaa could not provide.Footnote 55 After he hung up the phone, the qaid turned to Douaa and asked where she gave birth. “At my husband's place,” she replied. “So, in Khemisset?” he asked. “Yes,” she confirmed. “Well, then I can't issue this certificate because I'm not authorized to do that,” he explained. Khemisset is under a different jurisdiction, and thus the paperwork had to be filed at the Khemisset Prefecture, the town where she gave birth. The mood of Jamila and the qaid changed immediately. Jamila, visibly surprised at this new revelation, exclaimed, “What, you didn't give birth here [in El Hajeb]?” “No, there [in Khemisset],” she reiterated, shy and downcast.
Douaa's vignette is similar to many I encountered during my fieldwork in El Hajeb. After her lie was exposed, she was treated as a “bad victim.”Footnote 56 Her case was dismissed and therefore even less deserving of the qaid’s help. Further exhibiting the power at play in this short encounter, the qaid sent Douaa out, whereas Jamila and I were allowed to stay in his office so that he could demonstrate that he (and by extension the state) was just and law abiding but women were not. As soon as she was out of the office, he exclaimed to Jamila, “See?!” The qaid told us a similar story of how another woman recently lied to him in order to get her daughters registered. He concluded with a sigh, “They just lie.” I expected street-level bureaucrats working in a socioeconomically depressed area such as El Hajeb to understand why Douaa and other women would “just lie.” The qaid, however, took it as an insult and shut the case. This perceived disrespect for institutions and the law is, on the other hand, quite possibly an outcome of al-hogra, or “feelings of injustice, indignation and resentment related to one's helplessness to remove injustice, a state of powerlessness, and a set of individualistic and collective behaviors or practices rooted in a repertoire of political, economic, legal, and administrative differentials.”Footnote 57 Feeling that the system is stacked against them, people find alternative, if not always lawful, ways of accessing justice.
Back in my car we sat silently for the duration of our drive back to the Association. The air was filled with tension and annoyance. In the office, Jamila explained to Douaa how the system worked, that it was impossible for this muqaddam to know of her situation since she had not resided in El Hajeb during her marriage or pregnancy or when she gave birth to both daughters. He could not just issue papers, as there was a system in place with rules that had to be followed. Douaa finally broke down and began to cry because Khemisset was not close and she could not leave her daughters to deal with the paperwork. “Then I won't go,” she said, “I can't just leave my girls. If I take them with me, I have to pay for three seats [in the grand taxi]. That's expensive.” (The one-way ticket is cost 40 MAD, or $4.20, per person.) Jamila told her that she had to register her daughters and said, “Who made the mistake in the first place? It was you and your husband. When you had your first child, you had thirty days to register her. You failed to do that. Then you had a second child and again you didn't register her. … What you did is falsification. Do you know what that means? It means that you lied to get some documents. You can go to prison for that.” They ended the conversation on a lighter note with Jamila telling her that she had to find a way to go to Khemisset to obtain these documents, after which she could help her with registration. After Douaa left, Jamila rested her head on her hands. She then turned to me and said, “This is why authorities don't want to issue papers. Because people lie.” I found out later that Douaa got a certificate from the midwife with Douaa's home address, as if she gave birth in El Hajeb. Jamila continued, “See, we spent so much time and effort to take her from one place to the other, and then when the qaid starts to ask her questions she gives a different answer to him than she did to me. If she were honest with me from the beginning, we could have gone to [Khemisset] and dealt with the papers.”
SIHAM'S STORY
Siham was a single mother in her early forties.Footnote 58 She looked frail. Her eyes were sunken when I first met her in June 2016. A white cloth covered her hair, done up in the way I saw many housewives cover their heads while doing morning chores. She was wearing purple pajamas underneath her black and green djellaba. Her harried appearance made it seem as if she had left the house merely to ask a quick question. Jamila, who handled her case, was not in the office, so I introduced myself to Siham. She told me that the father of her child was absent. They had never married, and as she was recounting her story she lowered her voice so that the other women in the office could not hear her. She lived at home with her father who had divorced her mother a long time ago.
During our conversation, Jamila returned and greeted Siham warmly with multiple kisses on her cheek. Siham asked if her Family Booklet arrived. Jamila replied that she needed to go to court to get it, as they did not send documents to associations (or people's homes), but that first she would have to gather some additional documents. A 2002 amendment to the civil status law permits unwed mothers to register their children, although it is unclear whether they can obtain a Family Booklet. Until 2010, unwed mothers had to “choose a first name for the child's fictional biological father that begins with Abd [slave]” but this was recently revised by a circular that eliminated the Abd name requirement.Footnote 59 Despite the fact that the code was amended seventeen years ago, El Hajeb's Association reported regular maltreatment of unwed mothers by street-level bureaucrats. It is for this reason that the Association also organized registration days and set up stalls in towns and souks to assist unwed mothers with gathering necessary documents to register their children.
A few weeks later I came to the Association early and found Siham sitting at the steps of a café, across from the Association. She asked if Jamila was coming and I told her that she was dealing with files in Meknes. She had brought the additional documents but needed Jamila to accompany her to court so she could start the registration process. She said she knew the location of the court but not the Civil Status Office.
The following day, Siham was again back at the Association. This time, she was dressed for court. She brought her three-year-old daughter strapped to her back. She wanted Jamila to come with her to court to file her papers, as she “didn't go to school, I have no idea where to go.” Jamila asked her to leave her daughter at home, but there was no one to leave her with. At the court we were sent to the second floor, room 3. I noticed a plan of the floor on the wall but wondered how many people could read it. The offices were mostly wide open, so Jamila asked at one of them which was room 3, as none of the doors had numbers on them. The one we were supposed to go to file Siham's papers also did not have a sign or a number. Jamila handed the papers to the official and gave him Siham's ID. We were then told to sit outside. Jamila explained to Siham that the official taking the documents was a good sign.
While we were waiting, Jamila asked Siham about work. She told her that she had been looking for work cleaning restaurants or cafés but could not find anything. “Everything is taken already,” she explained. She received 50 MAD ($5.20) a month from renting out a small store her late grandfather had owned, which was enough to buy diapers for her daughter. Jamila told her that this amount was too low for rent and that she had to discuss the price with the tenant, but Siham felt uncomfortable with that. She lived with her father, who had diabetes and received a small pension from France, which was what the three of them survived on. Siham told us that she used to work as a cleaning lady in a café where the owner was nice and “never tried to steal from me.” Single mothers present a financial burden on their already stretched family budgets. It is women and their families who bear the brunt of taking care of children, whereas many men (the fathers) get away with impunity. This is why establishing paternity is so important for women, and why many men, at least in cases of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, disappear.Footnote 60 According to article 152 of the Family Code, paternity is established by conjugal bed, acknowledgement by the father, or sexual relationship by error.Footnote 61 Refusing to acknowledge paternity does not carry any legal (or apparently moral) repercussion; however, once paternity is established, a father may end up in prison for not paying child support. During the conversation, Siham adjusted the strap of the wrap multiple times. Her daughter must have felt heavy on her back, with the strap cutting into her shoulder.
As we were contemplating Siham's situation, the official reemerged from the office with a number of files in pink folders, which he took to the public prosecutor. After five minutes he came out and handed Jamila Siham's ID and a piece of paper with the name of her daughter. Siham thanked Jamila for her effort and turned to me to say, “It's their [the Association's] work that matters.” Her file was with the public prosecutor who had to consent to her application to register her daughter as an unwed mother. I found out the next day that Siham was able to start the process for registration. Siham's story is instructive as it demonstrates how women in her position—single, non-literate, low-income mothers—enlist the support of trusted NGOs to overcome what they lack in status and capital. I argue that it is the negative experience of these women related to how society treats them that inhibits their agency, rather than non-literacy and poverty per se.
FATIMA'S STORY
“Problem with husband,” is how Fatima began narrating her story. She sat down in the reception room of the Center and talked about depravity. How her husband had again assaulted both her and their daughter with Down syndrome. Through her tears she told us of the struggles she endured. Lifting up her djellaba, she rolled down her bloomers full of holes to show us a dark-color bruise on her left thigh. He also hit her on her head, she reported somewhat matter-of-factly. He refused to work and did not want to give her any money. They lived in his home, and he owned some land.
A week before coming to the Center she went to the gendarmerie and to the public prosecutor. The gendarmerie did not make a report, instead telling her that she needed to bring them a medical certificate from a public hospital attesting battery, which she did; they then told her to go to the public prosecutor to get an order for the gendarmerie to act, which she did. Yet, despite the fact that she followed all these steps, nothing was done. The bruise she showed us looked fresh, not a week old. I asked Jamila what the gendarmes could do, and she explained that they could go and talk to her husband, and/or start a legal process with a judge who could send him to prison or order him to pay a penalty.
Fatima and her husband were both born in 1956. Jamila mentioned later, “See, violence against women doesn't know age.” They had five children. Their youngest daughter, who has Down syndrome, was born in 1994. Fatima brought the Family Booklet with her, as well as an old handwritten marital contract. She told us that she had lost her appetite and that she could not live like that anymore. She was holding a tissue in her hand, folding it in and out as she told us her story. She could “endure the hard work, the hunger,” because she thought that things would get better once their children were older, but the situation did not improve. “It's too much,” she sighed. She was the one who built the toilet in the house, worked on improving the house, not him. The neighbors saw how violent he was toward both her and her daughter and asked her if he was crazy. If she said anything to him, he told her, “Just go to the makhzen [the government, or law enforcement] and see if they'll do anything.” I asked her if she wanted to divorce him and she exclaimed, “Where will I go if I divorce? I can't leave the house!” “Who from my family can take me?” she responded when I asked if she did not have a family to help her out. Her sister had died, and her mother was frail and ill.
She told Jamila that she had witnesses of his violence, namely neighbors whom she could ask to testify. They heard him when he called their daughter “bitch” and loudly denied being her father. Fatima told us that she had sent off all the necessary papers to apply for financial assistance for people with Down syndrome, which was initiated by the post-2011 government led by the Justice and Development Party (PJD). She never received any response or help. “The makhzen doesn't implement these things they tell us about,” she concluded.
Jamila and I took her to the public prosecutor because the gendarmerie she went to was in Taoujdate, about 30 kilometers (18–19 miles) from El Hajeb. When we arrived at the court, the female officer at the Complaints Office opened a big blue ledger entitled “Violence Against Women” (VAW). The ledger had up to ten full pages, although I could not see the dates of entries. She checked the file number of the complaint Fatima had brought to the public prosecutor the week prior to coming to the Center. Her case was listed as one of the last cases of VAW they had received. The officer left to check on where they had sent the prosecutor's note so that Fatima could follow up on her complaint. She came back and informed us that the note was still at the court because the courier had not come to collect the files yet. She explained that they could not send these notes by post, as they might not arrive, and told Fatima to wait a few more days before following up. Jamila and I were shocked at the lack of urgency. The husband could severely injure or kill his wife or otherwise continue abuse while she waited for her documents to be processed by different authorities, even though she had followed all the necessary steps and had all the documents and signatures. Moreover, in order to follow up with the process Fatima had to travel between Taoujdate and El Hajeb, which cost her money she did not have.
We waited for a few more minutes and then left when we found out that the prosecutor was in Meknes. I do not know the epilogue of this case, but similar cases ended with the system failing to assist or protect victims. Gendarmes argued that they were too busy and could not carry out all of the prosecutor's orders. Many women, meanwhile, were again reminded of the absence of any tolerable alternatives and returned to their violent homes. As another client of the Center explained to me after I asked if she wanted to divorce her abusive husband, “A covered head is better than a naked one.” For many Moroccan women, the status of being married, regardless of the constant humiliation, violence, and profound vulnerability, continues to be the only alternative to being stripped of their home and, more importantly, their dignity.Footnote 62
CONCLUSION
This article demonstrates that when research actively seeks to include the voices and experiential knowledge of marginalized populations, we are able to see (if not understand) what it means to be non-literate and poor in a society “riddled by extreme patterns of social, economic and regional inequalities.”Footnote 63 Furthermore, the attitudes demonstrated by the street-level bureaucrats in all three stories are “layers of assumptions that persons in positions of [power and privilege] bring with them” when they deal with those who are subordinate as a result of gender, class, or education.Footnote 64
This article calls for more ethnographic research, informed by FRE, CRM, and similar approaches, to expose how contempt (al-hogra) manifests itself in relationships between those in positions of power and their disenfranchised counterparts. Rather than dismissing the vulnerable position of low-income populations by blaming it on their poverty and non-literacy, what is needed is “formulation of a more robust and materialist understanding of social class than is usually allowed: not class as a subject position or identity, but class analysis as a mode of structural comprehension,” as posited by Barbara Foley.Footnote 65 This has the potential to bring greater social justice to the disenfranchised than merely reform of (self-serving) laws.
In early 2018, Douaa was living with her husband in El Hajeb. She invited her husband back to get her papers in order before pursuing divorce. They were living in a small rented room, too small for the four of them. Douaa was working regularly, whereas her husband only worked occasionally. Jamila was upset with Douaa for fabricating her story, but she was also aware of the financial and legal constraints of the Association's constituents and understood why they tried to trick the system. Being aware of the importance of documents and after exhausting every legal possibility, she often suggested to women that they return temporarily to their husbands to gather the needed papers and signatures and then renew their quest for legal justice. Some women are able to reach justice in the end, while all along being reminded of their status as low-income citizens.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would first like to thank the three anonymous IJMES reviewers for their generous, insightful, and kind feedback. I am grateful for the financial support from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI) for my fieldwork. Earlier versions of this article were discussed at AUI's Brown Bag Series (thank you to Paul Love for organizing the event) and Yale University's Comparative Research Project—I am thankful to all those in attendance for their comments. In addition, the conversations, comments, and support of my colleagues and friends—Zaynab El Bernoussi, Doris Gray, Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen, Saida Kouzzi, Smita Kumar, Nadia Sonneveld, Stephanie Willman Bordat, and Jonathan Wyrtzen—helped me see my data through different disciplinary lenses. And last but not least, my husband Derek Elliott listened to the harrowing stories I encountered during my fieldwork and edited all the missing definite and indefinite articles: thank you for your love and encouragement. This article is dedicated to the amazing women of El Hajeb's Association who shared their office, time, knowledge, and frustrations with me. Your work matters!
