Lharba as Politics of Escape: Necropolitics, Digital Discourse and Moroccan Youth Migration

This article introduces “lharba” (escape or flight) as a central yet understudied vernacular formation in North African migration discourse, demonstrating how Moroccan youth articulate sophisticated critiques of necropolitical governance through everyday language practices. Drawing on digital ethnography of Facebook communities (2017–20) and auto-ethnographic engagement, the research grounds “lharba” as simultaneously a theological innovation, a political practice and a framework for collective identification that transcends physical mobility. The analysis advances three interconnected arguments: first, that lharba discourse operates as vernacular necropolitical theory through which abandonment produces social death in non-conflict settings; second, that theological innovations such as “lharba liman istataa’” (escape for those who are able) constitute autonomous political practices wherein excluded populations claim interpretive authority over Islamic tradition to justify migration as religious obligation responding to state failure; and third, that collective identification emerges through shared articulation of alienation rather than completed mobility, creating communities encompassing migrants, aspiring migrants and those who remain. By centring vernacular knowledge systems, the article demonstrates how migration scholarship gains analytical precision by attending to how subjects themselves theorise the conditions that produce their movement.