Settler colonialism indeed: M. Padrón Hernández, ‘”The Moroccan king wants Western Sahara without its people”: an argument for Western Sahara as a settler colony’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism indeed: M. Padrón Hernández, ‘”The Moroccan king wants Western Sahara without its people”: an argument for Western Sahara as a settler colony’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

02Feb25

Abstract: This paper examines the case of Western Sahara through the lens of settler colonial studies. A former Spanish colony in northern Africa, Western Sahara is most often described as ‘occupied’ by Morocco since 1975. I aim at shifting this narrative by applying settler colonial theory, more specifically Veracini’s concept of transfer, to the relation between Moroccan authorities and the indigenous population. Building on anthropological fieldwork in Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and interviews with Sahrawis in Algeria, Morocco and Europe, I look at how Sahrawis have experienced a number of transfers whose compounded effect is the gradual elimination of the native population.

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