This ethnographic exploration of irregular migration from Western and Central Africa in Morocco deconstructs dehumanising narratives of a “migration crisis” and a “sub-Saharan problem” in politics of migration. The book provides an original focus on how migrants understood and experienced their entrapped mobility. The emic notion of “the adventure” at the heart of this study sheds light on a transformative, epic quest to carve out a better life and future. The book traces how young men from Western and Central Africa sought to assert themselves as agents of their own destinies, despite uncertain, illegalising processes. In steering away from aesthetics of despair and fearmongering narratives, the book brings new insights into inter-disciplinary debates (e.g. illegality, uncertainty, immobility, violence, suffering, transit, etc.). Such focus is essential to draw out the complexity and existential depth of (irregular) migrants’ lives, journeys, and stories.

The adventure is captivating as it is eye-opening. The engaging and thought-provoking ethnographic stories vividly show how young African migrants stranded in Morocco try to make a life for themselves amidst deeply unsettling socio-political environments. By deploying a phenomenological angle which stays close to migrants’ own ideas and experiences, Bachelet makes visible how the notion of adventure comes to be used as a resource allowing marginalised and highly vulnerable people to endure and contest hostile migration politics in the EU and beyond. The book beautifully draws out the complexity and existential depth of these young men’s stories, thereby moving beyond simplistic portrayals of illegal migrants as either victims or signifiers of crisis.
Annika Lems, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, Australian National University

In The Adventure, Sébastien Bachelet offers an evocative and powerful portrait of the struggles of precarious migrants in the marginal neighbourhoods of the Moroccan capital. Facing a violent border regime and deep discrimination, these adventurers from across West and Central Africa are, as one of them puts it, on a ‘quest for a life more bearable’. Bachelet follows them on this quest as they build a transient life in derelict ‘ghettos’, as they fight to make a living as cobblers or cooks, and as they keep a fire burning under the epic narratives and everyday struggles of the adventure. The result is a deft and deeply empathetic ethnographic portrait that reveals the adventurers not as victims nor pawns in a politicised crisis, and that draws its analytical force from foregrounding their perspectives. ‘The adventure is not a crisis,’ as Bachelet puts it, ‘but a radical movement towards life’ — a movement that no violent bordering logic is decisively able to quash.
Ruben Andersson, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford

A compelling and urgent book about life at the borders of Europe, unpacking with ethnographic care the violence and defiance of illegalised journeys.
Alice Elliot, author of The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco