Latest update: 03/08/2012 

- Economic crisis - Morocco


Economic crisis: young French graduates try their luck in Morocco

No Flash warning
To take advantage of all the features on FRANCE24.COM, please click here to download the latest version of Flash Player.

High unemployment, economic crisis, rampant gloom and doom...More and more French graduates are leaving their homeland behind to try their luck Morocco. Our reporter spent some time with these young people, who have emigrated in search of a better life on the other side of the Mediterranean.

REPORTERS
By Jean-Marie LEMAIRE / Rim MATHLOUTI

For several years now, Morocco has been a popular destination for French nationals. Today, approximately 55,000 of them live in the North African kingdom. While pensioners are discovering a better, cheaper life with year-round sunshine, young graduates eye career opportunities.

Young people looking for work are attracted by the economic vitality of Morocco. They have decided to try their luck outside of France, before or after gaining professional experience. The economic crisis, unemployment and the high cost of living at home are all factors that pushed them to become expatriates in a French-speaking country less than a three-hour flight from Paris.

Audrey, Aurore and Kevin have all moved to areas in Morocco where foreigners are in demand. A landscape gardener, an architect and an entrepreneur, they are gradually discovering the reality of Moroccan life. They know they are living in a traditional-yet-modern Muslim country. All of them have managed to find work and thereby boast a confidence that employers in Europe can no longer give them.

The Ivorian Gold Rush
16/11/2012 - REPORTERS

The Ivorian Gold Rush

Since the discovery of gold in the Bagoué riverbed, the Ivory Coast’s Kapolo mine has become a magnet for West Africa’s poorest. Tens of thousands of men, women & children work the land and themselves to the point of exhaustion. Gold fever has emptied the schools and left the crops abandoned. The stability of this impoverished farming region now hangs by a thread.
Burma’s Rohingya: forced into exile
09/11/2012 - REPORTERS

Burma’s Rohingya: forced into exile

They're one of the most persecuted minorities on earth. Descendants of Muslim merchants, the Rohingya settled in Burma centuries ago. But in 1982, a law took away their nationality as well as their rights to property, marriage and education. Now a dispute between Buddhists and the Rohingya has reopened old wounds and sparked deadly violence. Forced into exile, the Rohingya have poured into camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. An undercover FRANCE 24 team went to meet them.
(3) comments
Lost Vegas
02/11/2012 - REPORTERS

Lost Vegas

For decades, Las Vegas symbolised the American dream. But the economic crisis has hit hard. Today's recession has left Americans and foreign visitors with less cash to spend in the casinos. The glitz has given way to unemployment, uncertainty and evictions. Once Nevada’s leading source of tourism, Las Vegas is now dragging the entire state down.
Italy's Ilva factory: your job or your health?
26/10/2012 - REPORTERS

Italy's Ilva factory: your job or your health?

An Italian court has ruled in favour of closing Europe's biggest steel works on environmental and health fears. But the plant's managers are fighting to keep it open. Determined not to let that happen, citizens and workers have formed a united front.
(1) comment
Algerians in France, 1954-1962
17/10/2012 - DOCUMENTARY

Algerians in France, 1954-1962

Fifty-one years after the October 1961 massacre of Algerian protesters in Paris, four Algerians who lived in France during the Algerian war talk about their bitter struggle for the independence of their homeland in a FRANCE 24 documentary.

React to the article
Comment this article typing your message in the above text zone. Please note that this is limited to 1500 characters or less.
(3) Reactions

Get used to it :) in 2000,

by Globalization - 02/01/2013 - 22:07

Get used to it :) in 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people and the dissemination of knowledge.

Henri H

by Anonyme - 05/09/2012 - 20:09

Perhaps, if all the Moroccans in France go back home, the French will find jobs in France.

Intellectual fallacy

by Anonyme - 22/08/2012 - 07:13

Morocco as a 'traditional yet-modern-Muslim country''? Why do we always have to glorify a country that is far from being modern. Morocco suffers from high poverty level and lack of resources. Unless you are a Bourgeois from Anfa in Casablanca, or unless you attended the American School of Rabat, no you are not a ''modern Moroccan'' but rather subject to the difficulties of life. The expansion of this Kingdom is only attractive to French expatriates who are hired at the expense of Moroccan professionals.

Read more
Close