Studying contemporary models of Maghrebi racialisation through a bottom-up approach that grounds the understanding of racial identities in specific social, political and religious contexts — and moves beyond Western stereotypes — is the goal for the next five years of CHRoMA (“Chromatic Maghreb, Untangling the Complexities of Race in the Contemporary Maghreb”), a scientific project coordinated by anthropologist Marta Scaglioni at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca. The project has been awarded a €1.3 million European Research Council Starting Grant.
Racialisation refers to the tendency to discriminate against or segregate groups of individuals based on characteristics that are identified and perceived as “different” or inferior.
“The Maghreb offers a privileged perspective for narrating models of racialisation outside Western stereotypes,” says Marta Scaglioni. “It is both a post-colonial context — shaped by the legacy of French colonialism — and a post-slavery one, following the trans-Saharan slave trade.”
“In the Maghreb,” the CHRoMA coordinator continues, “growing ethnonationalism has recently triggered racial tensions rooted in a long history of social differentiation. Political, public and academic discourse tends to reduce this complexity to a binary opposition between ‘white’ and ‘black’ ethnic groups. In Tunisia, for instance, recent years have seen the rise of an ethnically based, anti-migrant nationalism. In Morocco, by contrast, there has been greater openness, including the recognition of ethnic minorities, particularly Amazigh (Berber) groups.”
CHRoMA will examine these contemporary dynamics in connection with historical patterns of racial differentiation.
“In my research, I use the term race as an umbrella concept,” Scaglioni explains. “It encompasses not only skin colour, but also genealogy, social status and religion. I then deconstruct and reconstruct it from the ground up, replacing it with emic terms — terms belonging to the local territories and populations themselves.”
The project will investigate the lexicons, grammars and genealogies of racialisation processes in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, starting from people’s lived experiences.
“We aim to avoid simplified, preconceived interpretations of ‘racial’ identities,” she continues, “and instead highlight both racialised hierarchies and the political and individual spaces of resistance to discrimination within Maghrebi geographies, histories and societies.”
Scaglioni’s innovative method uses etymology as a key to understanding history: starting from emic terms that describe racialisation processes, she will trace their historical and geographical trajectories. These terms will become metadata in an open-access online database, enabling contributions from researchers worldwide.
Five case studies
The research will focus on five key case studies:
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Legacies of racialised slavery — descendants of enslaved people who, despite sharing citizenship, language and religion with descendants of slaveholders, continue to be racialised and discriminated against as belonging to another social category.
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The meanings of “whiteness” — an Arab person does not typically self-identify as “white”; whiteness is associated with various attributes such as genealogy or social belonging.
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Internal racialised divisions within the Amazigh (Berber) population — differentiation between sedentary groups (e.g. Kabyles) and nomadic groups (e.g. Tuareg), including marriage taboos.
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Racialisation of sub-Saharan migrants — individuals arriving from West Africa and, in earlier periods, from the Horn of Africa.
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New categories developed by Maghrebi anti-racist activism — especially after 2020, with movements drawing connections to Black Lives Matter.
A team of four researchers will work on CHRoMA under the coordination of Marta Scaglioni.
Since 2014, the University of Milano-Bicocca has received funding for 20 ERC projects: 8 Consolidator Grants, 2 Advanced Grants, 6 Starting Grants (including CHRoMA), 2 Proof of Concept and 2 Synergy Grants.
“The ERC Starting Grant awarded to CHRoMA,” states Marco Orlandi, Vice-Rector and Pro-Rector for Research at the University of Milano-Bicocca, “is further confirmation of the quality and competitiveness of our research projects in international scientific contexts. Understanding the mechanisms underlying discrimination processes in the Maghreb is increasingly relevant today. This success also shows that Milano-Bicocca’s policies are effective in attracting young researchers and encouraging them to pursue ambitious goals.”