François Picard is pleased to welcome Aida Alami, New York Times World contributor. Drawing on her own field reporting at the Moroccan border, Alami challenges attempts to explain the mass crossing to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta primarily through a theory of deliberate state orchestration. While acknowledging both Morocco's history of leveraging migration in its relations with Spain and the possibility that security forces made tactical decisions on the day, Alami insists on distinguishing evidence from inference.
Her reporting instead points towards an interaction between online misinformation, overwhelmed security forces and a population already primed to migrate by political repression and limited economic opportunity.
