State Strikes Back: The Spanish–Moroccan Border Crisis from the Lens of the Beirut School of Critical Security Studies

ABSTRACT This goal of this article is to improve our understanding of Morocco’s instrumentalization of migration and border management to pressure Spain. We analyze the literature on critical security studies and North–South relations. This study’s contribution, resulting from the theoretical approach of the Beirut School of Critical Security Studies and the Spanish–Moroccan border-crisis case study, is twofold. First, it decenters the study of security and international relations from the dominant concerns with Western interests and policy priorities. Second, it documents a paradigm shift in the study of North–South relations, highlighting the agency of the Global South. This agency, evident in the case of Morocco, indicates that smaller state actors have the capacity to gain leverage over bigger state actors and that they are not merely recipients of the policies of the Global North. Proof of this is Morocco’s successful instrumentalization of the border crisis to obtain Spain’s explicit recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara.