The Sahrawi fisheries sector in the world economy : extraction, industry and commercialisation under occupation
Veguilla, Victoria (Universidad Pablo de Olavide)
Camps-Febrer, Blanca (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Dret Públic i de Ciències Historicojurídiques)

Date:	2025
Description:	21 pàg.
Abstract:	The study of the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara has traditionally been approached from the perspectives of legal or political conflict analysis, often overlooking the defining significance of the conflict's political economy. However, in recent decades, the fisheries sector has come to play a decisive role in the territories and can thus serve as an analytical vantage point from which to explore the detailed workings of occupation within the global capitalist economy. This article examines the development of the octopus and sardine industries in Western Sahara. It identifies the local, Moroccan and transnational actors that promote and have benefited from the globalisation of production in recent decades. The article highlights how the dispossession and exploitation of fisheries resources play a critical role in strengthening Morocco's settler colonial project and semi-peripheral position, while also serving global capitalist elites and their control of, and profit making via, global value chains. Far from being an exceptional practice, occupation provides a controlled space of accumulation for global and Moroccan elites, as well as a handful of Sahrawi actors, fitting smoothly into historical dynamics of imperialism.
Grants:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2020-113784GB-I00
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Western Sahara ; Fishing ; Global value chains ; Imperialism ; Occupation ; Settler colonialism
Published in:	Review of African Political Economy, Núm. 184 (2025) , p. 185-205, ISSN 1740-1720

DOI: 10.62191/ROAPE-2025-0011

22 p, 769.9 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles