لو وجدنا من يستمع لنا ما كنا لنصل لهذا الحد – ’If we had found someone to listen to us, we would not have reached this point’ (graffiti on a wall in Morocco, 2 October 2025).

How did the GenZ212 movement begin in Morocco? What social situation does it emerge from?

The ’GenZ212’ movement officially emerged in the streets on Saturday, 27 September 2025, but its structure was first established on Discord [1]. This platform was used by young people for coordination, planning protest locations, discussing demands, and inviting personalities known for their commitment or expertise in specific areas. This movement is therefore part of those collective actions that were structured first on digital platforms, in a decentralised manner and without an identifiable ’leader’.

Several reasons explain its emergence, relating to both structural and contextual elements. Concerning the latter aspect, it should be noted that since late August and early September, the city of Agadir, located in south-western Morocco, was the scene of a tragedy following the deaths of eight women in the same week during caesarean sections at the Regional Hospital Centre. This led residents to call it the ’hospital of death’ and to organise large-scale mobilisations, as was the case on 14 September. Some protagonists of this mobilisation would later be found in the movement.

The situation of hospitals in Morocco is well known to Moroccans: lack of personnel and equipment, multiple dysfunctions, and a hospital experience often lived as traumatic by the population. In addition to hospital infrastructure, official institutions such as the High Commission for Planning [2] note a very low medical density relative to the number of inhabitants, particularly when compared to international standards. These inadequacies are documented and experienced in large cities, but also in rural areas with an even more alarming situation.

Whilst the public sector faces profound inadequacies, neoliberalism continues to produce its effects by favouring the development of private healthcare provision at particularly high costs. This dynamic accentuates inequalities in access to care. The most vulnerable and working-class populations thus find themselves excluded from this system due to its cost, sometimes forcing them to take out loans or sell their belongings to receive treatment. Consequently, the situation of hospitals, to which we can add the lack of resources in the education system, resonates with a social context marked by an unemployment rate that reaches 36.7% (HCP, 2024) amongst the 15-24 age group, precisely ’Generation Z’.

From the emergence of this collective action, its demands were structured around three axes: health, education, and the fight against corruption. In the field of health, the mobilisation calls for a thorough reform of the health system with adequate budgets, properly equipped hospitals that preserve users’ dignity, as well as equitable access to care. Concerning the education sector, the demands focus on thorough reforms that guarantee a quality, free, and egalitarian system, valuing public schooling. The insistence on public provision here stems from the fact that the private education sector, in strong expansion over the last decade, has become a lucrative market that weakens the public sector. Finally, in the context of the fight against corruption, the movement targets public institutions by demanding measures against favouritism, guaranteeing equal opportunities, and strengthening accountability.

Thus, when we carefully observe what these young people put forward, one of the possible hypotheses for interpreting this movement consists of seeing in it the expression of a social conflict around the meanings of ’development’. Morocco is engaged in vast ’development’ projects, notably ’sustainable’ ones, but the young people precisely highlight the contradictions that accompany them: persistence of social and spatial inequalities, territories marginalised with respect to the benefits of ’development’, unemployment and dysfunctions in public services, even as the country prepares to host the World Cup in 2030 – which certain slogans denounce.

It is from this global picture that the issues of the movement take shape. The telephone code ’212’ in ’GenZ212’ also suggests a Moroccan version of what is happening internationally, associated with Generation Z.

What are the forces involved, in terms of organisation and social composition, and their demands? In particular, what are its links with the left or progressive Moroccan organisations?

One of the movement’s properties is that it wants to be independent of any organisation. Its members affirm having no party affiliation, nor any defined political current. This autonomy is a dimension ardently defended in communiqués and in the protagonists’ public statements.

Part of the Moroccan left has of course given its support to the movement. This is a left perceived as credible and which defends a project of social change, actively invested in social movements. On the side of the political field, the Democratic Federation of the Left [3] has published several support communiqués and some members are mobilised in certain locations. This is also the case for certain figures from the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) [4]. Certain left-wing political personalities, such as former deputy Omar Belfrej, enjoy a certain popularity amongst young people. He was recently (8 October 2025) invited on Discord, an event that caused server saturation due to the high number of participants. Other actors anchored on the left have also supported the movement in the associative sector (such as the Moroccan Association for Human Rights – AMDH [5]), journalism, civil society, or the trade union movement, etc. For the rest, the state of the Moroccan political field remains marked by strong decomposition, and young people are particularly wary of political parties.

The movement’s social base is constituted by this youth of ’Generation Z’ (born between the late 1990s and early 2010s). It is interesting to note that the protagonists have a high level of education which translates into their capacity to structure discussion spaces in a very advanced manner. Moreover, following hundreds of hours of debates and the first data from my research (interviews, observations, etc.) highlight a critical social consciousness, marked by a culture of exchange, directly correlated to their education level. As a sociologist of social movements, I observe two important phenomena. The first, already noted in my previous work on mobilisations in France, concerns the fact that some protagonists insist on the idea that their demands ’are neither left nor right’ or that ’we’re not doing politics’, to distance themselves from traditional political organisations, which they hold responsible for the country’s situation. This distancing does not signify an absence of political consciousness as I have heard said. On the contrary, it is accompanied by a politicisation in action, where the protagonists diagnose the situation very precisely and operate generalisations. Daily life is connected here to structural elements. The second phenomenon is processual. Although it was not an initial demand, the movement called in the middle of the first week of mobilisation for the government’s resignation. This dynamic is explained by the lack of rapid public interactions from the authorities with the protagonists whilst thousands of young people are in the street, combined with repression experienced as unjust and suffered from the first day of mobilisation. This moral economy of mobilisation could moreover be summarised in one of the slogans heard during the mobilisations and which is not new: كرامة, حرية, عدالة اجتماعية (dignity, freedom, social justice). A public expression of a generation from the Global South, confronted with the great transformations of its era, political, social, and ecological, and animated by a strong aspiration for freedom and justice.

What forms does the movement take in terms of repertoire of action? In particular, we have seen scenes of violence: what is the movement’s attitude on this?

The ’GenZ212’ movement mobilises the available action repertoires of social movements: demonstrations, sit-ins, or discussion circles. Mobilisation days are decided on Discord through a voting system to guarantee decision-making that is as horizontal as possible. This does not prevent, from a critical sociology perspective, observing that questions are formulated in a certain way rather than another, and that response modalities remain limited in posted polls. However, the new element resides in the fact that all these modalities proposed on Discord are the subject of collective discussion. This is a new fact in the context of collective actions in Morocco. This aspect is all the more interesting as in comparison, the 10 September movement in France [6] had also largely used polls to deliberate on the follow-up to its actions. Discord also constitutes a decentralised space where debates are held permanently, notably in voice channels (VC) organised by region, or within thematic working groups devoted to specific issues such as health, justice, etc. Online general assemblies where the protagonists present their worldviews, at a dense and difficult-to-follow pace.

The mobilisation thus follows a national dynamic, whilst remaining subject to regional adjustments resulting from local power relations, the presence of more politicised actors, or organisations that give each mobilisation specific tonalities. These particularities manifest themselves notably through slogans: for example, those expressing solidarity with prisoners from the Rif [7], banners, and the messages they convey.

In its current configuration, at the time we are speaking, although adjustments exist, it is indeed the Discord coordinators (the ’admins’) who set the tone, based on numerous consultations, by reporting remarks formulated in VCs, systematically resorting to voting, and following advances on the ground, etc. There is therefore a relational dimension to this work that is not carried out in isolation.

At the beginning of October, the movement was marked by significant episodes of violence. Scenes of riots accompanied by destruction, and the death of three people in Chtouka-Aït Baha province [8].

The constant, however, that characterises calls to mobilisation resides in the desire to preserve the peaceful character of actions. This orientation should be interpreted in light of the Moroccan context. It is a position aimed at remaining irreproachable and not alienating either the power or the general population.

What are the reactions of the ruling power? Beyond fierce repression and security discourse, are openings appearing?

From a chronological point of view, it should be specified that repression occurred from the first day of mobilisation. The hypothesis that could be formulated is that the authorities would likely have gambled on quickly extinguishing the movement through arrests, convictions, and judicial prosecutions. However, the opposite effect occurred, as the movement managed to impose itself on the public landscape. After a period of great silence, public television channels gave young people the floor to criticise the government, a situation unprecedented since the 20 February movement in 2011 [9]. Following violence and arrests, a moment of observation returned, and demonstrations took place under the surveillance of law enforcement, without intervention on their part.

However, the young people have not yet achieved their goal, notably the government’s departure. I noticed a certain disappointment following the royal speech on 10 October. The protagonists’ reaction here also fits into a pivotal moment of their political socialisation, which leads them to acculturate to forms of activism and to project themselves into political mobilisation that the Makhzen [10], understood here in the broad sense as the power structure in Morocco, does not hold dear.

What are the prospects but also the pitfalls of the movement?

The movement is still ongoing, and a major mobilisation day is planned for 18 October, following a vote on Discord. It is appropriate here to remain measured in hot interpretation, given the available data and the limits that social science tools impose on any researcher.

What can be said is that over the last fifteen years, there have been two important sequences: the 20 February movement, born in the context of the so-called Arab uprisings, and the Rif movement in 2016, specific because of its geographical anchoring. The ’GenZ212’ movement fits well into this lineage. Its mobilisations are built from below, carried by protagonists for whom this is a first mobilisation experience, and are characterised by such intensity that they manage to open a political debate within Moroccan society. At the same time, this movement is different from its two predecessors.

It is distinguished from the Rif movement by its territorial dispersion and the absence of a ’charismatic’ leader. Over the days of mobilisation, it extended to other localities: between 27 September and 6 October, no fewer than ten new localities were added, bringing the total number of mobilisation sites to 23. This phenomenon is not insignificant and reveals deep dynamics.

In my work, I have always insisted on the role of margins to decentre the gaze. It is crucial for understanding social dynamics in Morocco to question what is happening in rural spaces located outside the large cities that benefit from international media coverage like Casablanca and Rabat. These predominantly rural spaces are characterised by strong social control and low-level repression, ranging from authorities to families who exert pressure on their children. The profiles mobilised in Chtouka-Aït Baha province to take just this example and those of Casablanca do not share, beyond their youth, the same living environments, and probably not the same relationships to politics, education, and the future. Anti-racists are accustomed to saying that French working-class neighbourhoods are not political deserts. I would say the same about these spaces. Mobilisations take place there, as evidenced by the mobilisation of women against exploitation in agricultural greenhouses in this province.

The current mobilisation is also distinguished from the 20 February movement because its initial base is still maintained. At the time we are speaking, there are not yet broad convergences similar to those of the 20 February movement in 2011, which brought together historical actors of the opposition in Morocco, the radical left, the Islamists of Al Adl Wal Ihsane [11], the Amazigh component [12], as well as associations and civil society actors engaged in various aspects of social life: human rights, feminism, democracy, etc. It is still too early to measure the profound consequences of this movement on Moroccan society, and one must guard against over-interpretation of this protest event. Research must follow its course in order to better understand its springs and contributions. One thing is however certain: the movement has breathed fresh air into a Moroccan society marked by the atony of political space, where political figures succeed one another as in a theatre play where each actor plays a precise role.

As a sociologist, I would say that every social movement makes mistakes. This is characteristic of a socialising experience, characteristic of mobilisations from below in constrained contexts. A certain stigmatising discourse was temporarily established towards rural spaces and less educationally advantaged populations (such as the use of the term ’Al Awbach’ [13]), following days of great violence. But it was quickly corrected. It remains to be observed chronologically whether the refocusing around large urban spaces might not have produced limiting effects on the movement. One of the specificities of young people is however their reflexivity. Within the movement itself, intense debates focus on the decentralisation of decisions, on the role of facilitators, and on organising the following stages. Another important point concerns the gendered dimensions of the movement. Public statements and guests remain largely male. Yet women constitute a significant proportion of participants, and a movement of this scale should be able to correct this imbalance.

What are the international reactions to the movement, and have forms of solidarity been observed?

The movement has received strong international solidarity: in Europe, the United States, and Canada, emanating essentially from the Moroccan diaspora, but also from progressive organisations, working-class neighbourhood collectives, and spaces where a Moroccan diaspora resides.

In Brussels, Marseille, and especially Paris, Moroccans from the diaspora have mobilised to support the movement from France. Due to the strong presence of this diaspora in the country, the debate has also opened there, to the point that the France 2 8 pm television news devoted a several-minute report to it. An interesting fact: having investigated the 10 September ’Block everything!’ movement, to cite just one recent example, it does not seem to me that this news programme devoted as much time to it during this peak viewing time.

On the side of progressive organisations committed to democracy, the best support to bring to young people consists, it seems to me, in starting from their own slogans, avoiding imposing interpretative frameworks on a specific context, because they and they alone fully know the realities on the ground. On this subject there are interesting works such as those of Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi [14], or colleagues (Boutaleb, Vannetzel and Allal, 2018) who have shown well for example that so-called Arab post-2011 societies are not necessarily structured from a binary opposition between ’the people’ and ’the regime’, but through various interactions in their relationship to the state.

Like any major social mobilisation, I would say that international solidarity plays an important role in making the movement’s issues visible and providing support tools, but it must be deployed with respect for the movement’s independence and in close coordination with those mobilised, as is the case in France.

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Vincent Bollenot is a member of the editorial team of Contretemps.

Charif Elalaoui is a doctor in political sociology and specialist in social and environmental mobilisations in France and Morocco.