The cosmopolitan citizen in a world of fading boundaries: A research on the migration aspirations of the Dutch and Flemish that have settled in Morocco De kosmopolitische burger in een grensvervagende wereld Een onderzoek naar de migratieaspiraties van Nederlanders en Vlamingen die zich in Marokko hebben gevestigd

Within the scientific literature on migration, there is a seemingly strong emphasis on migrants who migrate to countries that are wealthier than their country of origin. Literature regarding the phenomenon of people moving to countries less wealthy than their country of origin is scarce. Therefore, the focus in this study is on Flemish and Dutch people (without Moroccan background) who migrated to Morocco with the main objective of finding out the reason for their migration. The model of Timmerman, Hemmerechts and de Clerck (2014) takes centre stage, the aim of which is to identify factors on the micro-, macro- and meso-level which influence the individual perception on migration. This study is based on secondary data analysis of 27 interviews with 21 individuals and 6 couples. At the micro-level, the love for a partner, the love for Morocco, the preference for the climate, and the presence of the so-called cosmopolitan identity are important factors in the creation of migration aspirations. On the macro-level the economic context (mainly because of a reduction in maintenance costs) is the most important reason to move to Marocco. The migration literature is increasingly focusing on the meso-level in which the social network of the migrant is most important. Most salient is that factors at the meso-level have hardly had any influence on the creation of migration aspirations for these interviewees. The identified factors on the micro-level and macro-level are in line with the fledgling theory Lifestyle Migration. Further research could indicate if the above-mentioned results comply with migrants who move to other non-traditional migration countries.

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