These MREs who find a new life in Morocco

The Kandinsky café-restaurant, a trendy and modern place in the city of Tangier, is buzzing with activity. The atmosphere is lively, the conversations lively. One detail attracts attention: the Dutch language resonates there, whether in exchanges between customers or on the menus. Here, no tourists, but many Dutch people of Moroccan origin, whose parents or grandparents had once left the Morocco for the Netherlands. Today they are going in the opposite direction.

Among them, Hassan El Yazghe, 58, spent most of his life in Amsterdam, where he worked in a bank. His father, who arrived in the Netherlands as a migrant worker, had been well received, with people still curious about migrants at the time, he said. The climate has changed since then. “Under Rutte, it was already not great for Moroccans, and with the current government, it is even worse. You always remain the stranger. People have had enough. Those who can leave,” he explains to Rouw.nl. He notices, during his regular visits to his mother who remains in the Netherlands, that the country has become more hostile.