Geographic Arbitrage to Morocco: The Muted Economic Motivations of European Lifestyle Migrants

ABSTRACT This article examines the cost‐of‐living motivations of European migrants relocating to Morocco. It attends to the culturally specific way these motivations are narrated, drawing on 36 semi‐structured qualitative interviews conducted in three receiving communities in Morocco. Geographic arbitrage alludes to the uses of inequalities in the cost of living between nation‐states, inequalities that index colonial social relations. The uses of these inequalities are increasingly the topic of discussion and attempts at legitimation. The article notes that, contrary to the libertarian contexts in which the idea of geographic arbitrage emerged in the 2000s, European lifestyle migrants are demure about the economic benefits of relocating to a former French colony, and prefer to speak of other motivations, notably a love of the country or culture, or a desire to make a significant life change. In a changing global political economy, these under‐theorized economic migrations shed new light on migrant categorization and the coloniality of transnational migration regimes.