Between vulnerability and resilience: The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic in two oasis societies in the Maghreb region

Abstract

From mid-March 2020 onwards, the Algerian and Moroccan governments instituted a lockdown to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in the closure of local markets and mobility restrictions. Even though these measures were implemented halfway through the agricultural year, the media and scientific coverage of the impact of the pandemic focused mainly on urban areas, leaving aside the experiences of rural people. This article aims to partially fill this gap by analysing how smallholder farmers, women and men, young producers, and workers in two oasis regions in the Maghreb, experienced these new challenges. To do so, we rely on 150 phone interviews conducted with rural actors in the Drâa Valley (Morocco) and the M'zab Valley (Algeria). By putting their experiences at the heart of our analysis, we show how the health crisis has put constraints on the ability of the majority of smallholder farmers to sell their products and how it has put a strain on the various activities of oasis families, making them more vulnerable. Then, we illustrate how these actors developed different individual and collective resilience practices, through the establishment of a virtual labor market to replace the traditional moquefs (places of recruitment of workers), the adoption of agroecological practices, and the reinvention of solidarity and collective action.