The Haratin, socially marginalized within the Anti-Atlas because of their dark skin, began migrating from the Anti-Atlas to the bidonvilles of Casablanca in the late 1930s, which placed them squarely within the epicenter of nationalist protests. Migration from the Oued Noun-Masa-Draa region of southern Morocco constituted a significant portion of the migration into northern port cities. These new arrivals consequently became the bedrock of the modernizing projects of the city, and also the base support of nationalists like Allal al Fassi. Through their participation in wage labor, these newcomers became subsumed within the varied anti-colonial and nationalist struggles, and exposed to the idea of being “Moroccan”. I suggest that the experience of migration, labor politics, and the various nationalist rhetoric to which they were exposed, gave rise to a localized brand of nationalism within Draa river valley oases. This nationalism was largely expressed through economic terms by the Haratin, who for the first time since 1850, were able to use their earnings gained from wage labor activities in the North, to (re)purchase land. The purchasing land was then, the act of dismantling the last vestiges of the ra’aya system, the patron-client system by which their body and labor were racialized. By bringing together these two activities, out and in-migrations, alongside the increase in land (re)acquisition, this paper argues that the Haratin were politically and economically astute actors. It argues as well for the integration of the south into the discourses of nationalism, in contrast to its conceptualization as a region which remained outside the discourse of nationalism in Morocco.