This paper builds upon the idea that land rights and belonging (and more broadly property and citizenship) are interrelated and that recognition is a core element of this dynamic connection (Lund, 2011; Jacob, Le Meur, 2010; Berry, 2009). What happens to the way belonging is conceptualized and defined by individuals when land resources become more valuable and when laws regulating this access change? Morocco represents an interesting case study in this regard. During the past 20 years, major economic projects have led to increasing pressure on Moroccan collective lands and have exacerbated conflicts and tensions within local communities and groups demanding to be included in the ongoing transactions. Drawing upon a book project-in-the-making and on research conducted since 2012 with different groups contesting their exclusion from collective land rights in Morocco, the paper focuses on developments that emerged after the adoption, in 2019, of new laws regulating collective land rights. This legislative reform declared women as legitimate beneficiaries of collective land, breaking with previous norms and practices that excluded them from their usufruct (Berriane, Rignall, 2017), but at the same time, it established a new category of people excluded from use rights: that of “non-residents”, meaning individuals who do not live within the area where the collectively owned land is situated. Paradoxically, this new category affects more particularly women. By focusing on a group of men and women who submitted a petition against this new resolution, this paper examines the impact of this new legal category in a context of widespread emigration which has distanced family and community members from the lands to which they now claim rights. How do they legitimize their claims? And, by doing so, how do they reconceptualize their belonging and membership to the community despite geographical distance?