The Maghrebi diaspora in Europe: the audience brands translate for instead of talking to

There is an audience French brands see every day without ever speaking to it. It shops in the same places as everyone else, it watches TikTok and Instagram like everyone else — and part of what it watches is in darija, Kabyle or Arabic. It has two cultures, two languages, and often two shopping lists: products from here, and products from back home.

“In 2023, 3.5 million immigrants born in Africa were living in France, accounting for 48% of all immigrants. Out of 100 African immigrants, 60 were born in the Maghreb: 26 in Algeria, 25 in Morocco, and the rest in Tunisia.”

According to the same publication, that is around 892,000 people born in Algeria, 853,000 in Morocco and 347,000 in Tunisia — over two million people, not counting their children and grandchildren born in France, whom INSEE counts separately. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Germany each have their own Maghrebi diaspora, smaller but real. This is not a niche market. It is a market nobody measures because nobody speaks to it.

Why so few brands speak to it

Not for lack of interest, but for lack of tools. To make a video in darija, you need to find a creator who genuinely speaks it (and which one: the diaspora is Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian, in different proportions depending on the city), write a brief they understand, check the video in a language nobody in the marketing team speaks, handle the rights and properly pay someone who doesn't always have creator status. Each step is a hurdle; put end to end, they mean the French ad gets taken and translated. And the diaspora recognises a translation from the first sentence.

What “speaking to it” means

• In the language it speaks, not a translated one: the family's darija, or the darija-French mix you hear in any kitchen in Marseille or Brussels.
• With its own codes: Ramadan prepared in January, Eid, back-to-school, summer weddings, the parcel sent back home.
• Through someone who looks like it: a creator born here to parents born there, filmed at home, not in a studio.
• Without folklore: the diaspora is a modern, urban, connected audience that spots caricature as quickly as translation.

Where to start

With a single video. A product the diaspora already buys, one promise, a creator who speaks the right darija, a seven-line brief. Then watch what happens in the comments: that's where this audience says, in its own language, whether it recognised itself. That's exactly what ASLI is built for — creators from the Maghreb and the diaspora filming in their own language, for brands that want to speak rather than translate.