Diasporic Mobilities on Vacation by Wagner, Lauren B.;

Short description:

Diasporic Mobilities on Vacation is a nuanced exploration of the embodied and affective practices of Moroccans from Europe visiting Morocco for summer vacation.

Long description:

Diasporic Mobilities on Vacation is a nuanced exploration of the embodied and affective practices of Moroccans from Europe visiting Morocco for summer vacation. Rather than characterizing them as uncomfortably split between homelands, this book focuses on how their touristic leisure practices create their own space of diasporic belonging.

An expert on Moroccan diaspora communities and mobile lifestyles, the book draws on multi-sited and mobile ethnographic research to take the reader along on the journey ‘home’ and experience the daily lives of diasporic visitors. Their practices, activities, and encounters on vacation offer insights into larger issues of class, leisure consumption, and transnational belonging in South-to-North migration contexts. Concretely, the book shows how these holiday encounters simultaneously generate integration into Morocco for migrant descendants who can feel at ‘home’ in this homeland, and differentiation from others in how they embody ‘Moroccaness’ as social and material actors.

This book shows how seemingly frivolous practices of leisure have material consequences for individuals who belong across homelands. Positioned at the intersection of migration studies, leisure and tourism mobilities, and ethnomethodology and practice theory, this book is a worthwhile read for scholars and students—indeed, anyone questioning or experiencing problems of belonging in transnational and diasporic contexts.

This book is a fresh whirlwind, a highly commendable contribution to understanding mobility practices among the post-migration generation in Europe, regularly engaging in visits to Morocco. Theoretically, the research skilfully moves above and beyond what we traditionally call tourist, migration or diaspora studies. Moreover, it surprises the reader with the breadth and depth of methodological excellence, combining mobile ethnography with visual materials and conversational analysis. As a result, words become alive and rise from the flatness of the written text. This book will demand a lot from a reader, but its freshness, methodological innovativeness and true interdisciplinarity will reward you generously.

-Dr Aija Lulle, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland

Table of Contents:

Foreword: Moving Beyond Eurocentric Tourist Studies, by Tim Edensor

Chapter 1 – Introduction: Home for summer vacation

Chapter 2 – Assembling diasporicness: More than the sum of its parts

Chapter 3 - Vignettes: Attachments, Embodiments, Insulations

Chapter 4 – Conclusions: Assembling diasporic mobilities

Appendix: Methodological design