Between a Rock and the Kasbah: Tourism Gentrification, Cultural Repackaging, and Identity in Tangier

Abstract

This article explores the impact of tourism gentrification on the residents of the Kasbah in the city of Tangier, Morocco. It utilizes qualitative methods to reveal how the Kasbah has become a site of contention between the Moroccan neoliberal state, the foreign investors and settlers, and the residents of Tangier as they negotiate place and identity. The paper will examine how the process of tourism gentrification is not only reinforcing a demographic shift in the Kasbah by displacing the locals but also how the foreign urban settlers are increasingly becoming the filter through which traditional Moroccan culture is conspicuously produced and legitimized. The article will end with a discussion on the mixed contentions surrounding the gentrifying presence of the foreign urban settlers on the residents of the Kasbah and the city of Tangier.