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作者

Lauren B. Wagner

来源

URBAN GEOGRAPHY,Vol.40,Issue5,P.665-683

语言

英文

关键字

Ethnomethodology,affective practices,diasporic mobilities,leisure,critical mass

作者单位

Department of Technology and Society Studies, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

摘要

For diasporic communities fostered through international labor migration, visiting an ancestral homeland can be a transformative encounter. Crossing into “the homeland”, descendants of migrants can reorient from a relatively underprivileged and socioeconomically immobilized minority, into a geopolitically mobile economic elite. For Moroccans from Europe, this transformation recurs every summer, as millions of diasporic visitors – including several family generations post-migration – travel “home” for summer vacation. These visits are as much an investment in belonging “at home” as they are a chance to consume leisure relatively inexpensively – to pursue, for a finite period in this familiar, familial place, affective practices of comparatively elite nighttime urban leisure available to them in Morocco more so than in Europe. As they move between and gather in consumption sites that are relatively inexpensive to them as diasporic visitors, they become a critical mass of nightlife consumers moving around cities in Morocco, becoming emergently and contingently elite.KEYWORDS: Ethnomethodology, affective practices, diasporic mobilities, leisure, critical massPerception of perception of arroganceS: you know when I eh phh, it depends(.) sometimes when I go to other countries, then I miss Morocco, but when I go to Morocco I come back I said oh why did I go to Morocco, the people are ennerving me, ils m’ennervent[3 turns excised]LW: what is annoying you?S: well phhhh, what is annoying me, the fact that they think that we in Europe are millionaires here, and we don’t have to work for our money and so(.) the fact that they think that we are arrogant, we are not arrogant.In an interview that took place in Antwerp, Soumia (above) describes one circulating perception that influences her experience of Morocco as a “diasporic visitor” (DV), having been raised in Belgium within a Moroccan-origin family. She links her irritation – her annoyance, as I translated “ennerving” in situ – to a perception she attributes generically to local residents (“they”) of thinking that DVs (“we in Europe”) are arrogant. That arrogance is made relevant by (her assertion of) “their” misperceptions about eliteness: that she and other DVs visiting Morocco from Europe do not need to “work for [their] money”; that they occupy a position of leisurely wealth.Her report of being perceived as arrogantly elite was echoed by other DVs – and has been echoed by other diasporically-configured visitors in other homelands (Coles & Timothy, 2004 Coles, Tim, & Timothy, Dallen J (Eds.). (2004). Tourism, diasporas and space. London: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Potter, Conway, & Phillips, 2005 Potter, Robert B., Conway, Dennis, & Phillips, Joan (Eds.). (2005). The experience of return migration: Caribbean perspectives. Aldershot: Ashgate. [Google Scholar]; Stephenson, 2002 Stephenson, Marcus L. (2002). Travelling to the ancestral homelands: The aspirations and experiences of a UK caribbean community. Current Issues in Tourism, 5(5), 378–425.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) – as an attitude they know circulates about them, but they are unable to effectively ameliorate. Even if their intention is not, as another participant described it, to “raise themselves a degree above others”, they reported being aware of perceptions about them as arrogantly elite; perceptions they attributed to local residents. Effectively, their interactions outside their families (and sometimes within them) can become a vicious cycle of negative perceptions reproducing each other: DVs indignantly perceiving themselves as perceived as arrogant, and local residents apparently perceiving themselves as affronted by arrogant behavior. These negative perceptions rebound and accumulate into a affectively practiced dynamic of elite distinctiveness, in which these DVs, when feeling unjustly labeled as “millionaires,” may choose – like Soumia threatens above – no longer to visit Morocco in order to avoid this negative experience.Though Soumia seems to disavow participating in any “arrogance” herself, behavior that might be interpreted as arrogantly elite is implicitly part of how DVs are present in Morocco. As visitors who come only during holiday periods, often in search of experiential leisure as a key activity to enjoy their visit, they seem to suddenly explode into the urban nighttime economy as voracious and mobile leisure consumers. In comparison to some local residents, they seem to spend money on leisure without limits, at times unaware of implicit socially-organized standards, and occupying significant resources in public space as a cumulative critical mass. Though in their European places of residence they may encounter problems of access in participating in nighttime leisure in cities (Schwanen, van Aalst, Brands, & Timan, 2012 Schwanen, Tim, van Aalst, Irina, Brands, Jelle, & Timan, Tjerk. (2012). Rhythms of the night: Spatiotemporal inequalities in the nighttime economy. Environment and Planning A, 44(9), 2064–2085.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), their status in Morocco as mobile, Muslim vacationers enables a freedom of movement and leisure consumption that they may not find elsewhere.Through this situated contrast, this paper investigates the leisure consumption practices that shape how eliteness emerges for a cohort of post-migrant generation diasporic visitors, coming into contextual relevance through interactions with others in urban consumption spaces rather than absolutely measurable through metrics of income or wealth. The reported perception of their eliteness at “home” may contrast their situational non-eliteness in their countries of residence, where they are often contextualized alongside other stigmatized and ethnicized migrant minority communities, but it may also be accurate to how, in their leisure practices, they become present and perceivable as a mobile collective in Moroccan urban nightlife.To that end, this paper begins by situating how this eliteness is configured by Moroccan histories, DV mobilities, and the production and consumption of urban nightlife in Morocco. Next, the discussion addresses the production of an elite distinction as an affective practice, and how it is empirically approached here using ethnographic methods. Finally, I present some fieldwork data, composed of fieldnotes paired with visuals and sketched maps, to illustrate how certain practices of urban leisure consumption, which were repeatedly observed across participants of many ages and in different cities throughout this project but are reported here through one exemplar “night out”, might be read as affective practices materializing into perceptions of arrogant eliteness, cutting a pathway of diasporic leisure consumption through a Moroccan city.Elite ecologies of summertime in morocco: night time experiential leisure across urban spaceEliteness as a practiced position incorporates the ability to define rules, create boundaries, and determine access to power (Myers-Scotton, 1990 Myers-Scotton, Carol. (1990). Elite closure as boundary maintenance: The case of Africa. In Brian Westein (Eds.), Language policy and political development (pp. 25–42). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. [Google Scholar]). Empirically, these practical attributes contour how others can situate themselves in relation to those who become “elite”: while others may know they are nearby, or be able to trace evidence of their presence and influence, elites are rarely blatantly visible or directly accessible. Part of practicing eliteness may be in this invisibility, inasmuch as those who have no need to raise their status (financially or socially) also have no need to demonstrably show their status (Freudendal-Pedersen, 2014 Freudendal-Pedersen, Malene. (2014). Tracing the super-rich and their mobilities in a scandanavian welfare state. In Thomas Birtchnell & Javier Caletrío (Eds.), Elite mobilities (pp. 209–225). Abingdon: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Spence, 2016 Spence, Emma. (2016). Eye-spy wealth: Cultural capital and “knowing luxury” in the identification of and engagement with the superrich. Annals of Leisure Research, 19(3), 314–328.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Part of this practiced invisibility may be spatial, through the purposefully limited accessibility of enclosed spaces where elites are to be found – especially those spaces codified and practiced as protected, silent, and satisfying in order to attract elite consumers (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2012 Thurlow, Crispin, & Jaworski, Adam. (2012). Elite mobilities: The semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege. Social Semiotics, 22(4), 487–516.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).Yet, the “elites” under discussion here are not among those who might be generally considered, across diverse times and spaces, as defining rules, creating boundaries, and determining access to power. They are, instead, those who encounter frictions, disagreements and ambiguity in being considered as “elite” (Jansson, 2016 Jansson, André. (2016). Mobile elites: Understanding the ambiguous lifeworlds of sojourners, dwellers and homecomers. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(5), 421–434.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In line with how this this special issue suggests approaching urban eliteness through “ecologies” rather than classifications – bringing attention to how eliteness works to contour urban life as relational between many interacting parts rather than as a universal definition (Bassens and Van Heur, this volume) – the “eliteness” argued for here is dependent and contingent on a combination of factors occurring in certain limited timespaces. It is not likely to be extendable beyond that limited space and its set of contingencies. The collection of factors that make up this urban nightlife scene all contribute to how this collective emerges as “elite” in their contingent ability to test and break rules, enact boundaries, and exercise economic power – while, however, remaining starkly visible in the Moroccan urban nightlife environments where their “eliteness” is practiced.Morocco presents perhaps a unique case in the production of urban space for consumption, to the extent that the “preservation” of each medina, or historical city, alongside the creation of villes nouvelles full of hotels and cafes, was explicitly part of the French colonial Protectorate project to engender and promote touristic consumption of the territory by a European public (Hillali, 2007 Hillali, Mimoun. (2007). La Politique du Tourisme au Maroc: Diagnostic, Bilan et Critique. Paris: L’Harmattan. [Google Scholar]; Minca & Wagner, 2016 Minca, Claudio, & Wagner, Lauren. (2016). Moroccan dreams: Orientalist myth, colonial legacy. London: I.B. Tauris. [Google Scholar]; Stafford, Bélanger, & Sarrasin, 1996 Stafford, Jean, Bélanger, Charles-Etienne Sarrasin, & Sarrasin, Bruno. (1996). Développement et Tourisme au Maroc. Montréal: Harmattan. [Google Scholar]). Modes of consumption encouraged through this dynamic, in parallel with other post-colonial sites for tourism (cf. Michael & Tucker, 2004 Michael, Hall, C., & Tucker, Hazel (Eds.). (2004). Tourism and postcolonialism: Contested discourses, identities and representations. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), range from a discourse of authenticity linked to global heritage, to an invitation for embodied experience of “the local” adapted for the non-local consumer, to the promised pleasure found in natural landscapes, city centers and urban nightlife throughout the territory. In Morocco, this Protectorate-era legacy is perpetuated in the current King’s development plans (Vision 2010, Vision 2020) predicated on tourist entries and nights of lodging as a key source of national income, and encouraging (with investment) the ongoing and increasing development of several Moroccan cities and landscapes as “unique” and “authentic” destinations for a wealthy foreign consumer (Hillali, 2007 Hillali, Mimoun. (2007). La Politique du Tourisme au Maroc: Diagnostic, Bilan et Critique. Paris: L’Harmattan. [Google Scholar]). While many tourists from Europe and elsewhere consume Morocco as a site, many diasporic Moroccans partake of the touristic leisure sites that have proliferated in this development goal, oriented towards a “foreign” consumer but implicating their own consumption preferences during their summer holidays as well. The contours of possibilities for consuming urban leisure, specifically nighttime economies oriented towards a comparatively elite consumer, become essential to framing how eliteness emerges as a key distinctive element for Moroccan diasporic visitors.Moroccan-origin communities across Europe, primarily composed of families who relocated during post-war labor migrations, reflect a recurrent model in migration studies of comparative economic success paired with problematized minority status. This wave of migrants were generally seeking economic solvency by finding work elsewhere, and for the most part achieved that in Europe; however, many communities suffered stigmatization, and many families are among the less wealthy in their European homelands (Chattou, 1998 Chattou, Zoubir. (1998). Migrations Marocaines en Europe: Le Paradox des Itinéraires. Paris: L’Harmattan. [Google Scholar]). Children of migrants – themselves born and/or raised in Europe, now adults with their own next generation(s) – often align with recognizable tropes about problems of integration as “citizens” and ethnicization as “other”, in different modes across different states (Daoud, 2011 Daoud, Zakya. (2011). La Diaspora Marocain En Europe. Casablanca: La Croisée des Chemins. [Google Scholar]).One integral part of this integration-ethnicization dynamic is the potential to ignite a sense of heritage, family ties, and cultural identity by visiting “home”. Even across distant generations, visiting places with ancestral connections engenders a sense of significance, belonging, and connection with others (Nash, 2008 Nash, Catherine. (2008). Of Irish descent: Origin stories, genealogy, and the politics of belonging. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. [Google Scholar]); but can also highlight distinctions, incompatibilities, and especially class differences in the form of mobile capitals (Coles & Timothy, 2004 Coles, Tim, & Timothy, Dallen J (Eds.). (2004). Tourism, diasporas and space. London: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Potter et al., 2005 Potter, Robert B., Conway, Dennis, & Phillips, Joan (Eds.). (2005). The experience of return migration: Caribbean perspectives. Aldershot: Ashgate. [Google Scholar]). The frequency and intensity of visits by diasporic European Moroccans to Morocco make this case distinct from many other migration trajectories, inasmuch as mobility between these continents is facilitated by relatively short distances, traversable by car and ferry, and increasingly served by low-cost airlines. Moreover, there have not been, like with some North African neighbors, significant periods of political unrest in Morocco to interrupt their flow. Yet, these mechanisms of facilitation also may increase their distinctiveness from resident Moroccan citizens, whose perceptions about travel and migration to Europe can be significantly colored (whether hopefully or discouragingly) through their networked contact with Moroccan-origin families in Europe (Jolivet, 2015 Jolivet, D. (2015). Times of uncertainty in Europe: Migration feedback loops in four Moroccan regions. The Journal of North African Studies, 20(4), 553–572.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).Furthermore, over the years different efforts have been made to smooth the journey of Marocains Résidants à l’Etranger (Moroccans resident abroad) on their annual circulation between Europe and Morocco and attract them as leisure consumers in Morocco. They are literally and discursively welcomed each year by Opération Marhaba (Operation Welcome), an extension of previous transit service operations to facilitate vehicular traffic from Spain, rebranded into a “humanitarian action” (http://www.fm5.ma/en/marhaba) which involves nearly all government ministries providing services to diasporic arrivals. Since 2002, they also find a plethora of summertime “festivals des plages” by the state-owned Maroc Telecom (Groupe Maroc Telecom, n.d. Groupe Maroc Telecom, (n.d.). Le festival des plages, de Maroc Telecom. Retrieved February 27, 2017, from http://www.iam.ma/groupe-maroc-telecom/responsabilite-societale-dev-durable/nos-realisations/promouvoir-la-culture-et-les%20arts/le-festival-des-plages-de-maroc-telecom.aspx [Google Scholar]), providing free high-profile concerts at many urban beaches, as well as concerts and events in central squares of inland cities. In short, the Moroccan state orients itself in multiple ways towards valuing these visitors by enthusiastically welcoming them and providing them with motivations to return through the service, excitement, and leisure promised in this homeland, rendering them particularly visible as a collective arriving and departing every summer.These concerts might be read through the same strategies that cities elsewhere have used to engender and control “preferred” forms of leisure consumption, particularly for youth, in their nighttime economies. Such city development strategies have been characterized through a neoliberal lens, including an implicit tilt towards an intended “up-market” consumer seeking branded, and surveilled, experiential leisure (Chatterton & Hollands, 2002 Chatterton, Paul, & Hollands, Robert. (2002). Theorising urban playscapes: Producing, regulating and consuming youthful nightlife city spaces. Urban Studies, 39(1), 95–116.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Alcoholic drinking practices are often a focal issue for urban nightlife as experiential leisure in Western contexts (Latham, 2003 Latham, Alan. (2003). Urbanity, lifestyle and making sense of the new urban cultural economy: Notes from Auckland, New Zealand. Urban Studies, 40(9), 1699–1724.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Roberts, 2015 Roberts, Marion. (2015). ‘A big night out’: young people’s drinking, social practice and spatial experience in the ‘liminoid’ zones of english night-time cities. Urban Studies, 52(3), 571–588.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), along with attempts at the control of embodied practices and production of socially acceptable experiential leisure of excessiveness, release, and excitement through urban nightlife scenes (Hubbard, 2005 Hubbard, Phil. (2005). The geographies of ‘going out’: Emotion and embodiment in the evening economy. In Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, & Mick Smith (Eds.), Emotional geographies (pp. 117–134). Aldershot: Ashgate. [Google Scholar]; Jayne, Valentine, & Holloway, 2010 Jayne, Mark, Valentine, Gill, & Holloway, Sarah L. (2010). Emotional, embodied and affective geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(4), 540–554.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Malbon, 1999 Malbon, Ben. (1999). Clubbing: Dancing, ecstasy and vitality. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Yet, for Muslim communities in European settings, businesses and atmospheres oriented around alcohol consumption can become sites of visceral exclusion (Valentine, Holloway, & Jayne, 2010 Valentine, Gill, Holloway, Sarah L, & Jayne, Mark. (2010). Contemporary cultures of abstinence and the nighttime economy: Muslim attitudes towards alcohol and the implications for social cohesion. Environment and Planning A, 42(1), 8–22.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), alongside other ways that ethnicized minorities may be characterized as “dangerous” andexcluded from nightlife centers (Schwanen et al., 2012 Schwanen, Tim, van Aalst, Irina, Brands, Jelle, & Timan, Tjerk. (2012). Rhythms of the night: Spatiotemporal inequalities in the nighttime economy. Environment and Planning A, 44(9), 2064–2085.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). These exclusionary practices prompt a search for – or the creation of (Boogaarts, 2008 Boogaarts, Simone. (2008). Claiming your place at night: Turkish dance parties in the netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34(8), 1283–1300.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) – alternative nighttime economies which are accessible to a minority consumer who seeks affects of experiential consumption parallel to that created by an inebriated “big night out” (Roberts, 2015 Roberts, Marion. (2015). ‘A big night out’: young people’s drinking, social practice and spatial experience in the ‘liminoid’ zones of english night-time cities. Urban Studies, 52(3), 571–588.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Unsurprisingly, then, part of what post-migrant generation diasporic visitors seek during their visits is unhindered participation in comparable “up-market” urban leisure centers in Morocco, where they are neither excluded by their religious preferences nor as a stigmatized minority.This emergent combination of a state that is oriented towards producing cities as sites for tourism consumption for both foreign and diasporic tourists, along with a diasporic population who has the financial means and access to mobilities to visit relatively frequently, and the desire to find safe, friendly spaces for nighttime leisure, becomes a set of specific contextual conditions (Latham, 2003 Latham, Alan. (2003). Urbanity, lifestyle and making sense of the new urban cultural economy: Notes from Auckland, New Zealand. Urban Studies, 40(9), 1699–1724.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for generating urban economies of visible, distinctively elite diasporic leisure. Without necessarily being aware of the processes that perpetuate it – or necessarily purposeful in their own actions and statements that engender classed distinction between themselves and resident Moroccans (Wagner, 2015 Wagner, Lauren. (2015). Shopping for diasporic belonging: Being “local” or being “mobile” as a VFR visitor in the ancestral homeland. Population, Space and Place, 21(7), 654–668.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) – these next-generation DVs arguably become, in their experiential leisure practices, contingent elites.Analyzing affective practicesEmpirically attending to formulations of emergence requires taking into account material and social becomings and the paths they depend upon; the modes through which agents interact with one another; and, most importantly, how all of these feed back into regeneration and differentiation (De Landa, 2002 De Landa, Manuel. (2002). Intensive science and virtual philosophy. London: Continuum. [Google Scholar]). By focusing in this example of how diasporic visitors become contextually elite in Moroccan urban spaces, this paper, as part of a larger project investigating diasporic belonging in Morocco (Wagner, 2011 Wagner, Lauren, (2011). Negotiating diasporic mobilities and becomings: Interactions and practices of Europeans of Moroccan descent on holiday in Morocco (Doctoral thesis). Geography, University College London, London. Retrieved from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317815/. [Google Scholar]), reflects how eliteness might unexpectedly emerge in such an ecology in the dynamics of many social and material agents in interaction. In fact, eliteness was not a primary thematic concern of the original project, which was an attempt to ethnographically and ethnomethodologically comprehend the communicative and leisure practices of diasporic visitors during their summer holidays. That is, this analysis is built primarily upon ethnographic observation following mobile participants from three families, over several years as well as dozens of others encountered during fieldwork over two summers, with ethnomethodological attention to the practical accomplishment of visiting Morocco in concert with diasporic networks.Effectively, eliteness only became relevant during analysis as more and more of the observed practices and reported discourses pulled me in to a social organization of economic, material and spatial boundaries differentiating DVs from local residents. As an ethnographer developing relationships with research participants, I also participated in an “education by attention” (Ingold, 2014 Ingold, Tim. (2014). “That’s enough about ethnography! HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1), 383–395.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 388), learning instinctively how to follow practices and respond to rules that interlace to make up a collectivity. I learned to recognize what characteristics of distinction separate those who make (and can exceed) rules from those who do not. Close participant observation brought attention to how such rules operate to keep some members in and others out, and how they can repeat and differentiate with feedback. In that sense, this ethnography is ethnomethodological by focusing on the interactional affiliations and boundaries emerging in the micro-activity of everyday life (Goffman, 1971 Goffman, Erving. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York, NY: Basic Books. [Google Scholar]), and in this paper particularly on micro-activity and materiality of mobility and encounter in urban public space (Jensen, 2006 Jensen, Ole B. (2006). ‘Facework’, flow and the city: Simmel, goffman, and mobility in the contemporary city. Mobilities, 1(2), 143–165.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; Wilson, 2016 Wilson, Helen F. (2016). On geography and encounter: Bodies, borders, and difference. Progress in Human Geography. (online).[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The data presented below, as well as my analysis, is therefore based not only on practices observed, but also on how I oriented to them as an “educated” ethnographer along the rules and mobilities I learned to follow with DVs and in Moroccan public space more generally.Discursively, the premise of contingent eliteness as outlined at the beginning of this paper is built on a perception of a perception as recounted in an interview context. Conversations about visitation practices were also collected in this project, and the metaphors and frameworks participants used to describe their orientations towards those activities are taken literally and seriously in relation to ethnographic observations (Katz, 1999 Katz, Jack. (1999). How emotions work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]). These meta-discussions often indicated attitudes that might be difficult to observe as “practiced” – such as Soumia’s possible choice not to visit Morocco, which she may attribute (at least in part) to feeling annoyed at being perceived as arrogant. Such reports also indicate some idea of intentionality: that the production of eliteness may be, at least in Soumia’s opinion, undeserved, though she may also recognize that others of her peers are acting “arrogant”.Soumia’s comments also put into evidence a relevant background for discursive perceptions feeding back into each other, which may materially participate in how diasporic visitors orient towards others in Morocco. A potential awareness of a circulating “arrogance”, though it may not be explicit in any particular observed encounter, may be acting as part of their cumulative and collective, affectively practiced orientation towards the holiday. That is, Soumia does not report an event of being told explicitly that she is arrogant; rather she is implicitly aware of that distinction characterizing interactions in Morocco of others like her as a general collective, and therefore possibly she herself as well. Furthermore, rather than being a direct consequence of any one moment of interaction – e.g. as explicitly linked to something Soumia did or said that makes others perceive her as arrogant – it behaves as an accumulation of the behavior of many bodies (Saldanha, 2007 Saldanha, Arun. (2007). Psychedelic white. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]) It takes on its own momentum in characterizing these individuals into groups and construing perceptions themselves as a fuzzy group, and as an “other”. As much as this analysis focuses on the embodied practices of DVs, it is essential to acknowledge that observed events may also be sites of affective practice extending beyond the immediate circumstance (Rutherford, 2016 Rutherford, Danilyn. (2016). Affect theory and the empirical. Annual Review of Anthropology, 45(1), 285–300.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]).In order to attempt to integrate the presence of such cumulative, backgrounded orientations, I draw upon Wetherell’s (2015 Wetherell, Margaret. (2015). Trends in the turn to affect: A social psychological critique. Body & Society, 21(2), 139–166.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) methodological directive to focus on the social practices of affect rather than on their nebulous and elusive “circulation”. Affect as social practice is, effectively, a pre-condition of the fieldwork example below, describing an evening out with a group of diasporic visitor friends through their consumption movements around the city. This event is predicated on the search for the “big night out”, itself an affective project of experiential leisure, whereby friend groups follow trajectories of movement and consumption over the course of an evening. As I have elsewhere devoted closer attention to how these spontaneous mobilities become an objective in themselves for how to spend leisure time (Wagner, 2017 Wagner, Lauren. (2017). Viscous automobilities: Diasporic practices and vehicular assemblages of visiting ‘home’. Mobilities, 1–20. (Online)[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the analysis here focuses more on the affective collaborations and distanciations as they occurred between this group and others they encountered along the way. Rather than attempting to define what this affect “is”, I take it, ethnomethodologically, as a black box that becomes empirically relevant to the sequence of activity through its pushing and pulling of practices.Using Wetherell’s notion of affective practice as “a figuration where body possibilities and routines become recruited or entangled together with meaning-making and with other social and material figurations” (2012 Wetherell, Margaret. (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding. London: Sage.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 19), the fieldnotes excerpted below describe these social-material figurations through both what I observed participants doing during this “big night out”, as well as my own responses and interpretations as an attentive ethnographer, participating in and contributing to these affective practices myself. I take these edited notes as data, and reproduce them here in a raw form, because both their form and content contributes to an analysis of affective practices that occurred on this night out to the extent that my own “education” as ethnographer is evident in how I frame what I (am able to) observe (Wolfinger, 2002 Wolfinger, Nicholas. (2002). On writing fieldnotes: Collection strategies and background expectancies. Qualitative Research, 2(1), 85–93.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). They indicate how affective practices contribute to the experiential objective of finding spontaneous fun around this city, and how these practices engaged multiple agents, including the group I was following, myself and others who were bystanders or contributors to our pursuit – like service staff, other drivers on the same streets, other leisure-seekers and family members staying at home on this summertime Wednesday.Keeping in mind the production of “arrogance” as introduced by Soumia as potentially always relevant (or omnirelevant; Fitzgerald, Housley, & Butler, 2009 Fitzgerald, Richard, Housley, William, & Butler, Carly W. (2009). Omnirelevance and interactional context. Australian Journal of Communication, 36(3), 45–64. [Google Scholar]) to how these interactions take place, this compilation of notes becomes as much an effort to understand how these friends organize their “night out” together in pursuit of an elusive affective state, as how others they encounter might read their behavior and engagement as “arrogant” through an affect of eliteness. Taking their mobility as a starting point for how they are carving out “elite” spaces from ordinary circulations, three significant mechanisms for distinction become visible in this evening, as I encoded into the fieldnotes in these figures: (1) financial accessibility for consumption, in how their access to capital makes them able to participate in specific environments; (2) bounded patterns of circulation, related both to their financial position as diasporic visitors and their purposes and practices as comparatively elite leisure consumers; and (3) being able to make and exceed rules of behavior in the different environments where they spend time. These mechanisms frequently intersect and overlap, as indicated in the coding, but coalesce in ways that reinforce how this group might be perceivable as “arrogant”.A Wednesday night in FezFieldnote extract 1{circulation} Noura, who has a beautiful and captivating, often well-made up face, and her bande des amis, which is Kamal her neighbor; Hind, Fatiha and Lubna, who is with Mohammed; plus Karim the algerian, his friend Nabil, and Abdel and Norddine.{/circulation}{circulation} So much conversation that it’s difficult to remember any single specific part but the overall impression was like high school summer weekends, where everyone has a car and the group clique feeling is so strong that you just want to keep performing well enough to stick around. {consumption} Moving from cafe to cafe, just to keep ourselves entertained, stay out a little later, stay with each other a little longer. someone says to me, on est en vacances.{/consumption} {/circulation}Dating from August 2008, these fieldnotes document one group’s leisure pursuits during fieldwork in Morocco. As the Fieldnote Extract 1 describes, this group was a band of eclectic friends: not family members or even from the same hometowns in France, but collected together through chance encounters and networked connections over their years of annual visits to Morocco (Fieldnote Extract 2 below). They were all in their late twenties to mid-thirties, mostly single (except the one couple mentioned), and were visiting Morocco as independent adults – that is, not necessarily accompanied by or accompanying their families, though they may spend time with family members during the trip. Some of them had family in Fez (such as Noura’s mother, waiting for her at home) where this evening took place, while others had families in other towns and cities and were stopping in Fez for vacation.At the point when I met them in this summer, they had already spent some time (from a few nights to a few weeks) on their holidays in Fez, though for the most part they were moving around Morocco (in smaller cohorts) and going out in different cities. Already, this combination of incidental encounters that spawned these friendships, as well as their uncoordinated and coincidental co-presence at the same time and in the same city in Morocco, feed in to the spontaneous affective sensibility of a “big night out” like this one as full of possibilities as they move around the city. Their ability to meet each other, as much as the story recounted here of this night out, indexes as well the bounded circulation of diasporic consumption spaces in Morocco, facilitating encounters between this mobile group as they might find each other in this or other cities within a semi-enclosed spaces like the various cafés, restaurants, and cars in which we spent most of the evening (Figure 1 and Figure 2). Contingently elite: affective practices of diasporic urban nightlife consumptionAll authorsLauren B. Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4778-7408https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1390722Published online:02 July 2019Figure 1. A cafe popular with DV participants (Photo by author).Display full sizeFigure 1. A cafe popular with DV participants (Photo by author).Contingently elite: affective practices of diasporic urban nightlife consumptionAll authorsLauren B. Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4778-7408https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1390722Published online:02 July 2019Figure 2. La Villa café, photographed after these events (Photo by author).Display full sizeFigure 2. La Villa café, photographed after these events (Photo by author).Fieldnote extract 2{consumption} All the places we go (except the one I don’t see, at Atlas) have a flavor of upperclassness in comparison to other similar cafes. The one we don’t go to, Eight, has the most fanciful appearance; where we start, La Villa, is a bit Venezia Ice ish, lots of marble and steel and glass.{/consumption}{circulation}{consumption} La Villa is also a car place – far enough distant from walking sort of neighborhoods that you wouldn’t happen upon it – it must be intentional, and it seems to be surrounded by villas. I think Noura’s house is not far from it.{/consumption}{/circulation}{circulation} I ask how they all know each other – links seem to be more in Morocco than france. one is friend of another, or met at the pool a few years ago, or met this year for the first time. I get the sense that they contact each other on site, not really keep in touch outside of Morocco, especially since they all live somewhat distant except for individual pairs. {/circulation}{circulation} sitting there, Abdel & Norddine arrive with another girl who disappears soon after. {/circulation} {circulation} Long conversation with Norddine about research – seems interested in it. we discuss his travel this year – with parents – and meeting up with Abdel who drove alone.{/circulation}Much like the story of this night out, their presence in Morocco was characterized by movement: they were moving around the country as they moved around during this evening, from place to place in a sea of nighttime leisure consumption options. Starting from where they originally met up with one another for this night out (Figure 2), their movements around the city that evening frequently intersected with other DVs who met us briefly, or joined in our trajectory (Fieldnote Extract 2). These movements created a bounded circulatory space, where they are able to encounter others like them, but as it involves moving from place to place through urban public spaces, they are not by any means invisible. Rather, their movements – and affective practices of group behavior, such as the argument that happened on the street – spill out into public view. That argument stretched across two separate consumption spaces, as it began at La Villa and continued as we made our way to Verdi.Fieldnote extract 3{consumption}{circulation} hunger is agreed, and we get up to leave la villa but are stalled by the business between Nordine and Fatiha. Karim is so sick of waiting that he jumps in a taxi and goes ahead of us to Eight. hanging around the cars, waiting, until they finish suddenly and F insists we go to Verdi, she’s sick of Eight {/circulation}{/consumption}{exceeding} Noura explains when we get there that they go to Eight quite often but the menu is limited and gets boring after a while. By now we’re about midnight, 1am. {/exceeding}{circulation}Outside of Verdi, F calls Karim, who is purportedly just down the street, to come meet us.{/circulation}{exceeding}lots of migrating from table to table, outside to inside to banquette, to chairs. The waiter has a look on his face like he’s really not interested in getting this business, and we take a long time to organize and order. Only Lubna is consistently speaking arabic – she tells jokes and stories, she makes polite concessions to the waiter.{/exceeding}In many ways, the evening documented in this story can be characterized as “youth culture”, and not necessarily “elite”. In writing my impressions in Fieldnote Extract 3, I compared it to youthful summer weekends spent hanging out in a clique of friends, simply trying to stay out late with each other. Yet, the places that were embedded in this group’s pattern of circulation – several cafes which I commented on as having a “flavor of upperclassness” (Fieldnote Extract 2) – mark their circulations as financially distinctive in a landscape of ordinary consumption in Morocco. While these do not have the same high bar for entry as other potential spaces for consumption in Morocco that might be only accessible to a “superrich” clientele, they represent a cumulatively expensive experience – tallying about 30 to 40 Euro per night (Fieldnote Extract 5), per person in a country where the standard minimum salary is about 300–400 Euro per month. Their “being on vacation” (Fieldnote Extract 1) combined with their trajectories as diasporic visitors with access to European cost-of-living capital makes these locations accessible to them as comparatively “cheap” for consumption. Furthermore, their circulations were in parallel with other, similarly configured diasporic groups, like the “Belgians” who kept La Villa cafe open late alongside us (Figure 4). Their circulations, though they may seem erratic, are following specific pathways and limited to certain corridors of urban space (Figure 3). Contingently elite: affective practices of diasporic urban nightlife consumptionAll authorsLauren B. Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4778-7408https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1390722Published online:02 July 2019Figure 3. Annotated map of Fez, looking up Boulevard Hassan II (Google Maps, Author’s annotations).Display full sizeFigure 3. Annotated map of Fez, looking up Boulevard Hassan II (Google Maps, Author’s annotations).Contingently elite: affective practices of diasporic urban nightlife consumptionAll authorsLauren B. Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4778-7408https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1390722Published online:02 July 2019Figure 4. Annotated map of Fez, extended view. (Google Maps, Author’s annotations).Display full sizeFigure 4. Annotated map of Fez, extended view. (Google Maps, Author’s annotations).Fieldnote extract 4{exceeding}{circulation}leaving Verdi becomes a car parade – sort of following a wedding parade that just passed us, we head off toward ‘Atlas’. there are car to car conversations: Noura feels like un peu de la marche [a little walk], after eating, so she pulls up alongside one vehicle then the other to suggest it (on Blvd Hassan II, which is not totally empty but mostly so). as Mohammed and Lubna’s car passes us a bit further up, L shouts ‘pas de la marche!’ [no walking!] out the window.{/circulation}{/exceeding}{exceeding}{consumption}Atlas turns out to be a totally unexpected dirty coffee shop next to the CTM station. Unfortunately, it’s closed until 3am. {/consumption}{/exceeding}{circulation}At that point, one car had gone off to pick up F’s jacket, so we must be communicating with them by mobile to tell them where to end up, or tell us where to go. N’s car follows M&L back to La Villa, where they are waiting.{/circulation}As consumption choices, these locations are contingent to their mobility practices, perceptions about the urban environment (Figure 4), and their social networks. Though following their movements linearly may make them seem random – spontaneously bouncing from one location to another without any specific planned destination, simply responding to a capricious desire of one member (hunger, walking versus driving, forgotten jackets) – when followed along night after night, their bounded and systematic circulation becomes more evident. The pattern is chaotic as opposed to random, starting from meeting in Morocco as a more-or-less cohesive group of friends, all with the same purpose of “being on vacation” (Fieldnote Extract 1), and moving between a range of possible consumption activities for accomplishing that practice, located in a limited range of spaces that meet a limited scope of needs for their purposes. These needs are partially coordinated through socially configured dimensions pertinent to Morocco as their “homeland” destination which I have discussed elsewhere, such as having access to a car (Wagner, 2017 Wagner, Lauren. (2017). Viscous automobilities: Diasporic practices and vehicular assemblages of visiting ‘home’. Mobilities, 1–20. (Online)[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) or feeling “safe” in mixed-gendered groups (Wagner & Peters, 2014 Wagner, Lauren, & Peters, Karin. (2014). Feeling at home in public: Diasporic moroccan women negotiating leisure in morocco and the Netherlands. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(4), 415–430.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Both of these dimensions are path-dependent on class-flavored distinctions, in that both access to a car (and the concomitant need for a place to park – see Figures 1 and 2) and “safe” consumption spaces for women outside the home – such as cafés and restaurants that are not entirely male-dominated, or nightclubs where women can avoid being mistaken for prostitutes (see Graiouid, 2007 Graiouid, Said. (2007). A place on the terrace: Café Culture and the public sphere in morocco. The Journal of North African Studies, 12(4), 531–550.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; Wagner & Peters, 2014 Wagner, Lauren, & Peters, Karin. (2014). Feeling at home in public: Diasporic moroccan women negotiating leisure in morocco and the Netherlands. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(4), 415–430.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) – hinge upon markets for these spaces that are contingent upon the presence of enough consumers for them. In many ways, diasporic visitors contribute to the existence of that market in Morocco, to the extent that they constitute a significant number of paying customers who will reliably return every summer, but they are also embedded in emerging gentrification and cosmopolitan consumption scenes that serve elite client bases in Morocco. In this sense, they are creating these consumption spaces through their presence, while simultaneously animating them with their affective practices of seeking fun in ways that are specifically configured to their diasporic context.Fieldnote extract 5{consumption} we are a sort of energetic force here again: F orders a box full of cookies and sweets, and a bunch of us order desserts, nearly cleaning out the remaining gateaux from the cold case. {/consumption} {exceeding} The waiter here looks more happy to see us, but not completely – it seems like he’s allowed to go home as soon as all these customers are finished. In fact, the don’t really force us out but once everyone has finished the cafe suddenly shuts down. {circulation} (another car full of belgians was there at the end…) {/circulation}{/exceeding}{circulation}{consumption} Conversation here is a little bit slower – seems like some of us are getting tired. At one point Mourad (?) shows up – Moh’s brother? – and talks about where he’s been that night: all the nightclubs in Fes, one after the other. {/consumption}{/circulation}{consumption} It occurs to me as we pay the bill, approx 30 euro for everyone, that none of these excursions are individually very expensive, but they add up to probably 30-40 euro/day for various meals, plus poss. car rental at another 30. all things considered, this is not very expensive for a vacation, but it’s still a lot more than a local moroccan would be able to afford, even on holiday, {/consumption}Furthermore, in inhabiting these consumption spaces and making them their own, the above notes indicate, indirectly, how these participants become powerful enough in these environments to make and/or break rules. While often these were not explicit or necessarily enforced rules, they were rules for social ordering that garnered an affective response when they had been exceeded. During this evening’s activities, I describe how they entered restaurants and “energized” them, taking over or rearranging several tables and expecting service beyond normal business hours (Fieldnote Extract 5). These become scenarios where they make their own rules, taking over spaces without requesting or securing permission (Fieldnote Extract 3). At other moments they were interactionally exceeding their roles as “customers”, marked by staff members telling them the kitchen is closed or suddenly shutting down a restaurant where they have arrived after (or before) the normal service hours (Fieldnote Extract 5). These microbehaviors of politeness (Culpeper, 2011 Culpeper, Jonathan. (2011). ‘It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it!’ Prosody and impoliteness. In Linguistic politeness research group (Ed.), Discursive approaches to politeness (pp. 57–83). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), especially in service encounters (cf. Hochschild, 1983 Hochschild, Arlie. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]) – marked here as well by Lubna’s overt and noticeable efforts to play and joke in Arabic with the disinterested waiter (Fieldnote Extract 3) – is exactly the affective practice that might engender the perception of arrogance around their activities. Their excessivity was also marked by my own discomfort and questions about their behavior, in my noticing their late-night erratic driving (Figure 4, Fieldnote Extract 4) as they pulled up alongside each other on a central boulevard which still, at that late hour, had some rule-following traffic moving alongside us, and in my question to Noura about her mother’s approval for being out late at night (Fieldnote Extract 6). Each of these indicates assumptions about rules – rules of cafe-going, rules of traffic flow, and rules of gendered public behavior – that this group was fluidly and enjoyably pushing to the point of violation in their urban leisure practices. These affectively exhilarating rule-breaking practices might compare favorably to affective experiences they, or others of their cohort, might have in trying to access European nighttime activities, as discussed above.Fieldnote extract 6{exceeding} I asked Noura at some point if her mother is ok with her being out late, and she says she [mother] is divorced, and she trusts her; however, when heading home, she wakes up Kamal – is this because she’s nervous about the walk from her car to her house? or because she wants to look like she has her guard of honor? {/exceeding}As much as these affective practices exemplify youthful leisure in their breadth of accessibility and energy for excess, they also reach an apex. As chaotic patterns, they have limiting points at which their patterning shifts suddenly into different modes of repetition. The final comment on Noura’s desire for an escort to her house (Fieldnote Extract 6) is one example of this: though she has previously told me her mother “trusts her” to go out late as a single woman, she still feels a need for gendered protection to arrive home. In fact, similar protection was enforced on me, as the members of the group who drove me home insisted on accompanying me until my door (in the old city – a residential and consumption space we had not visited on this night out). We were both effectively departing from our elite bounded consumption space and the cars that carried us between them, rendering both of us potentially vulnerable to unknowns beyond this group and the effectively enclosed spaces it occupies.Feedback: eliteness of mobile experiential consumptionThis series of explorations, retracings, and feedbacks come to make up an example of affective practices of eliteness for DVs in Moroccan cities during summer holidays. While the individuals described above – and the many others who engaged in similar frenetic mobilities of leisure consumption during the fieldwork period (see Wagner, 2011 Wagner, Lauren, (2011). Negotiating diasporic mobilities and becomings: Interactions and practices of Europeans of Moroccan descent on holiday in Morocco (Doctoral thesis). Geography, University College London, London. Retrieved from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317815/. [Google Scholar]) – are by no means globally elite, they manage to achieve some kind of elite differentiation across urban landscapes through their search for experiential leisure. This eliteness is in some ways materially dependent upon their own genetic and migratory lineages, as descendants of Moroccan parents who chose mobility in search of economic advantage and succeeded, and whose annual visits from youth to adulthood to their ancestral homeland have trained them to explore it as site for pursuing vacation leisure. Though the example above documents single adults, similarly chaotic, mobile, experiential-leisure-seeking was a feature of many different cohorts of Moroccan DVs, from youth to parents, from individuals to families. These leisure pursuits are also dependent on the existence of consumption sites like those consumed as described above, which offer services and experiences that correspond to their desires for non-discriminatory leisure experiences akin to those on offer in their European homes. In many ways, these fit the “touristic” orientation of Morocco towards a European consumer (Minca & Wagner, 2016 Minca, Claudio, & Wagner, Lauren. (2016). Moroccan dreams: Orientalist myth, colonial legacy. London: I.B. Tauris. [Google Scholar]). As much as they might have many non-touristic reasons for visiting Morocco more directly and discursively defined by their genetic lineages – such as the desire to “know one’s roots” by maintaining ties with family and being familiar and “at home” in a homeland – these repeated and iterated practices become an affective motivation as well.Though the events of this evening were confined to one city, these practices in other cases might roam into other cities around Morocco and back, within a single night out. In parallel with Roberts’ interviewees practicing experiential leisure in the UK, DVs’ search for leisure sites is not limited to what is nearby, but extends to what might provide the spontaneity of a new and memorable experience (2015 Roberts, Marion. (2015). ‘A big night out’: young people’s drinking, social practice and spatial experience in the ‘liminoid’ zones of english night-time cities. Urban Studies, 52(3), 571–588.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 576). These hypermobile practices are themselves a form of inaccessibility: they render these groups contingently elite through their consumption-enabled movement, as their leisure landscapes extend physically beyond and propel speedily past what is normally feasible for resident Moroccans around them. DVs become, visibly and practically, the “conspicuous consumer” in contrast with resident others with whom they come into contact, and possibly engendering the perception of “arrogance” that Soumia reported simply by joining along with their friends. This “arrogant” eliteness is thus, in some ways, inherent in their affectively practiced presence: like Stephenson (2002 Stephenson, Marcus L. (2002). Travelling to the ancestral homelands: The aspirations and experiences of a UK caribbean community. Current Issues in Tourism, 5(5), 378–425.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) describes, the visiting friends and relatives to migration-sending countries can often be considered as elite – against their wishes – simply through their implicit access to mobility of self and economic capital, in contrast to their loved ones. They are “on vacation”, spending money, and seeking experiences that often exceed the financial habits of residents who they might know or encounter.Beyond these distinctions related to migratory mobility, their leisure-seeking is also part of the rule-making (and rule-breaking) power of being the group who defines what is “in” in urban leisure scenes (Saldanha, 2007 Saldanha, Arun. (2007). Psychedelic white. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]). As such, this becomes a complex desirable and undesirable eliteness, whereby DVs may recognize themselves as being (unintentionally) classified as elite in their access to capital, but willingly seeking to participate in ongoing leisure that perpetuates that categorization. Some of the behavior detailed in the fieldnotes above indicate a sense of Morocco as a place where rules do not apply – neither to official actors nor to themselves, as they learn to “get away” with transgressive behavior, like driving erratically (Figure 4, Fieldnote Extract 4) because officials can be paid off to ignore it. Such rule-breaking does not need to be officially consequential; as it becomes an accepted mode of affective practices for “being on vacation”, it can expand and extend by reproducing in other activities, like when the economic presence of this group (and another Belgian cohort) keep a café open past their normal hours. Yet, as much as this rule-exceeding or -breaking is accepted within this cohort, it is still marked by others as unacceptable in their reactions to it – reactions which are sometimes recognized and responded to, and sometimes unnoticed. This power as a rule-breaking elite becomes similarly inadvertent as their conspicuous consumption, but also equally consequential in defining distinctive borders between DVs and resident Moroccans and engendering a divisive sense of “arrogance”.ConclusionWhether the eliteness observed in these dynamics is purposefully “arrogant” or inadvertently emergent, it contributes to the making of Moroccan cities as they materially contour along with the practices of diasporic visitors. Envisioning how this night out repeats for many young DVs over many summer nights and across many Moroccan cities, we can extrapolate the accumulating economic pressure for urban nighttime consumption environments configured to serve these ready consumers – effectively the archetype of “up-market” leisure consumer the Moroccan state is orienting towards in its projects for welcoming Moroccans from abroad. The relatively bounded circuit of spaces where they hang out and encounter each other – evident as critical masses of many bodies even in such small as moments when this group crossed paths with others engaged in parallel leisure trajectories – become entangled in both their affective practices of visiting Morocco and a practiced, unintentional eliteness.The perception of “arrogance” that Soumia identified at the introduction becomes empirically parseable through the combination of their circulation, consumption and rule-bending practices. As some move through the city with vehicular speed, from consumption site to consumption site – even returning to repeat a consumption site in the same evening – they are displaying access to economic power that distinguishes them from the local residents whom they might encounter. Likewise, their fun-seeking behavior demonstrates a disregard for social order that would normally structure consumption environments (like appropriate times to order food at a restaurant) or mobile circulation (like rule-following practices for driving in city streets). One of these dynamics alone might not be significant enough to mark out this group as “arrogant”, but their combination becomes more than the sum of its parts, accumulating into affective practices of elite distinction that become generically attributable across the many different diasporic visitors present in Morocco. This eliteness is not precisely measurable as differentials of wealth or income, or their access to cars; moreover, this eliteness is not, as noted in observations of other kinds of elites, invisible. Rather, it is the metrics of differential consumption style and speed, combined with the affective ways they become remarkable and potently visible in social spaces via repeated practices of exceeding social order out in the city.As affective practices of experiential leisure that pull DV participants along with it – triggering the departure to Morocco for many, and characterizing how leisure time is spent while there – these practices accumulate beyond their immediate goals for going to Morocco, and can become an affective goal in themselves. The ways their nighttime leisure involves taking up space and reorganizing its social rules along its logics – effectively changing rules and defining new boundaries – renders these individuals, in their participation in these affective practices, contingently and emergently elite.AcknowledgmentsThanks are due to all of the participants in this project for allowing me to stay out all night with them. I send thanks as well to the anonymous reviewers for their extremely detailed and useful comments on the first version of this paper, to David Bassens and Bas van Heur as session organizers and special issue editors, and finally to Alan Latham as continuing consigliere.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.ReferencesBassens and Van Heur. (2019). An urban studies approach to elites: nurturing conceptual rigor and methodological pluralism. Urban Geography, 40(5), 591–603. [Google Scholar]Boogaarts, Simone. (2008). 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