There are two dominant discourses of class: class as a position in a social hierarchy and class as an exploitative economic relation between producers and owners. This paper refers to the first one with its multitude of markers, anxieties and orderings. Fieldworkers in Morocco have trouble fitting into this hierarchy. They obviously come from an affluent background or they wouldn¹t be carrying out fieldwork in the first place. They obviously have the diplomatic and political power of their home country behind them or they would not have gotten permission to carry out their study. Yet they don¹t learn to manipulate the status codes synonymous with affluence; they don¹t manage to master the language of the upper class; they don¹t learn the performative aspects of elite belonging. Their sympathies would seem to be with the exploited and the marginal. This paper will draw on the author¹s experiences doing fieldwork in Morocco to address the circumstances surrounding the confused and confusing subject position and class identification of the foreign field worker. Why is it that both the locals and the foreigner are left scratching their heads over where the grad student/ foreigner/ Firstworlder fits in the local social hierarchy? Why is it that status and prestige codes remain so unstable in the face of this alien being?