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Dima Africa, Daily Darija: Spectatorship, Sociality, and Sports among im/migrants in Tangier, Morocco
Abstract by Dr. A. George Bajalia On Session 139  (Muslim Youth and Sports)

On Friday, November 15 at 5:00 pm

2019 Annual Meeting

Abstract
During the 2018 African Nations Championship soccer tournament, Morocco had the opportunity to showcase its prowess in hosting international sports teams in brand-new stadiums in city suburbs around the Kingdom. While ultimately these displays proved fruitless in winning the 2026 World Cup bid, they did contribute to Morocco’s campaign to reform its image among its fellow African Union members. Inasmuch as the tournament’s official slogan reflected a mix of Moroccan Arabic and French (Dima Africa, Always Africa), so did the blurring of cultural and religious boundaries that occurred among spectators of the matches. Normally antagonistic Nigerian Christian and Cameroonian Muslim im/migrants mixed in the stands of Tangier Ibn Batouta Stadium as they rooted against the Libyan national team, who tried to withstand constant jeering and indeed verbal abuse related to the recently exposed allegations of slave markets in Libya. This paper builds from ethnographic research among West and Central African match-goers, primarily from Cameroon, Senegal, and Nigeria, who attended 2018 championship matches in Tangier, Morocco. From this position, it situates social and linguistic solidarities that emerged across ethnic, religious, and national boundaries within the broader context of pluralism and immigration in the region. In doing so, it describes a Moroccan social fabric transforming because of religious pluralism, immigration to North African countries, and the regional apprehension of the Maghrib as seen from the south. This changing social fabric reveals the importance of time spent waiting among im/migrants in Morocco, who forge bonds of solidarity that appear fully and seemingly spontaneously articulated in events such as sports tournaments. Rather than considering migrant time spent waiting as vacuous, this paper argues for an understanding of waiting as productive of both distracted (and thus exploitable) time , as well as community fostering social exchange time .
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
Ethnography