Lifestyle Migration in South Sinai, Egypt: Nationalisation, Privileged Citizenship and Indigenous Rights

• Authors: Nadeem Karkabi
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The South Sinai region in Egypt has been a politically disputed borderland. After three decades, it was transformed to a tourist area and, in recent years, seen the development of residential settlements as well. This paper will explore how European lifestyle migrants and indigenous Bedouins negotiate civil membership vis-à-vis the Egyptian state in the tourist coastal towns in the area. It will discuss the implementation of governmental policies to nationalise South Sinai, on the one hand, and the establishment of civic spaces operating on free global market basis in order to achieve financial development, on the other. The contradiction between these two processes created a situation where a group of foreign migrants was allowed privileged rights, whereas indigenous Bedouins were collectively marginalised. By relating to policies regarding property ownership and accommodation of lifestyle migration, I will discuss how the Egyptian government allowed not only individual inequality, but also a categorical difference, to prevail based on tribal affiliation and financial qualifications away from national belonging. The violation of the sensitive equilibrium operating within the frames of the modern nation-state, between the idea of national community with equal rights and that of free economic rights to individual property, has created a threat to the Egyptian state as a governing authority.

Keywords

EN

citizenship; civil participation; indigenous rights; lifestyle migration; property; South Sinai

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: International Review of Social Research
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 49-66

Dates

published

2013-02-01

online

2015-05-06

Contributors

author

Nadeem Karkabi

• SOAS, University of London

References

• Amit, V. (2001) ‘A Clash of Vulnerabilities: Citizenship, Labor, and Expatriacy in the Cayman Islands’. American Ethnologist, 28 (3): 574-594.[Crossref]
• Aziz, H. (2000) ‘Employment in a Bedouin Community: The Case of the Town of Dahab in South Sinai’. Nomadic Peoples, 4(2): 28-47.
• Bailey, C. (2009) Bedouin Law from Sinai and the Negev: Justice without Government. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
• Basch L., Glick-Schiller N. and C. Szanton-Blanc (1994) Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States. London: Routlage.
• Benson, M. and K. O’Reilly (2009a) ‘Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life: A Critical Exploration of Lifestyle Migration’. The Sociological Review, 57(4): 608-625.[WoS][Crossref]
• Benson, M. and K. O’Reilly (2009b) (eds.) Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences. Surry, UK: Ashgate.
• Black, A. (2001). ‘Concepts of Civil Society in pre-Modern Europe’. In Kaviraj, S. and S. Khilnani (eds.) Civil Society: History and Possibilities, pp. 33-39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Böröcz, J. (1996) Leisure Migration: A Sociological Study on Tourism. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• Castles, S. and A. Davidson (2000) Citizenship and Migration: Globalizations and the Politics of Belonging. New York: Palgrave.
• Chatterjee, P. (2004) The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Cole, D. and S. Altorki (1998) Bedouin, Settlers, and Holiday-Makers: Egypt’s Changing Northwest Coast. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
• Croucher, S. (2012) ‘Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality’. Societies, 2: 1-13.
• Deeb, M. (1978) ‘The Socioeconomic Role of the Local Foreign Minorities in Modern Egypt, 1805-1961’. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9(1): 11-22.
• Gilbert, H. (2011) ‘‘This is not Our Life, it’s Just a Copy of Other People’s’: Bedu and the Price of ‘Development’ in South Sinai’. Nomadic Peoples, 15(2): 7-32.
• Hall, C and D. Muller (2004) Tourism, Mobility, and Second Homes: Between Elite Landscape and Common Ground. Clevedon, UK: Channel View Publications.
• Hazbun, W. (2008) Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in Arab World. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Hobbs, J. J. (1998). ‘Troubling Fields: The Opium Poppy in Egypt’. The Geographical Review, 88(1): 64-79.
• Isin, E. F. and B. S. Turner (2002) ‘Citizenship Studies: an Introduction’. In: Isin, E. F. and B. S. Turner (eds.) Handbook of Citizenship Studies, pp. 1-10. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
• Jackiewicz, E. L. and J. Craine (2010) ‘Destination Panama: An Examination of the Migration-Tourism-Foreign Investment Nexus’. Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1(1): (consulted 5.8.2012)
• Jacobs, J. (2010) Sex, Tourism and the Postcolonial Encounter: Landscapes of Longing in Egypt. Surry, UK: Ashgate.
• Lavie, S. (1990) The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
• Loker-Murphy, L. and P. Pierce (1995) ‘Young Budget Travelers: Backpackers in Australia’. Annals of Tourism Research, 22(4): 819-843.[Crossref]
• Karkabi, N. (2011) ‘Couples in the Global Margins: Sexuality and Marriage between Egyptian Men and Western Women in South Sinai’. Anthropology of the Middle East, 6(1): 79–97.
• Korpela, M. (2009)’When a Trip to Adulthood becomes a Lifestyle: The Community of Westerners in Varanasi, India’. In: Benson, M. and K. O’Reilly (eds.), Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences, pp. 15-30. Aldreshot: Ashgate.
• Marx, E. (2008) ‘Hashish Smuggling by Bedouin in South Sinai’. Studies of Organized Crime, 7(1): 29-37.
• Massad, J. (2001) Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Oliver, C. (2011) ‘Lifestyle Migration’. In: Betts, A. (ed.) Global Migration Governance, pp. 133-152. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Oliver, C. and K. O’Reilly (2010) ‘A Bourdieusian Analysis of Class and Migration: Habitus and the Individualising Process’. Sociology, 44(1): 49-66.[WoS][Crossref]
• Ong, A. (2006) ‘Mutations in Citizenship’. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(2-3): 499-505.
• Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• Shamir, R. (2005) ‘Without Borders? Notes on Globalization Mobility Regime’. Sociological Theory, 23(2): 197-217.[Crossref]
• Sowers, J. (2007) ‘Nature Reserves and the Authoritarian Rule in Egypt: Embedded Autonomy Revised’. Journal of Environment and Development, 16(4): 375-397.
• Standing, G. (2009) Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Uriely, N., Maoz, D. and A. Reichel (2007) ‘Rationalising Terror-Related Risks: The Case of Israeli Tourists in Sinai’. International Journal of Tourism Research, 9(1): 1–8.
• Visser, G. (2003) ‘Visible, yet Unknown: Reflections on Second-Home Development in South Africa’. Urban forum, 14(4): 379-307.
• Warens, A. and A. Williams (2006) ‘Older Migrants in Europe: A New Focus for Migration Studies’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32(8): 1257 – 1281.
• Weber, M. (1958) The City. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
• Williams, A. and C. Hall (2000) ‘Tourism and Migration: New Relationships between Production and Consumption’. Tourism Geographies, 2(1): 5-27.[Crossref]

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/irsr-2013-0004