The stigmatized tourist

Abstract

This paper explores the tourism experience of the Arab and Muslim Tourist (AMT) visiting a (Western) developed country for tourism, from a critical socio-cultural perspective. Encapsulated in Goffman’s theoretical underpinning of the study of stigma, and informed by Said’s Orientalism, I used in-depth interviews to understand the tourism experience of the AMT in an immigration context, situated in what Goffman refers to as the ‘normal-deviant drama’. In a contemporary climate of xeno/ethno-racism, The AMT is stigmatized by association with his/her nationals (or par default by semblance to those nationals), who constitute a visible ethnic immigrant group in the visited country. His/her actual social identity becomes confounded with an ascribed virtual identity. As a moral issue, stigmatization spoils the tourist identity of the AMT, resulting in feelings of shame, confusion, and anger. The rise of anti-immigrants discourse and sentiments, and the rise of religious extremism practices and sentiments in the world, begs for more attention in contemporary tourist studies.