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Abstract

In Morocco, skateboarding has become a cultural phenomenon among young people. This study examines how skateboarders (aged 18–32) transition to adulthood, challenging traditional notions of financial stability and family obligations. By prioritizing their passion for skateboarding, they develop innovative entrepreneurial ventures that blur the lines between work and leisure. The study builds upon ethnographic fieldwork within a community of skateboarder entrepreneurs established in a coastal village. It aims to define how Moroccan skateboarders challenge the normative expectations of transition to adulthood and describe how they navigate between skateboarding and work commitments. Additionally, findings highlight how the surge of skateboarding-driven business contributes to the economic and cultural transformation of local territories.

Keywords

Skateboarding post-Fordism youth transition to adulthood youth in the Middle East and North Africa lifestyle sports lifestyle entrepreneurship

Introduction

Amid socio-economic hardship and uncertainty, young people across the globe redefine the conceptions of adulthood (Furlong et al., 2011; Honkatukia & Rättilä, 2023; Mary, 2012; Roberts, 2007). In the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), young people are normatively considered adults once they enter the labour market, get married and can financially provide for their own household (Bonci & Cavatorta, 2021; Feixa et al., 2022; Maïche et al., 2017; Schwarz, 2020). However, the MENA has the highest youth unemployment rate globally (aged 15–24), which reached an all-time high of 25% in 2021 (International Labour Organization, 2022). As a result, young people develop new self-employment strategies to access the labour market. Related literature reveals a surge in entrepreneurship among young people in Morocco (Alla et al., 2022; Benkaraache, 2021; Mejjati Alami, 2017), where youth unemployment is among the highest in the MENA (Haman, 2021).

Meanwhile, young people in the MENA increasingly engage in youth subcultures such as skateboarding (Abulhawa, 2022; Novotný, 2020). Morocco represents one of the most vibrant skateboarding scenes in the MENA, as the sport has become a significant cultural phenomenon throughout the country (Novotný, 2020; Sandran, 2022). However, striving as a skateboarder in Morocco comes with its share of challenges. Economic hardship, unaffordable skateboarding gear, the lack of skateboarding amenities and limited job opportunities push too many young skateboarders to give up on their passion and focus on building a career as they enter adulthood. Some young skateboarders, determined to maintain consistent participation in their favourite sport, develop innovative entrepreneurial ventures by taking advantage of ongoing economic transformations in Morocco. For example, the recent introduction of surfing and skateboarding in coastal villages triggered a shift from a fishing-based industry to one centred on sports and tourism (Benattou, 2023). The ensuing flow of tourists allows local surfers and skateboarders to reconcile work and leisure with the creation of skateboarding- and surfing-centred businesses catering to tourists (e.g., surf schools and rental shops). Alternatively, the development of digital technologies offers new flexible entrepreneurship opportunities (Mabrouk & Van Den Plas, 2023). While scholars have investigated young Moroccan adults’ innovative strategies to access the labour market (Alla et al., 2022; Benattou, 2023; Benkaraache, 2021; Mabrouk & Van Den Plas, 2023), no study to date has explored the relationship between their choices of professional occupation and their participation in leisure or youth subculture such as skateboarding. This study explores the backgrounds and lifestyles of members of a community of skateboarders established in a coastal village with a local economy revolving around tourism and board sports (surfing and skateboarding). This work focuses on young people’s (aged 18–31) personal aspirations as they transition to adulthood and describes how these aspirations influence their work choices and dynamics. It aims to answer the research questions: (a) How do Moroccan skateboarders challenge the normative conception of transition to adulthood? (b) How do they navigate between skateboarding and work commitments?

Although skateboarding draws the attention of scholars from various fields, including youth and entrepreneurship studies (Atencio et al., 2019), only a few studies focus on skateboarding in the MENA (Abulhawa, 2022; Novotný, 2020). No publication to date explores the case of Morocco, despite the country’s thriving skateboarding scene. This research gap constrains the understanding of young people’s lifestyles and youth (sub)cultures in the MENA. This case study contributes to filling this research gap and thus enhances the knowledge of MENA youths’ leisure and lifestyles. More specifically, this research contributes to a more holistic understanding of young people’s transition to adulthood in the MENA. Lastly, the particular settings of the study site help advance the study of the economic transformation of Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

Transition to Adulthood and Skateboarding Lifestyle in Post-Fordist Morocco

This section begins by outlining the normative path to adulthood in Morocco and contextualizing the country’s current economic and political landscapes. It then explains how the theoretical framework of post-Fordism (Aoyama et al., 2010), combined with the concepts of ‘lifestyle sports’ (Wheaton, 2004) and ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ (Henricks, 2002), are applied to explore how young Moroccan people balance their skateboarding lifestyle with work commitments during their non-traditional transition to adulthood.

Youth Transitions in Contemporary Morocco: Normative Expectations and Individual Subjectivities

In Morocco, like in other MENA countries, the dominant perception of transition to adulthood is closely tied to Islamic and family values (Bonci & Cavatorta, 2021; Feixa et al., 2022; Maïche et al., 2017; Schwarz, 2020). A young person is typically considered an adult after getting married, leaving the parental home and achieving financial stability to start their own family (Feixa et al., 2022; Schwarz, 2020, p. 185). This normative transition emphasizes the importance of attaining secure employment, often in the form of salaried or public servant positions, due to their assumed stability and benefits such as health insurance and social security (Mejjati Alami, 2017; Schwarz, 2020).

However, many young people in Morocco struggle to meet these normative requirements for adulthood due to high youth unemployment rates and increasing costs of marriage. Thus, scholars have suggested that young Moroccans experience a ‘prolonged adolescence’ (Singerman, 2007; Thieme, 2018). Singerman (2007) conceptualizes this period as ‘waithood’, but this term is debated for implying passivity and a linear transition from school to work to marriage (Berrada, 2022; Kovacheva et al., 2018; Schwarz, 2020). Waithood fails to acknowledge young people’s non-normative efforts to provide for themselves through self-employment and informal work (Schwarz, 2020; Thieme, 2018). As Berrada puts it, ‘Waithood often “pathologizes” transitions outside of the norm it assumes’ (2022, p. 34). Youth transition researchers such as Schwarz (2020), Roberts (2007) and Furlong et al. (2011) advocate for greater consideration of young people’s subjectivities. An often overlooked aspect of young people’s pathway to adulthood is their increasing focus on self-fulfilment through lifestyle and leisure/non-work activities (Batchelor et al., 2020; Furlong & Cartmel, 2006). As this study will illustrate, young people in Morocco may challenge normative conceptions of adulthood by prioritizing the pursuit of personal aspirations and finding ways to earn a living beyond traditional salaried positions. Instead of viewing this as ‘waithood’, this study approaches transitions to adulthood through a post-Fordist lens, acknowledging participants’ individual aspirations and contemporary market realities in Morocco.

Youth Transitions and Post-Fordism

This study approaches youth transitions from a post-Fordist lens, which offers a context-sensitive perspective recognizing young people’s subjectivities. Post-Fordism describes the shift from mass production to more flexible and individualized systems of production and consumption that characterize Western societies since the 1980s (Aoyama et al., 2010; Farrugia, 2021). Farrugia describes post-Fordism as ‘a situation in which precarity and un/underemployment become normalized while the requirement for young people to seek subjectivity through work is intensified’ (2019, p. 708). Although Morocco has not fully transitioned to a post-Fordist economic model, the country’s socio-economic landscape has been shaped by elements of post-Fordism since it embraced a neoliberal turn (Bonci & Cavatorta, 2021; Catusse, 2009), encouraging self-reliance and individualized entrepreneurial strategies (Schwarz, 2020, p. 190). This has led to a rise in non-standard forms of work, such as informal work, part-time work, temporary work, self-employment, and home-based work, that are typical of post-Fordist economies (Aoyama et al., 2010).

Post-Fordism is also characterized by a perception of work as a site for increased lifestyle and identity cultivation (Farrugia, 2019, 2021). Farrugia explains that ‘fulfilment and self-realisation’ are central elements in post-Fordist working life, as ‘the subjectivity of a worker becomes increasingly critical to the value of labour’ (Farrugia, 2019, p. 2). In other words, young people no longer see work solely as a source of financial security but also as a means to achieve personal aspirations. This pursuit of self-fulfilment, characteristic of late-modern societies (Beck, 1992), encourages people to pursue meaningful work aligning with their individual orientations (Furlong & Cartmel, 2006). In the context of this study, post-Fordism thus emphasizes the special role that skateboarding plays in participants’ non-normative transition to adulthood.

Skateboarding and Work in Post-Fordism

Although skateboarding may initially appear as mere leisure, it has a special significance from a post-Fordist perspective. Post-Fordism is defined as ‘the expansion of economic strategies into all areas of everyday life’ (Götz, 2012, p. 71), thus blurring the boundaries between work and leisure (McRobbie, 2011). Moreover, skateboarding serves as a platform for identity construction (Bäckström & Blackman, 2022; Beal, 1995; Dupont, 2014; Dupont & Beal, 2021; Snyder, 2012), and thus as a site of self-realization within the post-Fordism realm.

Lifestyle Sports

Skateboarding is often discussed in terms of youth subculture. This means that skateboarders form a group with shared attributes, such as interests, values or lifestyle, that distinguish them from what they see as the ‘mainstream’ (Beal, 1995; Dupont, 2014; Snyder, 2012). Skateboarding is thus a symbolic site where youths construct and perform a collective identity (Bäckström & Blackman, 2022; Beal, 1995; Beal & Weidman, 2003). Building upon the concept of subculture, Wheaton (2004) proposes the ‘lifestyle sports’ framework, taking a further step in interpreting skateboarding as an embodied identity. She describes sports such as skateboarding, surfing or rock climbing as ‘lived cultures’ (p. 4) that transcend the boundaries of sports participation, for they embed ‘forms of collective expression, attitudes and social identity that develops in and around the activity’ (p. 11). The lifestyle sports framework also draws from Stebbins’ ‘serious leisure perspective’, defined as ‘the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that is highly substantial, interesting, and fulfilling and where, in the typical case, participants find a career in acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience’ (1992, p. 3). To summarize, the self-fulfilment pursuit associated with lifestyle sports significantly impacts individuals’ lifepaths, even guiding their career choices. In this context, the boundary between work and leisure becomes increasingly blurred. The lifestyle sports framework thus retains the post-Fordist focus on ‘fulfilment and self-realisation’ (Farrugia, 2019, p. 2) and offers a comprehensive understanding of the role of skateboarding in the broader context of this study’s participants’ transition to adulthood.

Lifestyle Entrepreneurship

Another key aspect of post-Fordist economies is ‘flexible specialization’, or the fragmentation of the economy into niche markets, leading to a surge in self-employed entrepreneurship (Hirst & Zeitlin, 1991; Wheaton, 2013). As detailed later, this study’s participants are indeed all self-employed entrepreneurs. Lifestyle sports are commonly associated with ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ (Cova & Guercini, 2016; Wallis et al., 2020). Henricks (2002) proposes the original definition of a lifestyle entrepreneur as ‘somebody who goes into [entrepreneurship] business not primarily for financial rewards, but for lifestyle reasons’ (Henricks, 2002, p. 4). Marcketti defines lifestyle entrepreneurs more precisely as ‘[operating] businesses closely aligned with their personal values, beliefs, interests, and passions’ (Marcketti, 2006, p. 241). Common examples of lifestyle entrepreneurs among lifestyle sports participants include instructors (Cova & Guercini, 2016) or surfers who take on board-shaping businesses (Wallis et al., 2020). Lifestyle entrepreneurs take advantage of their work flexibility to redefine the boundaries between work and leisure and between ‘home and business’ (Cederholm, 2014, p. 323). This framework supports the study of young Moroccan skateboarders’ transition to adulthood from a post-Fordist perspective as it brings the focus on how participants navigate between work commitments and skateboarding, emphasizing fulfilment and self-realization.

Methodology

This study builds upon ethnographically oriented qualitative fieldwork. Being a lifelong skateboarder, with a wealth of experience in grassroots community projects internationally, the author had the opportunity to closely observe the skateboarding community under study. Thanks to the author’s global skateboarding network, he was able to contact the skateboarding community under study and was invited to stay at their community house for the entire duration of his fieldwork. The author ensured that all the house residents agreed to participate in the research before formally starting the data collection. His role as a researcher is defined as ‘participant-as-observer’ (Atkinson, 2016, p. 50). Besides conducting observations, the participant-as-observer takes part in the community routine and activities. This position allows for an in-depth and holistic comprehension of participants’ lifestyles. The author spent a total of 14 weeks of immersive fieldwork (3 weeks in October 2022, 8 weeks in February–March 2023, 1 week in June 2023 and 2 weeks in October–November 2023) living at the community house, sharing daily life with participants, observing their routines and taking part in the community activities and events. One should bear in mind that this study emphasizes young people’s subjectivities in their transition to adulthood, hence the insiders’ perspective. While this approach allows for context-specific nuances, it also risks overemphasizing participants’ viewpoints (Miranda, 2022). The post-Fordist theoretical framework helps transcend individuals’ perspectives by placing their experiences within a broader context of changing economic realities (Götz, 2012).

Data includes field observation notes and pictures, and a total of 5 hours of audio interviews of the six residents of the community house. Interviews are semi-structured and revolve around participants’ backgrounds, their relationships with skateboarding, their lifestyles, work dynamics and professional occupation choices. Data collection is thoroughly informed by the life course perspective, which sees life as cumulative and pays attention to past and present factors influencing individuals’ lifestyles (Elder et al. 2003). As a result, interviews also explore participants’ pasts and the paths that led to their current lifestyles. Additionally, social media publications are included in the data to provide a wider exploration of participants’ lifestyles over the life course. For some participants, who are over 30 years old, one could argue that they can no longer be considered as young people. Moreover, participants may consider themselves as having already fully transitioned to adulthood, regardless of the normative expectations. The life course perspective thus allows looking back at their past transition to adulthood from their current perspective. To ensure confidentiality, participants, the community and localities are systematically given pseudonyms, and the exact location of the study is not disclosed in this publication.

The Study Case: The Maghrib Skate Entrepreneurs

Maghrib Skate and Dar Kickflip

This study explores the case of the Maghrib Skate (pseudonym) community, strategically established in Douar Sahili (pseudonym), a coastal village surrounded by several skateparks. The local economy revolves around tourism and services for surfing and skateboarding enthusiasts. Maghrib Skate aims to promote and develop skateboarding in Morocco and address local youths’ issues through skateboarding. They organize various events and distribute skateboarding equipment to local children in Douar Sahili and occasionally in other locations in Morocco. This study focuses on the six Maghrib Skate members residing at the community house, known as Dar Kickflip (pseudonym): Kareem (30), Abdel (31), Rayssa (19, the only female among participants), Moubarak (31), Mohammed (21) and Nassim (22) (pseudonyms are used for all participants). All of them hail from middle or large cities in Morocco. Their decision to relocate to Douar Sahili was essentially motivated by their desire to pursue a skateboarding-centred lifestyle. Abdel makes an exception as he is not a skateboarder. Nevertheless, he also moved to Douar Sahili due to lifestyle preoccupation, as he intended to retreat from the frenetic pace of city living and dedicate more time to his passion for photography—which thus makes it a serious leisure (Stebbins, 1992). For other participants, skateboarding holds a prominent place in their lives as they have been participating in the sport since their childhood and practice it daily. They describe the activity as a ‘passion’, ‘lifestyle’ and a ‘culture’ to which they manifest their belonging by the way they dress (privileging skateboarding brand clothes), the slang they use and their consumption of skateboarding media.

A few weeks before the author’s first field trip in Autumn 2022, Kareem and Abdel began renting a house in Douar Sahili, which they established as Dar Kickflip (pseudonym, ‘Dar’ meaning ‘house’ in Arabic and ‘Kickflip’ referring to a skateboarding trick). The house, thoroughly decorated with skateboarding items, features several rooms, designated spaces for desk work (desks and a computer station) and a skateboarding ramp. Dar Kickflip’s main ambition is to provide free accommodation for Moroccan skateboarders with low financial means who are willing to visit the local skateboarding venues. It also welcomes other guests on a free-donation basis, with the proceeds used to cover rent, utility charges, house maintenance expenses or support Maghrib Skate actions. Visitors can also visit the house to hang out with local skateboarders and learn about the Moroccan skateboarding culture. Additionally, the house serves as a showcase and retail point for local skateboarders who run product retail businesses.

Participants’ Backgrounds and Occupations

This study aims to describe the Dar Kickflip residents’ work choices and their strategies to reconcile skateboarding and work commitments. To achieve this, it is essential to first review participants’ backgrounds and current occupations. All participants are self-employed entrepreneurs. Mohammed pursued higher education in visual arts and is now a freelance video editor. Kareem created his own design company after graduating with a bachelor’s in business studies. Although he temporarily stopped his activity for a few years, his company is still operational nowadays and occasionally completes commissions for clients. Abdel holds a bachelor’s in religious studies. After working in a retail shop for several years, he resigned to travel the country and pursue his passion for photography. He eventually settled in Douar Sahili, living off savings and occasionally earning extra money as a freelance photographer. Since June 2023, Kareem and Abdel have taken on a new entrepreneurial venture together. They bought a house in Douar Sahili and turned it into a hostel: the Wheels & Lenses hostel (pseudonym). This business now represents their primary source of income. Rayssa left high school and moved to a larger city to learn handicraft for 2 years before settling at Dar Kickflip. She now earns a living by selling handmade jewellery in outdoor markets and occasionally performing as a fire-eater artist at local cafés. Moubarak dropped out of high school at the age of 19. Although he then enrolled in vocational training, he quit after 2 months. During his studies, he already began selling clothes, eventually turning it into a full-time entrepreneurial venture that still serves as his primary source of income. Nowadays, he operates a retail business of skateboarding clothes and apparel that he designs and crafts himself. Nassim was unemployed at the time of the author’s two initial field trips. Nevertheless, he used to work as a freelancer in web-based services. He dropped out of his bachelor’s in languages a year before graduation. By the author’s latest field trip, in October 2023, he resumed his activities in freelance web-based services.

Reconciling Work and Skateboarding

Participants explicitly express their disinterest in conventional salaried employment and corporate lifestyles. Some even claim to live ‘out of the system’ (Rayssa, Kareem and Abdel, 2023, personal communication) as they reject traditional work dynamics and growth aspirations. As mentioned earlier, it has been observed through fieldwork that participants spend more time pursuing skateboarding than profit-making activities. Interviews with the participants further confirm that they prioritize maintaining a skateboarding-centric lifestyle over their business growth. This illustrates the ‘lifestyle over growth’ mindset that characterizes lifestyle entrepreneurs (Wallis et al., 2020, p. 927). For instance, Moubarak explains that his business develops at a slow pace because he prefers to spend time skateboarding and surfing and fears that working too much may jeopardize his lifestyle:

I don’t like to work too much […] that’s why my [Instagram] page is growing like slowly. [If I worked too much] I should forget my habits and my soul. (Moubarak, 2023, personal communication)

Kareem perfectly illustrates the idea of ‘lifestyle over growth’ (Wallis et al., 2020, p. 927) when he states that he has no desire to accumulate wealth with his entrepreneurial ventures and adds: ‘The only future I have in my mind is skateboarding’ (personal communication, 2023). In addition to his claims, Kareem’s background demonstrates this stance as he decided to scale down his allegedly financially successful design business to pursue a skateboarding-centric lifestyle.

Sustaining a skateboarding-centred lifestyle is demanding, for it requires substantial time dedication and physical access to skateboarding amenities, which can conflict with work commitments. Through fieldwork observation, interviews and continuous interaction with participants on social media, the author identified two categories of work organization strategies employed by participants to reconcile their daily skateboarding activities with their work commitments: (a) work time management strategies and (b) workplace selection strategies, as detailed in the following subsections.

Work Time Management Strategies

Although participants’ work schedules vary, they have in common the fact that they all deviate from the traditional nine-to-five salaried employment model. To maximize their participation in skateboarding, they adopt two main strategies. The first strategy involves managing their work schedule through different schemes. The second strategy consists of blurring the work/leisure boundary. One should bear in mind that these strategies are not necessarily clear-cut, and participants may utilize a combination of them to achieve their goals.

Maintaining Control Over the Work Rhythm

Three work rhythm schemes have been identified: part-time work, intermittent work or self-scheduling. Part-time work with limited working hours used to be the strategy of Kareem and Abdel, who had mostly been living off personal savings until recently. After Dar Kickflip was established, Kareem dedicated most of his time to skateboarding and developing Maghrib Skate, which did not generate any revenue. Occasionally, he would complete commissions for his design company’s clients if additional funds were required for house maintenance or Maghrib Skate projects. Similarly, Abdel worked as a freelance photographer on an ad-hoc basis and spent more time doing photography as a leisure activity than for a profit. However, it is worth noting that their lifestyle was only possible due to the savings they had accumulated from their previous employments. Their work dynamics have significantly changed since June 2023 with the launch of the Wheels & Lenses hostel. Starting a financially viable business became a necessity to maintain Dar Kickflip and Maghrib Skate. This observation suggests that relying on limited part-time work is not a sustainable solution over time for participants unless they have substantial savings.

Since not all participants have enough savings to work on occasional shifts only, intermittent work is a common alternative scheme to increase spare time for skateboarding. This involves alternating periods of full-time work and extended periods of vacation. For instance, Rayssa frequently travels to a large city for up to one month to work full-time selling handmade jewellery in outdoor markets. In her case, there is a relatively clear boundary between periods of full-time work and extended skateboarding-filled vacations:

I don’t skate a lot if I’m working, like just once or twice a week. But now, I’m skating every day, now it’s good. […] But not so much when I’m working. (Rayssa, personal communication, 2023)

She typically does not work when staying at Dar Kickflip and dedicates most of her time to skateboarding, besides occasionally holding handicraft workshops in local cafés. Moubarak has a comparable work rhythm. Every few months, he travels to the north of the country to collect skateboarding clothes arriving from Europe. During these journeys, he also visits sewing workshops and crafts clothes of his own design. For most of the year, Moubarak stays at Dar Kickflip where he spends his days skateboarding and surfing. Though he mainly sells his products online through social media, he spends a day per week attending an outdoor market in the nearest city.

Some of the participants have adopted a third approach to manage their work rhythm in a way that allows them to maximize skateboarding participation as much as possible: self-scheduling. For instance, Mohammed’s work implies attending events to shoot video footage for online commercials for one to three nights a week. While these shifts represent a time constraint, he can complete the rest of his work, which involves editing the commercials remotely and on a free schedule. Mohammed uses this flexibility to work at night and save his daytime for skateboarding or surfing. In comparison, a nine-to-five corporate schedule would restrict his ability to consistently participate in skateboarding since the sport can only be practiced during daylight hours due to the lack of overnight lighting at the local skateparks. Occasionally, Rayssa, Moubarak and Kareem also use this self-scheduling scheme to complete some work tasks at night from Dar Kickflip—respectively crafting jewellery, managing online sales or completing design commissions.

Blurring the Work/Leisure Boundary

In the aforementioned work rhythm schemes, there is a clear boundary between working time and skateboarding/leisure time. Another work time management strategy consists of blurring this boundary. For example, Kareem and Abdel are now able to mix work and leisure. Since June 2023, they have been working daily to operate the Wheels & Lenses hostel. The hostel primarily caters to foreign skateboarders. Kareem takes these customers to local skateparks and little-known street spots. Despite Kareem’s perception of these skateboarding sessions as leisure time, they play a crucial role in the success of the hostel venture by providing customers with a satisfying experience. Abdel also participates in these skateboarding sessions to capture photographs that he later utilizes to promote the hostel online. Comparably, given that Moubarak’s business is situated within the skateboarding industry, visiting skateparks and socializing with skateboarders is a convenient way of finding new customers and promoting his business while enjoying skateboarding sessions.

Workplace Selection Strategies

The previous section reveals that participants seek a high level of work ‘independence, autonomy, and control’ (Wallis et al., 2020, p. 919). This desire, typical of lifestyle entrepreneurs (Wallis et al., 2020), also plays a crucial role in their workplace selection. In the following subsections, the author describes two workplace selection strategies to maximize skateboarding participation: blurring the workplace/leisure site and workplace/home boundaries, and lifestyle mobility. As for work time management, these strategies can overlap with each other.

Blurring the Workplace/Leisure Site and Workplace/Home Boundaries

In some cases, the boundary between workplace and leisure sites can become ambiguous. For example, as Kareem, Abdel and Moubarak can renegotiate the work/ leisure boundary in their work time management—as previously explained—the skatepark simultaneously serves as a leisure site and a workplace. While making the skatepark a practical workplace only concerns a few participants, all the Dar Kickflip residents find ways to redefine the workplace/home boundary. This is especially true in the case of Abdel, for whom the Wheels & Lenses hostel is now simultaneously home and workplace. Despite their businesses occasionally requiring them to travel, Rayssa and Moubarak complete the essential part of their work at home—respectively crafting jewellery and managing online retail. Moubarak explicitly admits that he prefers to sell online rather than in physical locations because of the higher level of autonomy it provides. Rayssa shares his opinion that while she mostly sells her products in outdoor markets, she intends to develop her business online to increase remote work opportunities. In the same vein, Nassim considers self-employment and remote work as the sole viable alternatives to maintain consistent participation in skateboarding:

I’d rather not work like… for a boss… To me working means working from home. I can work from home and at the same time work with [Maghrib Skate]. (Nassim, 2023, personal communication)

Lifestyle Mobility

The ability to blur the workplace/leisure site or workplace/home boundaries alone is not sufficient to ensure consistent skateboarding participation. In addition, a strategic residential location selection is essential.

I came here [Dar Kickflip] because the community is nice, there is lot of good skateboarders […] I came for skating actually. I like it here, and also I like the weather, I like the skateparks also. (Rayssa, 2023, personal communication)

Participants’ deliberate relocation to Dar Kickflip can be conceptualized as ‘lifestyle mobility’. This concept describes individuals’ voluntary relocation motivated by lifestyle/leisure pursuits rather than financial growth motives (Cohen et al., 2015). This phenomenon is commonly observed among lifestyle sport participants, leading Thorpe (2012) to coin the term ‘lifestyle-sport migrants’. Related literature typically emphasizes two forms of lifestyle mobility: nomadic lifestyle and relocation to a place that meets one’s lifestyle/leisure aspirations (Cohen et al., 2015; Piispa, 2022; Thorpe, 2012). Participants’ realities reveal a prevalence of the latter option.

The development of online technologies, new work paradigms and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to the rise of remote work and a new type of nomadic lifestyle: digital nomadism (Shawkat et al., 2021). Digital nomads work exclusively online, giving them a high level of mobility (Thompson, 2019, p. 28). As Thompson states, their profile fits the lifestyle entrepreneur framework in that they ‘have taken their leisure considerations and inverted their significance in life by prioritizing it over employment-based location’ (2019, p. 28). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, digital nomadism has been on a surge among locals and immigrants in Morocco (Mabrouk & Van Den Plas, 2023). Therefore, one may suggest that digital nomadism is an attractive option for participants, as it provides them with greater opportunities to visit various skateboarding sites. This suggestion could even be confirmed by the fact that Mohammed plans to change his business operation model and become a digital nomad. However, the reality is otherwise, as other factors of skateboarding participation draw participants towards a different strategy.

Abdel and Kareem demonstrate the lowest level of mobility among participants since they are constrained to live at or near their hostel—Kareem still resides at Dar Kickflip, located a few minutes away. Meanwhile, despite having the freedom to travel to any skateboarding site in the country during their extended periods of leave/remote work, Rayssa and Moubarak choose to stay at Dar Kickflip. Besides the local public skateparks, participants justify their deliberate relocation to Douar Sahili based on other crucial factors facilitating skateboarding participation, including a vibrant local skateboarding community, private skateboarding ramps in local surf camps, favourable weather conditions and the locals’ acceptance of skateboarding. In some areas of Morocco, skateboarders—especially females—may experience marginalization due to stigmas attached to youth (sub)cultures (e.g., skateboarding or hip-hop). Participants claim it is thus easier for them to get along with the local population of Douar Sahili because surfing and skateboarding cultures are now broadly implemented there. Moreover, participants cite the presence of local skateshops as an indispensable amenity. Skateboarders heavily rely on skateshops for regular equipment changes, as they typically break their boards every two to four weeks when skateboarding daily. In interviews, participants stress how the historical lack of skate shops in Morocco used to hamper their participation in the sport:

Before we [didn’t] have shop for skateboarding, we just wait[ed] for someone to bring a skateboard […] it was hard, you had to wait one year sometimes to find like trucks or wheels. (Abdel, personal communication, 2023)

Several skateboarders in the country have since launched informal online skateshops. However, deliveries are only available within a confined locality, which means skateboarders must reside within the operational areas of skateshops. This suggests that convenient access to skateboarding amenities, particularly skateshops, is more important than the mere opportunity to visit various skateboarding venues in ensuring consistent skateboarding participation in Morocco. In other words, and to conclude this subsection, participants privilege a relocation to a strategic residential location over (digital) nomadism/improved mobility. Even Mohammed’s particular case supports this statement. His current work requires him to regularly travel to larger cities to shoot commercials, restraining his stays in Douar Sahili. He thus plans to embrace digital nomadism for extended stays at Dar Kickflip rather than travelling to multiple skateboarding venues within the country.

Mohammed: […] this is what I like here. There isn’t another Dar Kickflip in Morocco. There are surf houses, but for the real skaters there’s nothing.

Researcher: Would you see yourself living here?

Mohammed: Yes, I would like to. And I’m planning to. If I can become fully nomadic and freelance, I’d come to live here. (personal communication, 2023)

Discussion

This study sheds light on the new work realities and conceptions of adulthood among young people in the context of economic and cultural transformations of Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Contrary to normative expectations of linear transitions from school to stable (and preferably salaried) employment to marriage, participants prioritize skateboarding-centred lifestyle pursuits and arrange their work accordingly. All the Dar Kickflip residents have opted for entrepreneurship for its higher degree of work flexibility and control, which allows them to balance their demanding skateboarding lifestyle with satisfactory profits. This can be seen as a post-Fordist drive for self-realization, influencing their work time management and workplace selection strategies.

The research confirms the common assumption that self-employment is a privileged path for young people in Morocco (Alla et al., 2022; Benkaraache, 2021; Mejjati Alami, 2017). Participants systematically depict entrepreneurship as a strategic choice rather than a constraint due to Morocco’s limited employment opportunities. This challenges Benkaraache’s (2021) and Mejjati Alami’s suggestion that ‘entrepreneurship appears more as a stopgap to employment than a choice and a massive deliberate orientation’ (2017, p. 17). The author contends that youth scholars should consider post-Fordism and lifestyle (sport) entrepreneurship as frameworks to develop a more comprehensive understanding of young Moroccan people’s transition to adulthood, considering their individual aspirations. This will also contribute to filling the gap in Global South-centred lifestyle entrepreneurship studies. The only studies mentioning lifestyle entrepreneurship in Morocco focus on women in higher education (Boulahoual, 2018) and small business owners’ leadership (Haouam & Mokhtari, 2019), without offering an in-depth exploration of the concept. Furthermore, lifestyle entrepreneurship in the Global South should be studied in the context of globalization and compared to youth transitions in other global contexts. For example, in a comparable study case, Piispa (2022) describes the lifestyles of Finnish surfers who have opted for lifestyle entrepreneurship and nomadism to travel in search of waves. He similarly characterizes this work choice as ‘challenging the “normal” conceptions of adulthood’ (2022, p. 33). Comparing this study’s and Piispa’s conclusion raises the question: In the case of lifestyle entrepreneurship, can we identify an emerging globalized pattern of youth transition to adulthood?

This globalization discussion leads to further interrogations regarding the neo-liberalization of Global South youths and societies. Despite their alleged disinterest in economic growth, one could argue that lifestyle entrepreneurs inherently embed neoliberal values, as they develop an ‘entrepreneurial self’ (Götz, 2012), where logics of labour, productivity and consumption invade the realm of passion/leisure. In the post-Fordist context, Farrugia qualifies these individuals as ‘subjects of passion’, illustrating how the ‘promise of self-realisation through work’ (2019b, p. 1) erases the boundary between work and leisure and leads young people to accept the role of neoliberal workers. The question arises: As some young Moroccan people may challenge the traditional family-centred conception of adulthood, are they inadvertently embracing neoliberal values? This inquiry highlights the importance of considering North-South power dynamics in the study of Global South youth transitions, particularly in relation to Global North economic models such as neoliberalism and post-Fordism.

Conclusion

This study aims to define how Moroccan skateboarders challenge the normative expectations of transition to adulthood and describe how they navigate between skateboarding and work commitments. In Morocco, the typical path to adulthood is seen as a linear progression from education to work to marriage. However, this path is not only hindered by the country’s high youth unemployment rate but also challenged by young people themselves, who prioritize lifestyle pursuits over financial success and family obligations. Indeed, while the participation in youth subcultures such as skateboarding increases, so does their significance in young people’s lifepaths. For many, maintaining their skateboarding lifestyle as they enter adulthood is a top priority, influencing their work choices.

In the contemporary post-Fordist economy, where job insecurity is normalized and entrepreneurship is encouraged, work is not only viewed as a source of financial gain but also a site of self-realization. The lines between work and leisure have become blurred, as observed with this study’s participants who pursue lifestyle entrepreneurship to maximize their involvement in skateboarding. They may pursue self-realization through work when skateboarding participation directly contributes to the success of their business ventures. This is the case of Kareem, who shares skateboarding sessions with his hostel customers. Alternatively, entrepreneurship allows participants to arrange their work time and workplace to maximize self-realization through skateboarding participation outside of work hours. While this study emphasizes skateboarding, participants may find other means of self-realization through their work, such as Rayssa and Moubarak expressing their creativity through jewel crafting or cloth designing, or Mohammed appreciating the process of shooting videos.

Findings challenge the concept of waithood as it emphasizes young people’s subjectivities and how they voluntarily depart from the normative expectations of adulthood by prioritizing their lifestyle. This highlights the significance of youth subcultures and leisure activities in young people’s lifepaths and work choices. Moreover, these subcultures have an impact on the economic and cultural landscapes. The surge in surfing- and skateboarding-related business ventures on Morocco’s Atlantic coast contributes to the transformation of once-quaint traditional fishing villages into bustling beach resorts that attract surfers and skateboarders from around the world. This suggests that youth subcultures, or lifestyle sports, play a role in Morocco’s transition towards a neoliberal economic model. The emergence of skateboarding in Morocco, as a Western youth culture and lifestyle sport, should also be studied in comparison to other Global South contexts, such as skateboarding in China (Li, 2022) or South Korea (Holsgens, 2019).

While skateboarding is a specific example, the concepts of post-Fordism, lifestyle sports and lifestyle entrepreneurship can serve as a foundation to study other emerging subcultures impacting Morocco’s economic and cultural landscapes, such as surfing and yoga. These frameworks can help us better understand youth transitions from young people’s perspectives. Lastly, it is important to note that this study is predominantly male-centred, with only one female participant. Future research should aim to include more diverse perspectives, particularly those of female skateboarders and lifestyle entrepreneurs in Morocco, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the youth transitions topic.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research received support from the project: What works? Youth Transition from Education to Employment in the Middle East and North Africa, funded by the Research Council of Finland, decision number 320449.

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