Trumping the Ethnic Card: How Tourism Entrepreneurs on Rodrigues tackled the 2008 Financial Crisis

Abstract

The 2008 global financial crisis had significant repercussions on small island states and territories. This article discusses the efforts of tourism entrepreneurs from Rodrigues, a subnational island jurisdiction and a dependency of the Republic of Mauritius, to combat those effects by organizing themselves as the group Associations du Tourisme Réunies (ATR). Their aim was to secure subsidies from the Mauritian government to reduce the price of airfares to Rodrigues so as to attract more tourists to the island. The article offers an ethnographic account of how the economic crisis was tackled in a creative way by ATR and how its members put the negative image of a Creole minority suppressed by a Hindu majority to strategic use to achieve a stronger recognition of Rodriguan interests within the Republic of Mauritius.

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