Beaches and breaches : articulations and negotiations of identity, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism in Mauritius - 'The most cosmopolitan island under the sun'

Contextualised by its history of colonisation by France, then England, with a dominant part of the population whose ancestral home is in the Indian subcontinent while simultaneously belonging geographically to the continent of Africa, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius can be seen as a “multicultural” island. As well as its success in containing its ethnic and cultural diversity, Mauritius has also had notable economic success – particularly in tourism. Mauritius has successfully marketed itself as a ‘paradise island’ tourist destination, making full use of the required geographical features of a tropical climate and unblemished sand-edged lagoons. Its successful multi-ethnicity has further allowed Mauritius to market itself in tourist brochures as ‘The Most Cosmopolitan Island under the Sun’. Because of its intense everyday multi-ethnicity, public spaces in Mauritius can cause frequent instances of liminality – where articulations of ethnicities, processes of tolerance, ideas of cosmopolitanism and negotiations of everyday life sway, shift and breach into places of uncertain and multi-layered ideas and identities. In this paper, I want to look at the case of Mauritius’ beaches – where hotel ‘tourist only’ beaches are juxtaposed with ungroomed local beaches, where ethnicised locals are juxtaposed against each other, whilst simultaneously juxtaposed against tourists. My focus will be on how Mauritius’ beaches become complex, liminal spaces where multiple layers of articulations and negotiations of identity and a sense of place – by locals and tourists alike – are breached, crossed, interlinked and un-linked, where identity, tolerance and cosmopolitanism are ebbing, weaving, swaying in constant processes of liminality.