Capitalismo extremo, ideology and Ibiza: A new perspective on youth deviance and risk on holiday

Abstract

Working class British tourists are renowned for their deviant and risk behaviours when they go on holiday to Spain. However, there is almost no consideration for a) how these accelerated attitudes to ‘getting wasted’ evolved; and b) the role of the resort, as well as the British people who work there, in the process of behavioural coercion. Based on ethnographic research, I argue in this paper that for many British youth, the idea of getting wasted on holiday is a socialised process which is commercially influenced which normally starts through Club 18-30 package holidays. There young Brits learn what they should be doing on holiday - drinking, taking drugs, having sex and engaging in violence - and here begins the ‘holiday career’ where they start to learn of the pinnacle of the holiday experience: Ibiza. It is the ‘place to be’ - even though many don’t really know why. Some shortcut the holiday career at a younger age and this, I argue, is what we are currently witnessing - a population of younger Brits who are being wooed by the potential acquisition of social status which can come from going to Ibiza which is ideologically constructed for them by marketing companies, travel operators and flight companies and the media. So well functions this ideology, that when people arrive, they are therefore familiar with what they should be doing - spending money they don’t have and engaging in various deviant and risk behaviours - only the holiday occasion, away from home routines and responsibilities and with friends who have ambitions for the same thing, means that the excess and consumption takes on a greater pressure. This is what I want to argue is called ‘capitalismo extremo’, a money-making process concerned only with profit and which takes no prisoners; even if it means significant personal and social loss. It is this which is precisely what creates the impetus for the deviant and risk behaviours of young British tourists.