RESULTS: GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES, LOCAL AGENCY, AND STRUCTURAL CHALLENGES

Material Constraints
One of Maghrib Skate’s most significant contributions to skateboarding democratization in Morocco is facilitating access to equipment. Skateboards, shoes, and protective gear are lent or sometimes gifted to local youth, many of whom could not otherwise afford to skate. During fieldwork, children frequently visited Dar Kickflip asking to borrow boards, underscoring both persistent demand for equipment and the community’s redistributive role.

Equipment provision is a central concern in SDP, often addressed through external distribution programs targeting underserved communities (Açıkgöz et al., 2022; Khokhryakova & Svensson, 2026). Yet, such interventions are typically short-term and structurally limited – particularly in skateboarding, where equipment breaks frequently – and often reflect deficit-based assumptions about local lack (Darnell, 2012; Darnell & Hayhurst, 2012). Studies in Latin America and Turkey concluded that top-down provision models can reinforce dependency on foreign aid (Açıkgöz et al.,  2022; Khokhryakova & Svensson, 2026).

In Morocco, these challenges are rooted in infrastructural limitations. The country lacks formal import and distribution systems, as well as official skate shops. Although informal online retailers exist, high costs keep sustained participation difficult. As Nassim explained:

“I used to buy boards. It was too expensive! […]. We’re talking about 600 dirhams just for a board, then there are the trucks, and wheels, that can easily be 1400. Imagine if you break a board every other week like I do. How much does that cost? 2000 dirhams! If I work, I will get 2500 or 3000 dirhams [per month] at most. It’s unbearable!” (personal communication, 2023)

Regulatory Friction and Grassroots Advocacy
In response to these material barriers, Maghrib Skate established partnerships with foreign organizations and brands to obtain donated equipment. Yet these arrangements are complicated by legal frameworks. As an informal collective without association status, Maghrib Skate cannot easily receive donations without facing steep import tariffs, as customs authorities suspect commercial activity.

“Our problem is that in Morocco to get donation shipped from abroad you need to have the association status. And because of this we always find it hard to get material. We collect money for the shipment, but we always face the custom tax problem. But I like to fight to get it, to get this material without paying the tax. This is a donation, it’s for the development of this sport. They should understand why we do this, […] we’re not selling the material, we’re not doing business with this stuff.” (Kareem, personal communication, 2023)

Imported skateboards are classified as raw wood rather than sports goods, resulting in higher taxation under the national Finance Act (Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances, 2024). In 2023, Maghrib Skate was unable to receive a major donation from a European brand due to prohibitive customs fees, despite months of negotiation with custom authorities.

Rather than passively accepting these constraints, the community launched a public social media campaign – combining English-language Instagram posts and videos in Darija – calling for policy change. In doing so, equipment access shifted from a logistical issue to a political one, raising broader questions about trade classifications and the recognition of grassroots sport actors by state institutions. However, Maghrib Skate was never able to retrieve the donation.

Institutionalized arenas, such as the Taghazout Surf Expo – a large-scale annual event that brings together tourism stakeholders, entrepreneurs, and policymakers – also become sites of negotiation. Although embedded within tourism economies, they enable grassroots actors to engage policymakers on issues of sport governance and distribution. Equipment access thus extends beyond conventional SDP provision models and enters the realm of policy advocacy, illustrating Khokhryakova and Svensson’s emphasis on “the role of political turbulence in resource dependencies” (2026, p. 179) and how local actors are often constrained to navigate between reliance on foreign aid and domestic institutional limitations to sports access.

Parallel Circulation and Local Production
Beyond Maghrib Skate, Moroccan skateboarders have developed parallel strategies to bypass the absence of formal distribution infrastructures. Equipment circulates through informal delivery systems, while informal online skateshops, typically operating via social media, facilitate domestic access (Chenier, 2024). Though rarely profitable, these initiatives fill critical gaps left by formal markets.

Other efforts focus on localized production. Atlas Skateboards, founded in Casablanca in 2012, pioneered Moroccan-branded boards before ceasing operations in 2018. More recently, 7ARKA, established in 2021, positioned itself as offering affordable, locally oriented products:

“At the end of 2021, my bro and I created the Moroccan skateboard brand 7ARKA with the release of the first logo deck. @7arkaskateco
The deal: offering a quality deck at a good price for Moroccan skateboarders.” (7ARKA, social media publication, 2024)

Both Atlas and 7arka still rely on outsourced production. However, localized artisanal production has begun to take shape too. In 2023, Rachid, based in Temara, founded Keep Skateboards, producing Morocco’s first locally hand-crafted decks:

“Keep Skateboards is a board brand started off my upcycling workshop. […] Keep is the first brand of skateboards entirely produced and commercialized in Morocco. With this brand, I seek to continue contributing to the local Moroccan skateboarding scene and supporting local skaters. As I continue to perfect the difficult craft of making pro-level boards, I want to share these updates to show that, in skateboarding, just like in anything else, Moroccan makers and artisans are up to the tasks for which we often trust industries based outside the country. If you want to support local production, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me to purchase your own Keep board, entirely produced in Temara.” (Keep Skateboards, social media publication, 2024)

These grassroots distribution strategies and production initiatives signal a shift from informal adaptation towards forms of material and symbolic autonomy within global sport economies.

Beyond Distribution: Structural and Epistemic Implications
These grassroots practices complicate the conventional SDP focus on equipment provision. External programs often frame material scarcity as the primary obstacle, thereby positioning Global North actors as providers and local communities as mere recipients. Without addressing regulatory frameworks or production capacities, such approaches risk reproducing dependency (Açıkgöz et al., 2022; Darnell & Hayhurst, 2012; Khokhryakova & Svensson, 2026).

In contrast, Moroccan skateboarders engage the structural conditions of access – negotiating customs policy, building informal distribution networks, and experimenting with localized production. These practices reposition them as stakeholders capable of shaping the institutional and economic conditions of sports participation. They reflect Hayhurst’s “agency from below” (2009, p. 209), or what McSweeney et al. describe as “institutional work” (2019, p. 14), through which local actors reshape development structures through everyday practices. Recognizing these dynamics is essential for decentering deficit-based and Orientalist assumptions within SDP. Grassroots actors are not awaiting top-down intervention; they actively navigate regulatory, economic, and neoliberal governance structures shaping sports participation. This supports Thorpe’s call to decentralize SDP knowledge production by focusing on “the informal, grassroots action sports participation already occurring within local contexts” (2016, p. 12).

Spatial Governance and the Politics of Public Space
Douar Sahili and neighboring villages offer relatively significant skateboarding infrastructure by Moroccan standards. The most prominent site is Taghazout Skatepark, built in 2017 by the international NGO Make Life Skate Life following negotiations between local skaters and municipal authorities. Located on hilltops overlooking the Atlantic, the park has become both an iconic skate site and a tourist attraction. It is currently managed by the Taghazout Skatepark Association, which offers equipment rental and retail services.

Following its perceived success, additional skateparks were constructed in nearby villages, partly funded through the Initiative Nationale pour le Développement Humain (INDH) (King Mohammed VI, 2005). However, these projects did not replicate Taghazout Skatepark’s success. Designed without consultation with skateboarders or professional skatepark architects, they feature inadequate layouts and fragile concrete structures that deteriorate quickly under regular use, as reported by Maghrib Skate members and observed during fieldwork. While all parks remain open public spaces, some hostels have built private ramps, generally reserved for paying guests, although Maghrib Skatemembers are often granted access.

The open nature of skateparks generates recurring spatial tensions. For example, a prominent local skater posted on Instagram to complain about families sitting on ramps at a local skatepark, rendering them unusable. During fieldwork, skateboarders frequently reported conflicts with visitors who treated skateparks as playgrounds. These tensions sometimes escalated into disputes, particularly when adult skaters’ presence was questioned by parents.

In 2024, Maghrib Skate issued a series of social media posts to address how Taghazout Skatepark is increasingly frequented by tourists treating the site as a photo backdrop. They criticized visitors’ behaviors such as obstructing ramps for photos, painting ramps, and local businesses hostels and tour operators bringing clients to the skatepark and asking skateboarders to perform for them. One widely shared post captured this frustration:

“Some of [the visitors] told us thanks for the Show [sad emoji] […] Skating is our passion, but lately it’s been feeling like we’re performing for a show instead of practicing our craft. We’re here to skate, not to entertain. It’s exhausting when there’s no respect for the space or the vibe we’re trying to build. […] Respect the session, respect the skaters, respect the culture. […]” (Maghrib Skate’s social media post, 2024)

Such incidents, frequently observed during fieldwork, restrict what skateboarders perceive as the legitimate use of these spaces – as sites of practice and progression. Nevertheless, as public spaces, skateparks do not grant exclusive rights to skateboarders. Acknowledging this, Maghrib Skate adopts largely educational and adaptive responses. Workshops include discussions on managing conflicts. The community also submitted a proposal to the city council requesting the installation of informational boards promoting safe and practitioner-friendly use of skateparks. Members also engage in informal sensitization at the Wheels & Lenses hostel and encourage surf-camp owners to inform visitors about respectful skatepark conduct.

They also adopt avoidance strategies. Workshops are intentionally held in local village skateparks rather than at Taghazout Skatepark to reduce overcrowding, also because Taghazout Skatepark Association occasionally organizes its own events. Beyond workshops, Maghrib Skate members often schedule early-morning sessions at Taghazout Skatepark, before crowds gather, or use less frequented parks in neighboring villages. When possible, they rely on private hostel ramps for uninterrupted practice.

From an urban governance perspective, these tensions reflect broader struggles over spatial entitlement and cultural commodification. Public space is a site where competing claims over meaning and use are negotiated (Low & Smith, 2006; Mitchell, 2003). The Taghazout Skatepark itself embodies these dynamics, emerging from both grassroots initiative and transnational intervention. While such projects can improve sports participation, critical SDP scholarship has long noted that externally supported infrastructures are often embedded in broader development logics (Darnell, 2012; Giulianotti, 2011; Hartmann & Kwauk, 2011). In Taghazout, the skatepark is also integrated into tourism-driven territorial development (Benattou, 2023; Berriane, 2021; Berriane & Moizo, 2020), illustrating how spaces designed for sports inclusion can simultaneously contribute to the incorporation of grassroots sport cultures into neoliberal development agendas.

These dynamics are particularly visible in Taghazout, where the skatepark functions both as a site of everyday practice and as a touristic spectacle. Its transformation into a scenic backdrop mirrors broader Orientalist economies in which local practices are aestheticized for foreign audiences (Minca & Borghi, 2016). Skateboarders’ frustration at being treated as performers rather than practitioners thus reflects an effort to defend the subcultural meaning of the space. More broadly, these tensions show how sport infrastructures become sites where competing understandings of sport, space, and development intersect. As grassroots actors navigate these dynamics, they generate situated knowledge about the governance and everyday use of sports spaces – knowledge that is rarely acknowledged in external SDP programming (Darnell & Hayhurst, 2011; Nicholls et al., 2011; Thorpe, 2016). Examining these negotiations provides insight into the power relations through which knowledge about sports and development is produced, legitimized, and contested, challenging externally imposed narratives of how sport should function as a tool for social change in the Global South (Darnell, 2017).

Institutionalization, Mistrust, and the Politics of Formalization
Since the 2005 launch of the INDH, skateparks and urban sports initiatives have been funded under youth inclusion frameworks. While Maghrib Skate members acknowledge the benefits of new infrastructures and tourism-related opportunities, they remain wary of institutionalization and the commodification of local skateboarding culture:

“Sometimes, you feel like someone is trying to use the skateboarding community just to make money, and it’s just something bad. I wanna talk about it, because we have this thing here in Morocco, we have people who try to use the community to make money. […] and we should not shut up about it.” (Kareem, personal communication, 2023)

The prominence of informal grassroots organizations reflects a broader climate of mistrust towards formal institutions. Maghrib Skate and Moroccan Skater Girls (a community sub-initiative, further discussed later in this paper) deliberately avoid registering as legal associations. According to Kareem, many skateboarders perceive legal associations as profit-driven entities disconnected from local skateboarding culture – a sentiment echoed by numerous skateboarders interrogated across Morocco during fieldwork interactions:

“We are not an association, and for now we don’t want to be an association. […] it’s not because we want to be illegal, but because of the image of associations in Morocco. I’m from the skateboarding community, I feel that the image of associations is still not clear. So, all the skaters, I feel like they don’t like associations and what they do because, I mean some associations in Morocco are doing competition, but most associations are doing nothing. So, we also want to keep the trust of the skateboarding community in Morocco.” (Kareem, personal communication, 2023)

These critiques are particularly directed at the Fédération Royale Marocaine des Sports Urbains (FRMSU). Dissatisfaction extends beyond informal groups: Association Street Skate and Association Tamara Skateboard called for a boycott of the FRMSU in 2017 (see figure 1), citing profit motives, nepotism, and the absence of skateboarders in leadership positions.

Figure 1 – Institutional resistance: social media post by Association Street Skate and Association Tamara Skateboard, calling for a boycott of the Moroccan Royal Urban Sports Federation (FRMSU), 2017

Skateboarders connected to the FRMSU² (e.g., current or former federation employees, national team members) encountered during fieldwork also expressed skepticism towards its governance. Ilyes (pseudonym), a former national team member, met at Dar Kickflip, described unclear recruitment processes and a lack of tangible support:

Researcher: “So, you are in the national team?”

Ilyes: “[laughs] Yes, I have no clue [how it happened]. I was with [a local association] and we… Honestly, I just let them deal with the paperwork and all. They signed me up [for competitions in Morocco], they tell me the date, I go there, and that’s it.”

Researcher: “And what do you get from being a member of the national team?”

Ilyes: “Well, nothing! [laughs]”

Researcher: “Not even some free equipment?”

Ilyes: “No, I have to buy my own.” (personal communication, 2023)

A female competitor similarly criticized the federation for perpetuating gender hierarchies, citing limited female events and public promotion of female performances. She also reported that the winners of a national female competition never received the promised prizes. While official records confirm a lack of female-centered activities (FRMSU, n.d.), Morocco’s participation in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games through a female skateboarder highlights the complex and contradictory nature of institutional representation.

Across actors encountered during fieldwork – including Maghrib Skate, Taghazout Skatepark Association, Moroccan Skate Girls, and individual skateboarders – critiques consistently point to governance issues, lack of transparency, and top-down decision-making. Similar tensions in other sports, such as the federation boycott by Moroccan breakdancers (Frost & Singh, 2023), suggest broader structural challenges within Moroccan sport institutions (El Akari, 2022).

While resistance to institutionalization has long characterized action sports cultures (Beal, 1995; Thorpe, 2016), in Morocco it intersects with wider debates on governance and legitimacy. From a postcolonial perspective, this skepticism reflects more than subcultural opposition. Formalization can introduce administrative norms and governance models associated with colonial and neoliberal regulation (Batuev & Robinson, 2017; Wheaton,  2004), potentially reshaping grassroots practices to align with institutional priorities rather than community needs.

In response, grassroots skateboarding communities often pursue alternative strategies to sustain their activities (Beal, 1996; Thorpe, 2016). While financial or material support is necessary, both Maghrib Skate and Taghazout Skatepark Association deliberately avoid domestic institutional funding and instead rely on self-sufficiency and translational partnerships (personal communication, 2025).

This configuration reveals a common SDP paradox. While grassroots actors exercise agency in navigating domestic constraints, their strategies remain embedded within global power structures. Drawing on Gramscian perspectives, Darnell & Hayhurst (2012) argue that local initiatives operate within global political economies where resources, knowledge, and development agendas are often controlled by Global North actors. As such, resistance to state institutions – such as in Maghrib Skate’s and Taghazout Skatepark Association’s case – may simultaneously disrupt and reproduce global power hegemony. McSweeney et al. (2019) describe this as “institutional work,” through which local actors both contest bureaucratic governance and reinforce patterns of dependency on external SDP actors.

At the same time, tensions between grassroots actors and state institutions are often interpreted in SDP discourse as evidence of weak governance or institutional deficiency in Global South contexts (Adam & Harris, 2014; Coalter, 2010; Giulianotti, 2011). Such interpretations risk reproducing Orientalist narratives that portray non-Western societies as incapable of self-regulation, thereby legitimizing external intervention (Darnell, 2017; Said, 1978). The Moroccan case instead suggests that skepticism towards formalization constitutes a politically situated strategy through which communities negotiate both domestic institutional structures and transnational development hierarchies.

Neoliberal Activation and the Incorporation of Grassroots Culture
While some scholars interpret the institutionalization of action sports as a mechanism of regulation and cultural domestication (Bäckström & Blackman, 2022; Batuev & Robinson, 2017), Moroccan development planning reveals an additional layer: the integration of skateboarding into neoliberal place-branding strategies.

Beyond INDH-funded infrastructures, Agadir’s urban development plan includes the construction of several skateparks (Commune of Agadir, 2022, p. 45) and increasingly features skateboarders in regional promotion materials (such as hoarding boards – see figure 2). Similarly, Taghazout Bay – a state-developed resort designed to expand tourism in the region – frames skateboarding as a distinctive regional lifestyle asset, rearticulating subcultural practices through market logics (Benattou, 2023). Skateboarding is also increasingly incorporated into events such as the Taghazout Surf Expo, where local skate brands, dedicated ramps, and competitions further embed the practice within tourism-oriented development.

Figure 2 – Regional promotion of skateboarding: city hoarding panel featuring a skateboarder in Agadir amid the new urban development plan. Fieldwork photograph, 2024

In this context, skateboarding infrastructures function not only as welfare provision but also as tools of territorial development linked to tourism, regional branding, and market-oriented growth. The trajectory of the Maghrib Skate community illustrates these dynamics. While members relocated to Douar Sahili for its skateboarding infrastructures, sustaining their lifestyle required engagement with the surrounding tourism economy. Entrepreneurship has become a central livelihood strategy, with members operating skateboarding- and tourism-related activities – including clothing brands, guiding services, and skate schools (Chenier, 2024). The Wheels & Lenses hostelexemplifies this shift, mobilizing the community’s skateboarding networks and subcultural capital (Dupont, 2014) to cater to visiting skateboarders. These developments illustrate how grassroots skate communities convert subcultural expertise into economic opportunities within neoliberal development contexts.

These dynamics reflect what Bergh (2016) terms Morocco’s model of “inclusive neoliberalism,” in which development policies prioritize decentralized initiatives and entrepreneurial activation over structural redistribution. Within this youth “activation” framework (Barsoum, 2018), young people are encouraged to transform subcultural practices into economic assets and pursue social mobility through discipline, adaptability, and entrepreneurship. This logic aligns youth subcultural and sports participation with broader neoliberal citizenship norms (Darnell & Hayhurst, 2011) and  post-Fordist economies, where creativity, flexibility, and entrepreneurial initiative become markers of successful social integration (Chenier, 2024), and activities such as skateboarding are reframed as pathways to employability, innovation, and regional branding (Wheaton, 2004). At the same time, it normalizes precarious labor conditions and individualizes responsibility for social mobility. This governance model thus depoliticizes structural challenges such as social insecurity, unemployment, and spatial inequalities (Bergh, 2016; Turner, 2014).

These activation processes are closely linked to Positive Youth Development (PYD), a dominant framework within SDP (Schulenkorf et al., 2016). Market integration is at the core of PYD approaches, which frame social mobility as the outcome of individual initiative and skill development, thus relying on implicit deficit logics that portray Global South youth as lacking competencies that sports programs must cultivate (Coalter, 2010; Darnell, 2012). As Hartmann and Kwauk argue, such programs aim to “resocialize and recalibrate individual youth […] to maintain power and hierarchy, cultural hegemony, and the institutionalization of poverty and privilege” (2011, p. 8). In contexts such as Morocco, PYD risks reproducing Orientalist assumptions that local youth require external discipline, modernization, or moral correction. Moreover, employability and entrepreneurial training programs cannot guarantee social mobility in contexts where structural unemployment persists, and access to financial capital remains limited.

These reflections highlight how both national development policies and external SDP interventions contribute to broader processes of neoliberalization in Global South societies. At the same time, grassroots initiatives reveal more complex dynamics than top-down models suggest. Projects such as the Wheels & Lenses hostel demonstrate how local actors navigate these conditions by mobilizing cultural practices within existing economic structures.

Grassroots initiatives remain ambivalent as they may simultaneously challenge, adapt to, and reproduce neoliberal development logics. Therefore, the celebration of grassroots agency must be critically weighed against broader systemic factors, including unemployment, economic precarity, power relations, and global tourism economies that shape the realities of skateboarding and ‘development’.

Gender Dynamics
Throughout fieldwork, Moroccan skateboarders consistently identified female participation as a key issue – one that is also a dominant theme of SDP (Schulenkorf et al., 2016). In response to her experience as the only female skater in her hometown and her family’s initial reluctance, Rayssa founded Moroccan Skater Girls (pseudonym) in 2022. This informal collective promotes female participation through equipment provision, women-only events, and online safe spaces where members can “discuss the problems that girls face in society” (Rayssa, personal communication, 2023). By creating spaces of visibility, safety, and mutual support, the initiative challenges the perception of skateboarding as a male-only activity.

These barriers are both cultural and material. Morocco faces high youth unemployment (Haman, 2021; International Labour Organization, 2022), with women’s employment rates significantly lower than men’s (Rafiq, 2021). As Rayssa explains:

“Most girls skating they are not working, they’re still in school. […] After school boys can work and get paid, not girls. Girls just go home and stay with the family, they’re not allowed to go work at the age of 13 or 15.” (personal communication, 2023)

Limited income opportunities and stronger familial control over girls’ mobility directly affect their ability to purchase equipment, travel to skateparks, or participate regularly. Grassroots initiatives such as Moroccan Skater Girls thus address both symbolic exclusion and structural constraints.

These dynamics align with feminist leisure research showing that access to sport spaces is shaped by gendered power relations regulating women’s mobility, safety, and visibility (Aitchison, 1999, 2001). In Morocco, leisure practices are further mediated by norms of bodily respectability, family reputation, and public visibility (Guibert, 2018; Rubio-Rico et al., 2021). Lifestyle sports intensify these tensions through embodied public display and risk-taking (Wheaton, 2004). Studies of female surfers in Taghazout similarly highlight how participation entails negotiations of the male gaze, familial scrutiny, and moral judgements (Arab & Guibert, 2016). Moroccan female skaters are often accused of transgressing dominant gender expectations (Rayssa, personal communication, 2023), which resonates with global observations (Abulhawa, 2020; Atencio et al., 2009; Beal, 1996)

Tourism economies further complicate these dynamics. Feminist tourism scholarship shows how women’s presence in leisure spaces is often mobilized symbolically as markers of modernity, progress, or cultural difference (Pritchard, 2000). In Morocco, such representations intersect with Orientalist imaginaries that commodify gender and cultural difference for foreign audiences (Minca & Borghi, 2016). In Taghazout, the visibility of foreign women surfers and skateboarders can normalize female participation while simultaneously framing it through touristic spectacle, producing uneven gender geographies (Arab & Guibert, 2016).

Community-based governance can also shape gendered participation and access. While Maghrib Skate’s workshops are gender-mixed, Taghazout Skatepark Association appears to provide lessons and equipment exclusively to local boys. While many young males from Taghazout frequent the skatepark daily, local girls are largely absent from everyday practice. This contrasts with my observations across other Moroccan skateparks (including Agadir, Rabat, Casablanca, Tamsloht, and Taroudant), where female participation has at times approached half of users. Given that Taghazout Skatepark is the only site formally managed by an association, this governance structure may contribute to the exclusion of local girls. At the same time, the presence of foreign women and visiting Moroccan skaters highlights how tourism and spatial governance intersect to produce uneven gender access and visibility.

Such representational logics extend to SDP initiatives and media portrayals, which forefround female skaters as symbols of empowerment, emphasizing entrepreneurship and employability (e.g. Amell, 2022; Corrochano, 2023; Red Bull, 2023; Vogue Arabia, 2025). As Heinecken (2020) demonstrates, these narratives tend to individualize empowerment while obscuring structural inequalities, aligning with neoliberal development logics, where empowerment is depoliticized and framed through market participation (Thorpe & Chawansky, 2016; Thorpe et al., 2018).

Against this backdrop, these gender dynamics are not unique to Morocco. Skateboarding remains globally male-dominated (Atencio et al., 2009; Bäckström & Blackman, 2022; Beal, 1996; Thorpe, 2016; Yochim, 2010). Global North SDP actors often frame gender inequality in Global South contexts through Orientalist narratives portraying Muslim societies as resistant to gender progress (Said, 1978), while overlooking entrenched masculinities within skateboarding culture itself (Thorpe et al., 2018). Postcolonial feminist scholars warn that Global North-led gender interventions risk reproducing colonial assumptions by positioning Muslim women as passive subjects of empowerment rather than agents navigating complex local power relations (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Darnell, 2017; Rizwan & Ali, 2025; Samie, 2017; Thorpe & Chawansky, 2016; Toffoletti & Palmer, 2017). As Hayhurst et al. note, many SDP programs overlook local “religious, cultural, national, and international power relations […] or local girls and women’s own culturally specific forms of agency” (2021, p. 92). In contrast, grassroots initiatives such as Moroccan Skater Girlsoperate through culturally situated practices, suggesting that locally embedded actors are better positioned to navigate context-specific gender dynamics. These practices highlight how gender relations, like other dimensions of sport participation, are shaped through the intersection of local norms, global representations, and development discourses.

It is important to acknowledge the empirical limits of this analysis. Female participants represented a small proportion of interlocutors, limiting the ability to fully assess women’s skateboarding participation trajectories. Within this article, gender is therefore approached as one dimension of grassroots praxis, illustrating how local actors negotiate social norms while confronting the neoliberal and Orientalist framings embedded in mainstream SDP discourse.