Impossible Citizens

Culture in the ‘politics of identity’: conceptions of national identity and citizenship among second-generation non-Gulf Arab migrants in Dubai

“…In order to understand how migrant groups are placed within the social and power relations as well as structural and institutional practices (Vertovec, 2001), we need to analyse diasporas in its context (Brah, 1996:182). Second, in relation to the first point, the 'de facto' and 'de jure' separation between citizens and migrants in the Gulf States (Fargues, 2011), suggest that there are no concern for migrants' integration to the national communities, for they are perceived to pose a threat to the national cultural homogeneity (Vora, 2013). This is in contrast to the majority of traditional immigration receiving countries in the West, where immigration is integral to the public policy.…”

“…At the core of these widely pronounced narratives lie the idea that immigration to the United Arab Emirates is a post-oil phenomenon, which brought cultural, social, economic and political implications on the 'homogenous native population', who become numerically a minority in their own country. Thus, despite the ethnic, tribal and cultural differences within Emirati citizens, today the diversity in the UAE is solely attributed to migrants, who, through their legal and social exclusion from the national community, have become crucial to the construction and maintenance of Emirati citizenship and national identity (Vora, 2013;Kanna, 2011).…”

“…However, the lived experiences of the migrants and their descendants have been conspicuous by their absence from the contemporary Western literature of migration, citizenship, diaspora and second generation. Scholars suggest that very little is known about middle class migrants and their descendants in this context because they are considered neither diasporic nor transnational due to legal and social policies that position these migrants as temporary and economic (Gardner, 2010;Fargues, 2011, p.274;Vora, 2013).…”

“…Limited yet growing literature on the lived experiences of migrants in the Gulf States, focus on the effects of structural exclusions of migrants from host societies on their understandings of belonging and identity, such as the absence of naturalisation and long term residencies (see Longva, 2005;Vora, 2013;Ali, 2011;Gardner, 2011), a highly nationalised schooling system (see Vora, 2013) and a workforce that is highly segmented on national, ethnic and racial lines (see Kapiszewski, 2001, Nagy, 2006Walsh, 2010). Some of these scholars, challenging the conceptions of identity and belonging as based in liberal notions of rights, citizenship and cultural assimilation, investigated how migrants protected themselves against the systematic vulnerability of their temporariness in the Gulf, utilizing their privileged socio-economic locations (see Vora, 2013 for Indian diasporic elite; Kanna, 2011 for middle class South Asians in Dubai).…”

A Bigger Prison

“…5 This is not true of all migrant groups. For example, well-off people from India have created diasporic communities with generational continuity in the UAE (Vora 2013). But among Egyptians in high income levels there is a characteristic pattern of parents returning by retirement age by latest, and of children returning, as it were, to Egypt for their university education after going to school in the Gulf.…”