Migrant Dubai

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction: Situating Dubai

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 1-27

3. Dubai as Metaphor: Corporate Entity, Global City, Hope and Mirage

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 28-56

4. Migrants and the State: Structures of Violence, Co-ethnic Exploitation and the Transnationalisation of Rights

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 57-93

5. Neoliberal Narratives: Migrant Self-Constructions and the Performance of Empowered Subjectivities

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 94-133

6. The Divided City: Gated Communities, Everyday Mobilities and Public Space

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 134-180

7. Social Networks: Informal Solidarities and an Ethic of “Care”

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 181-223

8. Conclusion

   • Laavanya Kathiravelu

   Pages 224-232

9. Back Matter

   Pages 233-246

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This book analyzes the everyday lives of labour migrants in a rapidly developing city-state. Using the emirate of Dubai as a case study, Migrant Dubai shows that even within highly restrictive mobility regimes, marginalized migrants find ways to cope with structural inequalities and quotidian modes of discrimination.

• Migration
• migrant labour
• urban
• Middle East
• South Asia
• inequality
• global city
• Gulf
• Dubai
• neoliberalism
• migration
• mobility
• Nation
• Transnational
• violence
• area studies

• Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  Laavanya Kathiravelu

Laavanya Kathiravelu is Assistant Professor in the Division of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is also a Fung Fellow at Princeton University, USA, in 2015/16. Her research sits at the intersection of international migration and contemporary diverse cities, especially in the Global South.

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