Migrant Dubai ― Low Wage Workers and the Construction of a Global City

Migrant Dubai analyzes the everyday lives of labour migrants in a rapidly developing city-state. Using the emirate of Dubai as a case study, it shows that even within highly restrictive mobility regimes, marginalized migrants find ways to cope with structural inequalities and quotidian modes of discrimination. It is one of the few contemporary ethnographic accounts to unpack migrant male working class experiences and compare them to those of their female counterparts, who are often domestic or sex workers. In so doing, this book makes an important contribution to the study of migration within and to the Global South, areas much neglected when compared to research on migration to Europe and North America. Moreover, it informs our understanding of other globalising states and has implications for studies of temporary migrants in other parts of the world. Finally, it raises important social justice issues in the context of restrictive migration regimes and the global neoliberal economy.

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.