A City of the Global North and South: The Appeal of Dubai for Non-Western Expatriates

Anju Mary Paul, New York University Abu Dhabi
Mustafa Yavas, Johns Hopkins University
Sejin Park, New York University Abu Dhabi

There is a relative dearth of scholarship in migration studies on the brain circulations of skilled, non-Western migrants moving to non-Western destinations. This shortfall is partly a result of an unquestioned assumption in the literature about the irresistible gravitational pull of Western destinations for non-Western migrants. We test this assumption by assessing the appeal of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (and specifically, the city of Dubai) for skilled migrants from three non-Western regions. Drawing upon an original survey of 1,000 college-educated migrants from South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa currently living in the UAE, as well as interviews with 48 non-Western white-collar expatriates working at Fortune Global 500 companies in the UAE, we explore the reasons why these business professionals chose to move to the UAE and their experiences post-migration. We find that Dubai (by extension, the UAE) holds a unique appeal to these non-Western expatriates, offering the advantages of both a “global city of the North” and a “global city of the South.” As a global city of the North, Dubai offers the increased economic benefits, lifestyle amenities, and safety and security that these migrants used to associate with the West exclusively. But as a global city of the South, Dubai also offers geographic proximity to non-Western migrants’ origin countries, cultural familiarity given the large populations of migrants from these regions, and greater religious and racial tolerance. These experiences encourage these migrants to extend their time in the UAE, though we also find differences in long-term migration plans across these three groups. Overall, our findings highlight shifting destination hierarchies of skilled, non-Western migrants with significant mobility capital, offering a glimpse into a potential “post-West” world of migration.

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 Presented in Session 190. Disciplining Laborers Through Migration Policy