Dubai, the City as Corporation

5. Indian Ocean Dubai: The Identity Politics of South Asian Immigrants

CHAPTER 5 INDIAN OCEAN DUBAI The Identity Politics of South Asian Immigrants Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary Dubai: A Pattern of Purity L est we are tempted to assume, based on the discussion in the previous two chapters, that there is some neat line dividing the Emirati neoorthodoxy and neoliberal tendencies on questions of cultural pluralism , consider the following conversation I had with a young Dubai flexible citizen. Saad is fluent in English and educated in the United States. He is also from the Khodmoni/Ayami background and speaks Persian fluently. In short, he knows as much as anyone else that even “authentic Arab” Emiratis are very often a mix at least of Arab and Persian, if not also of South Asian and African, roots. Yet he made a revealing comment during one of our conversations. I had asked him and another Emirati mutual friend about the ethnic composition of the UAE and whether it was possible for people to become naturalized. After a short explanation of the technicalities , Saad concluded that naturalization is rare, and he added that state decisions are often unfair. He knew a Palestinian, he said, who had lived in the UAE “for fifty years or something” and wanted to get naturalized but was not allowed to. “If you have been living here that long, you should be able to get naturalized. Not all nationalities are eligible, obviously. Indians are not eligible. I’m sure that the government has its reasons for this.” When I pressed him on why Palestinians but not Indians should be allowed to get naturalized, Saad dismissed my question, implying that I was missing something obvious. For Saad, the notion that a Palestinian could be naturalized was clearly thinkable, whereas the idea that an Indian could be clearly was not. This is a curious development in a society that has had, historically, much closer links with the Indian Ocean than with the Levant. INDIAN OCEAN DUBAI 172 While eschewing the sorts of cultural reification that individuals deploying more neoorthodox discourses did, the ideologically neoliberal opponents of neoorthodoxy also, it seems, have their limits. Contemporary Emiratis, like most national communities, are both intellectually and politically diverse and, simultaneously, share a set of tacit assumptions about politics, the common good, and national identity, among other issues. A delicate balance must be achieved between social science representations of both the commonalities and differences among Emiratis. A tilt too far in the direction of national consensus risks cultural reductionism or too homogeneous an image of the contemporary UAE, as is the case with much Gulf studies literature. (See Longva, 133–34 for a trenchant critique of this tendency.) Too far in the other direction and the UAE as an imagined community disappears. My view is that a dialectical reading of UAE national identity (and of UAE South Asian identity), in which Emirati identity is seen as a process, made in relation to and through the construction of its others, can best keep this balance (see introduction). The contours of modern Emirati national identity, along with that of its primary other, UAE South Asian identity, should be approached by looking at the patterned inclusions and exclusions discursively constructed and practiced in the UAE. Dubai is arguably the most “South Asian” of the major Middle Eastern cities. This is both a numerical phenomenon—approximately one in two Dubai residents is a citizen of a South Asian country—and a more complex process of cultural mapping and place-making. Many of my South Asian interlocutors, for example, called Dubai “the westernmost Indian city,” an attitude that has been confirmed and explored in greater detail by anthropologist Neha Vora (2008; 2009b). This view is strikingly at odds with that of most Emiratis, who see the large South Asian population more as a threat to national identity and the integrity of Emirati sovereignty. In Consciousness and the Urban Experience, writing about another context of rapid, radical urban change (Paris under Haussmann), David Harvey asks, How did people view each other, represent themselves and others to themselves and others? How did they picture the contours of . . . society, comprehend their social position and the radical transformations then in progress? (1985, 180)1 Harvey’s simultaneous focus on the symbolic and political aspects of the urban management of social and cultural difference is wholly germane to contemporary Dubai. So far, in this book I have been making an INDIAN OCEAN DUBAI 173...