Exploring Dubai’s Indian Diaspora
Visiting professor at the faculty of Islamic Studies at HBKU in Doha, Neha Vora, was a guest speaker at a distinguished public lecture held at Georgetown University in Education City (GU-Q) to deliver a CIRS Monthly Dialogue on the topic “Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora.” In her lecture, Professor Vora touched on the key points of her book that shares the title of her presentation. Through her research and extensive interviews with the middle-class Indian business communities of Dubai, she painted a clear picture of how this community perceives their identity and their status in the city as economic migrants who have cultural and historical links to the city but who don’t necessarily desire permanent assimilation and citizenship. “Though Indians are technically temporary and in the Gulf solely for economic accumulation, I found bonds that cut deeper than in communities where people can naturalize such as my own Indian community in the U.S.”