Iranian Migrations to Dubai: Constraints and Autonomy of a Segmented Diaspora

On the Iranian coast, and especially during the second half of the 19th century and thanks to the pearl trade, the city of Lengeh (now called Bandar Lengeh) was the main seat of the Arab tribes and the local dhows that crossed the Gulf easil transferred goods from Lengeh s wharves to ports situated in the Trucial States1 and in the other Gulf countries. [...] Thus, the large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991 (owing to the PLO s support for Saddam Hussein), the Arab Spring of 2011 (which led to fears of an uprising) (Zelkovitz, 2014), and the subsequent involvement of the UAE in regional conflicts have prompted the de facto participation of the security apparatus in migrant selection. [...] Still today, these policies reinforce the divide between the centre and the peripheries of the country between the feeling of superiority of urbanites and the feeling of marginalization that prevails among people living in the peripheries. [...] In effect, the diversity of Iranian populations in Dubai, the spaces of sociability in which they circulate, the modes of reproduction of their material culture, and the cultural and social practices they engage in have given rise to a sort of reconstituted Iran. [...] Thus, their new personal experience of the Arab-as-other has led to a flexible view of differences between Iranians of the centre and those of the periphery, between the Arabs of southern Iran and those from Shiraz or Tehran, yet without eliminating the images and stereotypes associated with the origins of each.