Whiteness, upper-class authenticity and legitimacy in the Gulf: ‘expatriation’ as a struggle in social ranking

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the social position of ‘expatriation’ in Abu Dhabi, in terms of the ranking struggles that distinguish it from the Emirati population, in cultural practices and in the workplace. It shows how strategies, discourses and practices of distinction involve racialised representations of social hierarchies within a transnational space and emphasises the alignment of whiteness, upper-class authenticity and deservingness. This distinction can be seen as a post-colonial struggle over social ranking between racialised segments of the upper classes, characterised by the feeling of losing some of the economic, political and symbolic advantages that colonisation used to guarantee to white migrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Expatriation
• privileged migration
• whiteness
• Abu Dhabi
• class authenticity

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 All participants, in all rounds of interviewing, have been provided with information outlining the aims of the project, the strategy deployed for participant confidentiality/anonymity, and data management.

2 Single-job households are predominant, which makes migration benefits very ambivalent for women, and means that I specify the spouse’s profession in order to situate socially survey respondents who do not work.

3 Remarkably, the population surveyed here included many former military personnel who had moved into civilian life.

4 This superposition leads to ambivalent positions for France’s ethno-racial minorities, who find themselves in a position of conditional inclusion within ‘white’ or ‘multi-racialisation’ groups (Haritaworn 2012). These ambivalences have been described by Amélie Le Renard for the nearby Emirate of Dubai (Le Renard 2019). But they are less common in Abu Dhabi, because the French group has fewer persons belonging to ethnic or racial minorities.

5 In addition to traditional public administrations, the latter makes up a significant share of the national economy. In particular, it covers a large part of the oil sector, which accounts for about half of GDP, via the influential Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), owned by the state of the UAE. Etihad Airways, the second largest airline in the UAE after Dubai’s Emirates, is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, but its CEO is still British.

6 Abu Dhabi’s per capita GDP was approximately twice as high as the Emirates’ in 2016. In 2020, Abu Dhabi’s per capita GDP reached $96,000.

7 A long garment generally white, worn by men and positioned as a marker of regional (Gulf) or national (Emirates) affiliation. See Khalaf (2005).

8 I am following here Ahmed’s suggestion to analyze emotions not for what they are but rather for what they do (Ahmed 2004).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fondation nationale des sciences politiques.