Cosmopolitanism and Urban Space in Doha, Qatar

Abstract

This essay commences with an ethnographic sojourn through the Industrial Area, a peripheral zone of the urban landscape in Doha, Qatar that is densely inhabited by low wage migrant laborers. In this segregated urban enclave, I ascertain the openness to alterity and the interactions with difference that connect their experiences to the conceptual legacy of cosmopolitanism. Via a discussion of the segregated experiences of transnational migrants in Doha’s urban landscape, I then stake out a speculative argument for the connection between that segregation and the resulting cosmopolitan conditions. Together, these two assertions explore manifestations of cosmopolitan urbanism in non-Western and non-democratic cities. In the conclusion to this essay, I suggest that we might usefully disentangle our assessment of these cosmopolitan conditions from our sustained critiques of the global landscape of inequality, and turn my attention briefly to the western ethnocentricities that suffuse the analytic lens by which we gauge cosmopolitanism and the city.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• migration
• Qatar
• Doha
• urbanism
• segregation
• inequality

Notes

1 Pagès-El Karoui, “Cosmopolitan Cities”, in Cicchelli and Mesure (eds), Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times (2020), p. 195.

2 Snoj, “Population of Qatar by Nationality – 2019 Report”, Priya Dsouza Communications 15 August 2019.

3 I have elsewhere used the term transnational proletariat to describe the population of working class labor migrants who, collectively, make up the largest segment of the foreign workforce in Qatar and in the neighboring GCC states. This transnational proletariat can be contrasted with the diasporic elite. See Gardner, “Strategic Transnationalism: The Indian Diasporic Elite in Contemporary Bahrain”, City and Society 20.1 (June 2008), pp. 54–78.

4 Harvey, “The Right to the City”, New Left Review 53 (September/October 2008), pp. 23–25.

5 Bruslé, “Nepalese Migrations: Introduction”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 35–36 (2009–2010); Gardner et al., “A Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar”, Journal of Arabian Studies 3.1 (June 2013).

6 Fishman, “Longer View: The Fifth Migration”, Journal of the American Planning Association 71.4 (2004).

7 Mohammad and Sidaway, “Shards and Stages: Migrant Lives, Power, and Space Viewed from Doha, Qatar”, Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106.6 (2016).

8 Gardner et al., “A Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar”, p. 4.

9 A pseudonym chosen by him.

10 Hannerz, “Two Faces of Cosmopolitanism: Culture and Politics”, Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 107.3 (2005), p. 200.

11 Zubaida, “Cosmopolitanism in the Middle East”, in Meijer (ed), Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Authenticity in the Middle East (1999), p. 15.

12 Wessendorf, “Commonplace Diversity and the ‘Ethos of Mixing’: Perceptions of Difference in a London Neighborhood”, Identities 20.4 (September 2013).

13 Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (2005), p. 18.

14 Calhoun, “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Towards and Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism”, The South Atlantic Quarterly 101.4 (Fall 2002).

15 Meijer (ed.), Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Authenticity in the Middle East (1999); Breckenridge et al. (eds), Cosmopolitanism (2002).

16 Eldem, “Istanbul as a Cosmopolitan City: Myths and Realities”, in Quayson and Daswani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (2013); Meijer (ed.) Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Authenticity in the Middle East (1999).

17 Gupta, “Globalisation and Difference: Cosmopolitanism Before the Nation-State”, Transforming Cultures eJournal 3.2 (November 2008).

18 Gilroy, Against Race (2002), p. 115.

19 Breckenridge et al. (eds), Cosmopolitanism (2002), p. 6.

20 Hannerz, “Two Faces of Cosmopolitanism”, p. 212.

21 Clifford, “Traveling Cultures”, in Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies (1992), pp. 96–112; Beck, “Cosmopolitical Realism: On the Distinction between Cosmopolitanism in Philosophy and the Social Sciences”, Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 4.2 (March 2004); Kurasawa, “A Cosmopolitanism from Below: Alternative Globalization and the Creation of a Solidarity Without Bounds”, European Journal of Sociology 45.2 (August 2004).

22 Exell, Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula (2016).

23 Tarrius, “Europe without Borders: Migration Networks, Transnational Territories and Informal Activities”, in Drieskens, Mermier, and Wimmen (eds), Cities of the South: Citizenship and Exclusion in the 21st Century (2007); Scharrer, “‘Ethnic Neighborhoods’ and/or Cosmopolitanism? The Art of Living Together”, in Wacker, Beck, and Crepaz (eds), Refugees and Forced Migrants in Africa and the EU (2018); Marfaing, “Living Together and Living Apart in Nouakchott”, in McDougall and Scheele (eds), Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa (2012).

24 Anderson, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (2011), p. 276; also see Thiollet and Assaf, “Cosmopolitanism in Exclusionary Contexts”, Population, Space and Place 27.1 (June 2021) for an insightful discussion of Anderson’s assertions.

25 Eldem, “Istanbul as a Cosmopolitan City”, p. 217.

26 Tarrius, “Europe without Borders” (2007); Scharrer, “‘Ethnic Neighborhoods’ and/or Cosmopolitanism? The Art of Living Together” (2018); Marfaing, “Living Together and Living Apart in Nouakchott”, in McDougall and Scheele (eds), Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa (2012).

27 Thiollet and Assaf, “Cosmopolitanism in Exclusionary Contexts” (2021).

28 Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (2008), p. 192.

29 Dresch, “The Place of Strangers in Gulf Society”, in Fox, Mourtada-Sabbah, and al-Mutawa (eds), Globalization and the Gulf (2006), pp. 200–222.

30 Alsayer, “The ‘Right to the City’ in the Landscapes of Servitude and Migration, from the Philippines to the Arabian Gulf, and Back”, in Linhard and Parsons (eds), Mapping, Migration, Identity and Space (2019), p. 301.

31 Hosada’s detailed and insightful analysis of the Filipino community in the UAE capably portrays this self-segregation, and emphasizes the role of religion in that process. See Hosada, “Surivial Strategies and Migrant Communities in the Arab Gulf States: A Case of Filipino Workers in the UAE”, in Ishii, Hosada, and Horinuki (eds), Asian Migrant Workers in the Arab Gulf States (2020), pp. 172–193.

32 Anderson, The Cosmopolitan Canopy, p. 276.

33 Alexander et al., A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), pp. 42–50.

34 E.g. Tarrius, “Europe without Borders” (2007); Scharrer, “‘Ethnic Neighborhoods’ and/or Cosmopolitanism? The Art of Living Together”, in Wacker, Beck, and Crepaz (eds), Refugees and Forced Migrants in Africa and the EU (2018); Marfaing, “Living Together and Living Apart in Nouakchott”, in McDougall and Scheele (eds), Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa (2012); Gupta, “Globalisation and Difference” (2008).

35 Marfaing, “Living Together and Living Apart in Nouakchott”, p. 195