Feeling at Home in the Global City: The Distinct Appeal of Dubai for Non-Western Expatriates

Description

Global cities are often assessed using universalizing economic criteria, overlooking how local characteristics shape high-skill migration. As part of SNF Agora's Academy Workshop series, post-doctoral fellow Mustafa Yavas will examine the case of Dubai via a survey of 571 college-educated migrants from South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa and in-depth interviews with 46 such expatriates employed at Fortune Global 500 companies.

Yavas finds that Dubai offers all expatriates career prospects, high living standards, and cosmopolitan lifestyles like other global cities while uniquely benefiting non-Western migrants through geographic proximity, cultural familiarity, religious tolerance, and reduced discrimination due to its minority-majority demographics. Coupled with safer everyday life experiences, these latter factors make Dubai feel like "home" for South Asian and Arab migrants, though less so for African migrants. These findings frame global cities not as universal magnets but as each harnessing a distinct appeal to various migrant groups and raise questions about the future dynamics of high-skill migration in a post-Western world.