‘Ways to stick around’: im/mobility strategies of ageing, temporary migrants in Dubai

ABSTRACT

In spite of the strict migration regimes that prevent permanent settlement and naturalisation, migrants have, for decades, made the UAE their unofficial home, something that has led to the existence of subsequent generations of non-citizens who are born there. However, reaching the age of 65 marks retirement for migrants, who can no longer receive work visas in the UAE. Prolonging residency is possible, yet without social security and pensions, maintaining a decent life requires significant financial investment and reliance on family and social networks. Based on interviews with the adult children of first-generation migrants from the ‘Global South’, this paper provides insights into a number of strategies their parents develop in order to navigate restrictive immigration regimes upon retirement in the UAE. Most migrants prefer to stay put in the UAE upon retirement, where their children continue to live. Drawing on ‘immobility’ debates, this paper argues that immobility is an active – and relatively privileged – response to restrictive immigration policies in the UAE that enforce mobility upon retirement. Whilst a preference for ‘ageing in the UAE’ is often costly and precarious, older migrants’ social and emotional attachments often outweigh economic reasons to leave, as this paper shows.

KEYWORDS:

• Retirement migration
• temporary migration
• ageing migrants
• the United Arab Emirates
• Dubai

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the guest editors and the anonymous reviewers who generously read and commented on the multiple versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Under UAE law, an end-of-service gratuity is calculated on basic salary for 21 days per annum for the first five years of service and then 30 days’ basic salary per annum for each year of service beyond five years (Sahoo 2012).

2 An upmarket gated residential community in Dubai, known as ‘Beverly Hills of Dubai’.