Expatriates and the Gulf’s Middle Classes

The term “expatriate” typically depicts a privileged location within intersections of class, nationality, and race/ethnicity. Yet, because this social category is often assumed to be both global and mobile, little attention has been given to how it is inscribed within local hierarchies. This question is especially relevant in societies where expatriates represent a structural part of the population, like in the Arab Gulf region.

Gulf societies have mainly been analyzed through the divide between citizens and non-citizens: while the former would benefit from economic and social privileges, the latter would hold the precarious status of “temporary workers.” However, this dichotomy fails to describe the complexity of social hierarchies in the region: neither does it account for the gap separating ruling families from ordinary citizens, nor for the social and spatial boundaries segregating working-class employees housed in labour camps, or domestic workers living in their employer’s home, from other city-dwellers. Between these two poles thus exist highly heterogeneous “middle classes” who cross paths and interact in Gulf cities.

Based on the case study of Arab expatriates in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, this paper attempts to build an ethnographic definition of these middle classes, looking at their access to urban space; modes of residence; and social and professional mobility. It notably explores how the notion of lifestyle – and its subtle intersections with occupation, class, race/ethnicity, and religion – is often mobilized by residents themselves to portray the internal stratifications of Abu Dhabi’s urban society.