Arab Youth of Abu Dhabi. Becoming Subjects in a Diverse City

Cities of the Arab Gulf are often described as sites of both privilege and disenfranchisement. Depending on one’s location across the divide between citizens and non-citizens, or between “expats” and “laborers,” they may carry the promise of luxury or the threat of temporariness.

Arab Youth of Abu Dhabi focuses on an “unimagined community” that complicates these dichotomies. It offers an ethnographic account of the everyday experiences of young, middle-class Emiratis and Arab expatriates coming of age in the Emirati capital during the first decades of the 21 st century. At a moment when public policies preparing the post-oil era increasingly mobilize young citizens and exclude foreign youths, the book explores how the city becomes a place where these young adults encounter, (re)produce, and disrupt social hierarchies. From the university campus to the workplace, and from gatherings in shopping malls or empty parking lots to romantic encounters, their practices are, more profoundly, a catalyst for the emergence of new subjects, constituted through their youthful appropriations of urban spaces and the relationships they develop with(in) them.

Arab Youth of Abu Dhabi thus explores the importance of place in shaping contemporary subjects. The book argues that citadinité – urban membership – forms a powerful counterpoint to national belonging; one that can unsettle rigid social categories by producing transformative, though fragile, identifications.