Abstract
This chapter investigates future prospects and a sense of belonging among second-generation Asians based on case studies of Filipino and Indian youths in the Arab Gulf states (AGS), in particular Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Due to the strict migration and exclusive citizenship policies of the AGS, second-generation Asians in the region mainly grow up within their respective ethnic groups where they are segregated from the host society as well as from other ethnic communities. Many of them are simultaneously unaccustomed to the physical and social environment of the countries that their parents come from. Their sense of belonging thus appears to be multifaceted in that their ‘home’ is an ethnically segregated community in a Gulf country, but where they are permitted to stay only as temporary residents. As a result, these second-generation Asians are forced to search for places where they can cultivate a real sense of belonging.
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Notes
- 1.
Interview with Kyla at the New Kuwait Philippines International School, Kuwait City, 22 February 2017.
- 2.
As with Al-Ali and Koser’s (2002) work on transnationalism and a sense of home, in this chapter, we define ‘home’ as a place where fear, danger, alien places and traditions, and unfamiliar faces are absent; in other words, ‘home’ is where these students and their families enjoy a safe, familiar and comfortable living space.
- 3.
Historical records show several waves of Arab migration to precolonial Philippines, which continued even during the colonial period (Rosario 2016).
- 4.
Andrzej Kapiszewski gives several additional reasons for the increased presence of Asian workers in the Gulf. Asian migrants, he states, did not represent any ideological threat to the host states, and appeared to be ‘less expensive to employ, easier to lay off, and believed to be more efficient, obedient, and manageable’. Further, they tended to migrate without their families and so were less likely to settle down permanently (Kapiszewski 2006: 7).
- 5.
Omar AlShehabi calls this situation ‘hyper-alienation’, in which a person feels a ‘lack of control and involvement in the production of their surrounding environment, whether economically, politically, socially or culturally, to the point where they feel the surrounding environment and its production process does not represent them, and indeed is a source of oppression’ (AlShehabi 2015: 28). He also emphasises that hyper-alienation has been occurring not only with the migrants but also with citizens of the host country.
- 6.
The governments of the AGS permit certain categories of foreign workers and/or workers with valid residency permits and salaries higher than a specified minimum to sponsor their family members. For example, in the UAE, the government permits migrant workers with a monthly salary over AED4000 (approximately US$1100) to sponsor their family members, whereas the Omani government stipulates that workers are only permitted to sponsor family members if they are employed in specific occupational sectors (Hosoda 2016: 42–43). In Kuwait, the minimum income required for migrants to sponsor their wives and children is KWD250 (approximately US$820) per month (Mahdavi 2016: 78). Although no official statistics are available, the authors were informed by the principal of an Indian school in February 2016 that a monthly income of at least KWD1000 (approximately US$3300) is needed to stay comfortably with their family in Kuwait.
- 7.
For example, when we visited the Salmiya Indian Model School in Kuwait on 24 February 2017, we had a chance to talk to ninth grade students. We asked them whether they were born in Kuwait. Out of 19 students, nine were born in Kuwait. Among them, parents of six students came from India. For three students, their parents were Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Indian and Jordanian.
- 8.
The KHDA was established in 2006 in order ‘to develop all knowledge and human resource sectors in the Emirate of Dubai and bring them on par with international standards and prevalent best practices’ (Dubai Government Portal 2011).
- 9.
In Kuwait, the public educational system consists of nursery (two years), primary (five years), intermediate (four years) and secondary (three years) schools. Private schools with foreign curricula do not follow in the same system. For instance, in the Indian educational system, years are divided into lower primary (five years), upper primary (three years), lower secondary (two years) and higher/senior secondary (two years).
- 10.
At the national level, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) develops education policies and guidelines in India while there are several curriculum bodies and boards of education that govern different school education systems. The CBSE is one of these bodies and its establishment can be traced back to 1921, though its present name only dates to 1952. Currently, the CBSE has pan-Indian jurisdiction and the board’s affiliation is internationally accepted. Affiliated schools follow a curriculum set by the board (British Council, India 2014: 16–17; Ghosh and Mohan 2015: 75).
- 11.
In the Indian educational system, students must take national exams at the end of grade 10 and at the end of grade 12; both the CBSE and the CISCE administer their own versions of these examinations. Indian states also have their own boards as alternatives to national examinations (Dundar et al. 2014: 78).
- 12.
The principal of an Indian school in Kuwait told us that Indian schools are popular among other nationalities as well because they are English-medium schools and tuition fees are generally reasonable compared to American and British schools.
- 13.
Interview with Arlene and her family in Dubai, 5 March 2016.
- 14.
Interview with Jenny Gonzales (manager for development and community relations) at the United International Private School, Dubai, 10 March 2016.
- 15.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the AGS began to place an emphasis on reforming educational programmes and transforming themselves into a knowledge-based society in order to diversify their economies and move away from dependence on oil. At the present, the public sectors of the AGS employ mostly nationals, while the private sectors offer higher-paying positions to skilled migrants due to a shortage of national workers with sufficient knowledge and the required education level. As noted by Alexander Wiseman et al. (2014: 6), the ‘nationalisation of the private sector… is a key to the development of a highly knowledgeable and highly skilled national workforce’. This shift has led to the proliferation of international partnerships in the higher education industry of the AGS. As Davidson and Smith (2008: 1) emphasise, ‘most Gulf universities and colleges interact with the partner institutions in Europe, North America and Australia or are branches of them’, while Vora (2013: 159) points out that the proliferation of the branches of Western universities in the AGS is the moves from oil to diversified economies ‘which include the promotion of knowledge as a commodity and investment in high-quality education to produce citizens as managerial transnational subjects’.
- 16.
Interview with the mother of Maria Fernandes in Sharjah, 7 March 2016.
- 17.
Interviews and focus group discussions with Jay, Zara, Annie, Alex, Jason and Jay’s parents in Dubai, 8 March 2016.
- 18.
There was a massive layoff of Filipino workers among other foreign nationals during the Dubai financial crisis which began in 2008 and continued to 2009. The Philippine government sent a special taskforce team from the Philippines to aid those who were suddenly laid off and were asked to leave the UAE immediately. Foreign workers and their families were required to leave the UAE within a month after the cancellation of their work permits. See Hosoda (2015) for a more detailed analysis.
- 19.
In addition, the arrival age and the length of stay may influence their sense of belonging. If they are brought to Dubai at a young age, they tend to regard themselves as ‘different from Filipinos in Manila’, whereas if they arrive during their adolescent years and stay only several years, they may consider the Philippines as their true home, in the same way that first-generation migrants do. The former communicate only with their relatives whom they meet during their trips to the Philippines, whereas the latter may still stay in touch with friends and maintain their social networks, even after moving to Dubai. Despite the multinational environment in the Gulf, both groups spend the majority of their free time only with other Filipinos.
- 20.
Interview with Hasna Fathima in Kuwait City, 23 February 2017.
- 21.
Interview with Antonio in Kuwait City, 20 March 2015.
- 22.
‘Dubai-born confused Desi’ is a colloquial term for a South Asian person born in Dubai, which Vora (2013: 148–154) describes in her book. ‘Desi’ is a colloquial word referring to a South Asian person. Dubai-born confused Desis can also be associated with ‘American-born confused Desis’. According to Padma Rangaswamy, an American-born confused Desi ‘encapsulates the dilemma of the Indian teenager growing up in the United States’. Rangaswamy states that ‘most of the second generation feel that their parents have no true understanding of American culture, and that they resort to stereotyping of the unknown American mainly in order to influence and control their children. Parents see challenges to their authority as “typically Americanised” behaviour and demand that their children be “Indianised” and respectful and unquestioningly obedient’ (Rangaswamy 2000: 169). The main difference between Dubai-born confused Desis and American-born confused Desis is that the former must find a place to settle in the future, while the latter is more rooted in the host society.
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Acknowledgements
The study was supported by the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) grant-in-aid for scientific research number 2026257004B1 (2014–2017). An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Twentieth Asian Studies Conference Japan at the International Christian University, 2–3 July 2016. We thank the participants for their insightful comments. We are deeply grateful to Filipino and Indian expatriate families, community leaders, schoolteachers, administrators and embassy officials in Kuwait and the UAE for having shared their everyday lives and views with us.
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Hosoda, N., Matsukawa, K. (2019). ‘This is our home, but we cannot stay here forever’: Second-Generation Asian Youths in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. In: Lian, K., Hosoda, N., Ishii, M. (eds) International Labour Migration in the Middle East and Asia. Asia in Transition, vol 8. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6899-8_5
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