Akiko Watanabe – författare

This important volume empirically explores the lives of migrants experiencing long-term temporariness under temporary labour migration programmes (TLMPs) implemented by a number of governments in the Global South and becoming emerging actors in the social fabric of migrant-receiving countries.Focusing on the Philippines–United Arab Emirates (UAE) migration corridor over the past 50 years, the book illuminates the dynamic interplay among temporary migration policies, migrants’ lived experiences, and rapid urban development. Chapters concentrate on three key areas – macrostructural aspects of the corridor; migrants’ agency in navigating temporariness; and emerging trends from below – and incorporate policy-oriented and ethnographic analyses. As well as offering policy implications, the book demonstrates how a proportion of Filipino migrants do not merely adapt to the TLMP, but also undergo significant transformations themselves in tandem with the UAE’s economic restructuring and rapid urban development. The Philippines–UAE migration corridor’s role as an evolving experiment supports the broader insights into how large-scale temporary migration flows might unfold in other regions in the future.The volume ultimately offers a new way of thinking about temporary labour migration as a dynamic, socially embedded process in the contemporary Global South, and will therefore be of use to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of international migration, Asian diaspora studies, and Southeast Asian studies more broadly.

This book examines the recent migration phenomenon in the Arab Gulf states for work and residence. It sheds light on the transnationality of diverse groups of migrants from different generations, and unpacks how migrants’ multiple senses of belonging, orientations and adaptive strategies have shaped contemporary migration in the Gulf region. In turn, the analysis presented here shows how the Arab Gulf states’ citizenship and educational policies affect second-generation migrants in particular. Through a series of fine-grained ethnographic case studies, the authors demonstrate the ways in which these second-generation migrants construct their identities in relation to their putative ‘home’ country in the Gulf as well as their complex relationship to their parents’ countries of origin. This is what underpins the deeply transnational character of their lives, choices and notions of belonging. While migration scholars often situate these groups as ‘temporary’, this does not in fact capture the reality of temporariness for the migrants themselves, their children or their dependants. The result is a complex and ongoing construction of identity that shapes the way of life for millions of migrants. Relevant to scholars of migration and international studies, particularly focused on the Middle East, Transnational Generations in the Arab Gulf States and Beyond is also of interest to social scientists researching student mobility in higher education, intergenerational families, identity politics and globalisation.