Portland State University Middle East Studies Center Lecture Series

Research on Dubai has typically focused on the city's spectacular and rapid urban transformation. Yasser Elsheshtawy goes beyond the city as spectacle by exploring and uncovering its hidden spaces. In this talk, Elsheshtawy will present one such case providing a detailed, empirical account of a street in one of its low-income districts, Hor Al-Anz. The neighborhood is a locale for South-Asian migrant workers, for whom the street is the only venue for public interaction. The street-corner in particular becomes a site for social gatherings, and thus provides a microcosm for the lives of these migrant workers, framed within a larger context of informal urbanism where city residents take matters into their own hands and subvert established planning practices. Elsheshtawy will use census data and content analysis of media reports to provide a brief overview of Dubai's urban development to contextualize the case study, in particular looking at immigration laws and the place accorded to such migrants. He will also d