“Facing life together”: Everyday friendship and well-being among Dubai’s Indian diaspora

David Sancho, Zayed University

ORCID Identifiers

0000-0002-3037-7701

Document Type

Book Chapter

Source of Publication

Everyday Youth Cultures in the Gulf Peninsula

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

In this chapter, I focus on the cultural terms through which a group of young Indian middle-class friends experienced well-being and sought to give their lives a sense of quality in the context of migration to the Arab Gulf. I draw on an understanding of migration as an undetermined process, driven by a variety of motivations, in which new forms of sociality, subjectivities, and belonging may emerge, and that these may, in turn, transform people’s migratory experiences and trajectories. The ethnographic evidence I present below speaks of the emergence of an Indian youth culture centred on the nurturing of particularly intense forms of friendship. In turn, I examine how these friendship bonds support and facilitate the development of alternative experiences of self-realisation, and forms identity and belonging, which reshaped my respondents’ sense of well-being. In particular, I examine how my interlocutors narrate a shift from a notion of well-being based on hard work, frugality, and the achievement of long-term objectives, to a notion of well-being based on developing a group history and the enjoyment of intimate friendships in the present.

ISBN

9781003048626

Publisher

Routledge

First Page

123

Last Page

138

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Young, Indian diaspora, Dubai, friendship, well-being, belonging

Indexed in Scopus

no

Open Access

no

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