Between home and accommodation
Migration and housing in the Arab region between circular ideals and diasporic lives
Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham and Camberley, 2023
p. 581-594
Based on a review of selected research on Egypt, Morocco, and the Gulf region in combination with ethnographic research in Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, this chapter addresses the conceptual, moral, and material contrast between home and accommodation that structures migrant homing trajectories in the Arab region. Migratory movements in and from the region are structured by a tension between a circular ideal of migrant return, and the possibility of making a home in a new place. This tension is grounded in the political economy of labour and visa regimes, and in moral expectations and ideals held by migrants and their families. As a productive dialectic, it generates long-term diasporas with strong homeland connections embodied by houses built for return and used for vacations.