‘Bed-space’ housing in Dubai: African migrants, ambivalence towards authorities and gender differences

Abstract

In the literature on migration to the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), authors generally mention that labour migrants, predominantly from South and Southeast Asia, live in overcrowded, low-class accommodation, sharing rooms and ‘doing bed-space’, without giving a clear picture of what this practice entails. This paper is an ethnographic account of what it actually means to live in ‘bed-space’ accommodation. It explores how West African migrants cope with the difficulties of this type of housing. The paper is based on 6 weeks of fieldwork in Dubai and draws on Achille Mbembe’s ‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony’. The analysis reveals that African migrants undermine and modify the established practices of exclusion that relegate them to urban slums through strategic responses to challenges in their everyday lives and that their experiences and responses vary in relation to gender.