Identity Formation, Social Media and Migrants 2.0: Case Study of Second Generation Malayali Migrants in the Gulf

Abstract The temporary nature of residency in the Gulf has given fewer legal and political rights to the Indian migrants, while not completely rendering their affection to their chosen ‘home,’ cultivated with their historical, cultural, and familial ties to the region. While existing literature has delved into the working conditions and political scenario that surround the immigrant workforce from Kerala residing in the Arab Gulf countries, most have not paid attention to the second-generation of these immigrants who have continued to stay. More specifically, the second-generation of these immigrants struggle to identify themselves in a complicated environment that does not permit them the possibility of naturalising into citizens or culturally assimilate, while their ‘Non-Resident’ status questions their innate cultural immersion into the native environment. Meanwhile, social media has offered a discursive space where possibilities for belonging in multiple communities emerge for the second-generation Malayali living in the Gulf. On the contrary, governments in the Gulf are attempting to rediscover and redefine their sense of self or national identity, while trying to find alternative means to deal with the dependence of foreign labour. Therefore, this study is a descriptive narrative which aims at understanding the formation of identity by second-generation migrants from Kerala and the terms that constitute their subject positions in regard to the transforming and modernising Gulf. Further, it aims to investigate possibility of physical or virtual spaces with the use of social media by these migrants which helps ponder on the larger questions of belonging and identity.