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- PublicationEmirati Food Culture Between Stability and Change(2023)This research aims to identify Emirati food and the local food preferences in everyday life. It discusses the role of local food and Emirates and their relationship. Also, highlights the substantial changes that have occurred in Emirati food culture over time due to identity and globalization generation gaps. Moreover, it is significant to demonstrate how the environment and hospitality have shaped Emirati food culture. The contribution of diverse labor in the UAE and their culinary practices also impacted the local cuisine. The research uses various methods, including surveys, interviews, observations, and case study. Despite some minor changes, old Emiratis still stick to their local cuisine. One of the results indicates that Lebanese dishes are often considered Emirati dishes.
- PublicationUNVEILING THE STRUCTURES OF EIDIYA(2020)When money is given, there is a general connotation towards a reciprocal action or commodity. Twice a year the Islamic world celebrates Eid, a festivity that enforces kinship. During which different amounts of money, also known as Eidiya, are given to children of various ages in the form of new, crisp bills with no expected reciprocity. What determines who receives which bill, or even which demography is perceived as acceptable to give money? This research aims to explore and unveil the factors that create the situations of the reciprocity of Eidiya. Both the donors’ and recipients’ background, influences to behaviour and the role they play in each others lives needs to be assessed. While the community has no sanctions for those who do not hand out Eidiya, almost all respondents participated in giving Eidiya even when they realise that it is not considered an obligation. By using the structure of the Emirati Dirham bills as well as creating a strata of kinships, one could start to identify a pattern. There seems to be a strong relation between the amounts spent on Eidiya and on the ages of the respondents as well as the average age of the sibling’s children. Not only does gender play a role in the influencing of Eidiya, it played a role in the perception of the opposite gender and the expectations set in giving money. Moreover, this research was able to uncover the exchanges of Emirati bills across two generations to show the patterns of giving and receiving.
- PublicationAttitudes and Beliefs toward UAE’ multicultural society: How Emiratis’ Interaction with foreigners in the UAE is stimulating their perception of cultural identity(2019)In a highly hybrid and demographically imbalanced society like the United Arab Emirates, a question of social cohesion and cultural preservation come to the mind. The UAE is home for more than 200 nationalities and the majority of its population are foreigners. While there are various initiatives to encourage tolerance, open dialogue and coexistence, there is a huge gap between the national population and the foreign population that requires further study. Most of the foreign population are coming to the UAE in temporary basis for economic reasons mainly for working and find interaction with the local community is unnecessary. On the other hand, the local community view the huge influx of forging workers as threat to their identity and national economic, political and social stability. This paper examines the impact of Emiratis’ social interaction with their multicultural peers in different social settings like; personal life, education, workplace and neighborhood on their cultural identity.
- PublicationBRIDE PRIDE OR BRIDE PRICE? INTERGENERATIONAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING EMIRATI WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVE ON DOWRY(2023)As Emirati women are showing more in physical and virtual public spaces, shining as powerful leaders in workplaces and as mothers who do it all inside and outside the house, this study aims at understating how much these women’s perspectives have changed regarding the payment of dowry, or Mahr, which is an amount of money the Emirati woman receives in marriage, in light of the recent debates on the media about the negative connotation of being paid by her husband to marry him. Through a qualitative approach, this study concludes that as modernized as they have become, there are still certain things in marriage that Emirati women perceive traditional and perpetuating. Dowry is found to be an instrumental and essential tool used for wedding preparation. The interviewed women in this study don’t think of dowry as their price in marriage, but rather the price that has to be paid to have a decent wedding in an extravagant world.
- PublicationTHE GOLDEN VISA: ANATOMY OF MAKING A LONG-TERM HOME IN THE UAE(2022)While traditionally governed by the ‘kafala’ system of sponsorship for non-nationals, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have diversified their visa portfolios in line with rising global trends and internal structural shifts. The launch of the Golden Visa in the UAE and its approximate equivalents across the GCC region has marked a historic shift in the way these countries approach their residents and non-national communities. Building this research on the back of the aspirations-capabilities nexus within the lifestyle migration theoretical corpus, I examine the short-term impact of the changing residency policies in the UAE on the Golden Visa recipients – medium- and high-skilled non-nationals from a variety of backgrounds and industries. In my research inquiry, I employ semi-structured interviews with twenty-five Golden Visa recipients. My research inquiry finds that, while it does not provide a structural break in the whole-of-life approach to non-residents’ life in the UAE, the Golden Visa does, indeed, act as an enabler of its recipients’ capabilities to fulfil their long-term aspirations and constantly (re)construct their desired life(style) in the country.