Living In Dubai, Having Property in Bangalore: Transnational Property Dynamics of the Global City

Abstract : Purchasing land and a house “back home” are common goals among migrants as they testify for accumulation and achievement to the community of origin. In the case of India, such remittance and investment channels have been partly commodified by Indian real estate companies that strived to tap the diaspora niche market. The UAE had become a hots pot for them, partly thanks to the structural impermanence of migration to the Gulf. Such transnational practices were brutally restricted by the UAE authorities in November 2016, as an attempt to reorient migrants’ investments towards the local, over-supplied property market, in a financially depressed context. In this contribution I provide some empirical elements on how Indian professionals settled in Dubai with their families participate in the booming real estate markets in India but also in Dubai. The role of well-off migrants in property markets is a little explored dimension of the transnational flows that connect global cities, namely Dubai and Bangalore in this case study. Such practices deserve closer attention as they are constitutive of cosmopolitan urbanities.