Centre for South Asian Studies

Profile

My work examines the role of immigration and citizenship regimes in the production of global inequalities. More specifically, I examine the lived experiences of legal insecurity and the intersecting constituents of power that inform legal and social inequalities within formal citizenship, as well non-citizen forms of belonging. By anchoring this work in the Arab Gulf States, and particularly in Dubai, my work maps the ongoing colonial entanglements in racial formations of citizenship, and similar strategies of boundary policing across migration and political regimes. I have been conducting ethnographic research in Dubai since 2013, focusing on various non-citizen (or partial citizen) groups. This includes South Asian communities, the largest group among non-citizens, and their strategies for accessing long-term security in the Gulf or elsewhere in the world.

I am currently finalising the revisions of my first monograph, tentatively titled as ‘“The making of natives and immigrants in the United Arab Emirates”, and developing a research project on ageing non-citizens in the Gulf States and their (im)mobilities upon retirement in the Gulf. Below you can find some of my latest published works:

İdil Akıncı  (2023). Circumstantial Citizenship: UAE Born Syrians and Their Complex Journeys to Long-Term Security. International Migration Review, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183231162625

İdil Akıncı (2023) Beyond the Headlines with İdil Akıncı-Perez: Qatar and the World Cup. [Podcast]. 4 January 2023. Available at: Who do we think we are?: BtH1 S8 Beyond the headlines … with İdil Akıncı-Pérez (libsyn.com)

İdil Akıncı (2022) ‘Ways to stick around’: im/mobility strategies of ageing, temporary migrants in Dubai, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2022.2115627