Free speech and civil discourse: producing expats, locals, and migrants in the UAE E nglish‐language blogosphere

Abstract

This article examines the production of belonging and exclusion on a popular E nglish‐language blog in the U nited A rab E mirates. The UAE , and particularly the emirate of D ubai, has a large majority foreign resident population, which has little to no access to official citizenship. However, I argue that foreign residents narrate and perform belonging on various scales, including through the production of on‐line ‘publics’. As I explore in this article, the differences between citizens and non‐citizens are not simply imported into on‐line spaces, but on‐line spaces and the interactions within them are constitutive of differentiated resident identities. In particular, I explore how the UAE E nglish‐language blogosphere is a space for state criticism, assertions of belonging, and interactions by and between groups of people that are not readily available in the rigidly divided social and geographical spaces of D ubai. The ability for citizens and non‐citizens to interact in these on‐line forums makes the UAE blogosphere a space where assumptions about differences between citizens, expatriates, and migrants that circulate in off‐line discourses and technologies of governance are both negotiated and rehearsed by group members and administrators.

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