The Gentrification of Karama & the South Asian Diaspora in the UAE

"Karama: An Immigrant Neighborhood Transformed" is an essay by writer Bhoomika Ghaghada, published in Jadaliyya. Karama is where Ghaghada grew up. It is a place where Bollywood music was part of the background soundscape, where one could hear people speaking "in Hindi, Urdu, and Tagalog".

That, of course, was in the early 2000s—well before the gentrification of Karama began. Flanked by the Dubai frame were "Old Dubai" and "New Dubai," signifiers for tourists who wished to see what "historical" neighborhoods looked like. Once a trading port and an affordable haven for South Asian immigrants, Karama has convulsed with massive change and the expulsion of many of its former residents as part of Dubai's vision of itself: a glitzy, skyscraper-dominated, upper-class, and rarefied space.

As part of our online event "In Grief, In Solidarity" in 2021, Ghaghada—introduced by editor Vamika Sinha—read her poignant and incisive essay, one which is all the more important because of the dearth of writing on and from the large South Asian diaspora in the UAE.

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