citizens” (Vora 2013) who can be deported at any time, whatever the length of their stay in Dubai.

Although Dubai and the UAE are increasingly promoting “tolerance” policies (Pagès-El Karoui, forthcoming 2021b), they are far from offering a real cosmopolitan political project which would imply, for instance, more integrative policies for foreigners. In such a context, the use of cosmopolitanism may be problematic when considering its normative dimension. In this case, Dubai seems to embody a superficial or pseudo-“cosmopolitanism” “which focuses only on the use of the lifestyle of other cultures to enrich one’s material life without normative engagement” (Delanty 2009, 220). This idea is applied to the case of Dubai by the French geographer Denis Retaillé in his book on the places of globalization. He speaks of Dubai in terms of a “cosmopolitisme de décor” [surface cosmopolitanism] (2012, 16). He opposes Dubai’s current “fake” cosmopolitanism with the more “authentic” and inclusive cosmopolitanism in the pre-oil period that arose out of trade and commerce around the Indian Ocean. In doing so, Retaillé reproduces both the traditional debate between “superficial” and “authentic” cosmopolitanism (Molz 2011) and the common account of contemporary Dubai as ostentatious and soulless.

Provocatively, I argue that even if we reject the normative stance of traditional notions of cosmopolitanism, it is still an important heuristic concept, provided that it is empirically grounded, for thinking about diversity in multicultural cities (Pagès-El Karoui, forthcoming 2021a). Contributions to the theory of cosmopolitanism can emerge from non-normative approaches of the concept. Instead of discarding cosmopolitan as fake and superficial, how could we describe its specificities in the Gulf context? So, the real question is not whether Dubai is a cosmopolitan city but, rather, what kind of cosmopolitanism does Dubai embody?

There are two different ways of defining a cosmopolitan city. First, in a sense closely linked to cultural globalization (echoing the idea that cosmopolitanism is a cultural orientation towards globalization), a cosmopolitan city is a place open to the world, where inhabitants’ practices and landscapes are strongly influenced by lifestyles, ideas, and products coming from elsewhere. This is how, in a context totally disconnected from migration, Latham (2006) has described Auckland, sharply contrasting the emergence of new bars, restaurants and cafés inspired by France or Italy to local pubs. Second, a cosmopolitan city may refer to a place people of diverse origins and backgrounds live and coexist, whatever the degree of interaction between them (although some scholars would restrict its use only to strong interactions, which is not my case). This plurality may be either the result of past or current migrations or of an internal ethnic diversity.

Dubai embodies perfectly this double meaning of the cosmopolitan city with its cosmopolitan landscapes (for instance, its bars and restaurants offering food and drinks from all over the world) and the hyper diversity of its population. To characterize Dubai’s cosmopolitanism, we need to articulate it with three core concepts, consumption, segregation and globalization (which serves as a backdrop to the first two terms). In the first part of this chapter, I explore cosmopolitanism in Dubai through this nexus between consumption, segregation, and globalization. Then, through two case studies, I illustrate how the state and its corporations shape some
cosmopolitan spaces in order to achieve the status of global city, playing with the idea of Dubai as a *cosmo-polis*, i.e., a city where you can encounter (and buy) the world at a local scale. I will show also how these spaces are perceived, experienced and practiced by their users, be they customers or residents. Inspired by Yasser Elsheshtawy's approach to see "behind the urban spectacle" (2013), I will analyze Dubai cosmopolitan urbanism by two ordinary spaces: Global Village and International City.<fnref n="1" /> Although they are less glittering, luxurious and visible places than the iconic architectural productions which have made Dubai famous as a global city, they both, as their names indicate, express a strong desire for globalization. Global Village is an outdoor entertainment park where you can buy products from all over the world. International City is one of the rare urban housing projects for low and middle-class foreign residents. In these two ordinary spaces, frequented mainly by non-Westerners, a kind of cosmopolitanism from below emerges, although one not exempt from tensions and contradictions as the inclusive logics of consumption coexist with the exclusive logics of segregation.

## 6.2 A Consumerist and Segregated Cosmopolitanism in Global Dubai

Cosmopolitanism in Dubai is firmly anchored in a rampant globalization. Dubai has appeared in various rankings as a global city. This chapter is less interested in the various criteria positioning Dubai in different positions of the economic hierarchies of global cities but more in how Dubai's government and companies seek to produce cosmopolitan landscapes in order to contribute to its celebrity as a global city.<fnref n="2" /> With few oil reserves, Dubai early on chose to become a hub, drawing its main resources from outside its small territory. The objective is thus to attract and retain the global middle and upper classes, as well as tourists and investors who will contribute to the city's economic prosperity. One of its challenges is to offer global landscapes for those who are eager to consume diversity. In line with the general theory of cosmopolitanism, consumption is one of the striking features of cosmopolitanism in Dubai. The other feature, segregation, is less self-evidently associated with the concept of cosmopolitanism since it seems to be in direct contradiction to term's normative dimension. Segregation, though, is an integral part of Dubai's definition of cosmopolitan, a dimension of its spatial translation also found in other non-Western cities, such as Singapore (Yeoh 2004).

<footnote n="1">¹The notion of « ordinary spaces » is influenced by Robinson (2013) works on « ordinary cities », and Lamont and Aksartova (2002) on « ordinary cosmopolitanism ».</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²For example, Dubai was listed in 2018, by GaWc world city index, the famous ranking of global cities, as an Alfa+ city, the second category after Alfa++ city (New York and London). Source: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2018t.html</footnote>
cosmopolitan spaces in order to achieve the status of global city, playing with the idea of Dubai as a *cosmo-polis*, i.e., a city where you can encounter (and buy) the world at a local scale. I will show also how these spaces are perceived, experienced and practiced by their users, be they customers or residents. Inspired by Yasser Elsheshtawy's approach to see "behind the urban spectacle" (2013), I will analyze Dubai cosmopolitan urbanism by two ordinary spaces: Global Village and International City.<fnref n="1" /> Although they are less glittering, luxurious and visible places than the iconic architectural productions which have made Dubai famous as a global city, they both, as their names indicate, express a strong desire for globalization. Global Village is an outdoor entertainment park where you can buy products from all over the world. International City is one of the rare urban housing projects for low and middle-class foreign residents. In these two ordinary spaces, frequented mainly by non-Westerners, a kind of cosmopolitanism from below emerges, although one not exempt from tensions and contradictions as the inclusive logics of consumption coexist with the exclusive logics of segregation.

## 6.2 A Consumerist and Segregated Cosmopolitanism in Global Dubai

Cosmopolitanism in Dubai is firmly anchored in a rampant globalization. Dubai has appeared in various rankings as a global city. This chapter is less interested in the various criteria positioning Dubai in different positions of the economic hierarchies of global cities but more in how Dubai's government and companies seek to produce cosmopolitan landscapes in order to contribute to its celebrity as a global city.<fnref n="2" /> With few oil reserves, Dubai early on chose to become a hub, drawing its main resources from outside its small territory. The objective is thus to attract and retain the global middle and upper classes, as well as tourists and investors who will contribute to the city's economic prosperity. One of its challenges is to offer global landscapes for those who are eager to consume diversity. In line with the general theory of cosmopolitanism, consumption is one of the striking features of cosmopolitanism in Dubai. The other feature, segregation, is less self-evidently associated with the concept of cosmopolitanism since it seems to be in direct contradiction to term's normative dimension. Segregation, though, is an integral part of Dubai's definition of cosmopolitan, a dimension of its spatial translation also found in other non-Western cities, such as Singapore (Yeoh 2004).

<footnote n="1">¹The notion of « ordinary spaces » is influenced by Robinson (2013) works on « ordinary cities », and Lamont and Aksartova (2002) on « ordinary cosmopolitanism ».</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²For example, Dubai was listed in 2018, by GaWc world city index, the famous ranking of global cities, as an Alfa+ city, the second category after Alfa++ city (New York and London). Source: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2018t.html</footnote>
### 6.2.1 Cosmopolitanism as a Form of Global Consumption

> “Cities capitalize on cultural diversity to transform themselves into globalized spaces of consumption.”

(Molz 2011, 38)

As a concept, cosmopolitanism is closely linked with consumption. Many scholars (Nava 2002; Binnie et al. 2006; Molz 2011) have explained how cosmopolitan encounters with difference and diversity are channeled in daily life by commodities and the process of commodification. According to Beck, “cosmopolitanism has itself become a commodity” (2004, 150). There are two ways to study the articulation between consumption and cosmopolitanism. The first, from above, examines how cosmopolitanism is often associated with urban spaces which are branded and planned as cosmopolitan. The second approach, from below, looks at how these places are experienced by consumers in their everyday practices. Here, I focus on “the spatialization of specific forms of ‘cosmopolitan consumption’ involving new arrangements of people, objects and performances by consumers who can conform to and engage with this particular vision of a ‘cosmopolitan lifestyle’” (Binnie et al. 2006). Instead of dismissing these spaces as superficial, I argue that these spaces are crucial elements to understanding Dubai’s development and cosmopolitanism.

Since Dubai is not a major oil producer (compared to Abu Dhabi), its incredible growth is mainly due to an aggressive post-oil strategy of diversification centered on trade, finance, real estate and tourism.<fnref n="3" /> Its population has grown rapidly, from 10,000 inhabitants in 1900 to 862,000 in the early 2000s; by 2017, its population had reached three million. The growth of the last two decades was partly due to massive construction projects – like Burj al Arab, Burj Khalifa, the Palms and the World Islands – which have contributed to making Dubai famous around the world and building up its image as a global city. Backed by major real estate development groups controlled by the Dubai government, like Nakheel, Emaar or Meraas, these iconic projects have spurred the emergence of a spectacular “new Dubai” along the Shaykh Zayed inter-city highway, which contrasts sharply with the older neighborhoods.

Dubai has never been an industrial city: it has jumped directly from a small port to a global service city based on leisure and consumption. It now epitomizes the archetypal city of consumer capitalism where consumption and leisure are central activities, playing a major role in the construction of individual and group identity.

Based upon on its history as a colonial trading port between the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, Dubai's strategy has been to develop transport infrastructures to foster commerce. Its global city position was first achieved by becoming a regional hub for air and maritime transport with gigantic ports and airports. Its famous national company, Emirates, was founded in 1985. Two years before, the first duty-free store was opened in Dubai Airport. As part of destination branding, the Dubai

<footnote n="3">³Dubai ranked as the seventh-most touristic city in the world with 16,7 million visitors, putting it after Paris (16,8) but ahead of New York (12,3).</footnote>
### 6.2.1 Cosmopolitanism as a Form of Global Consumption

> “Cities capitalize on cultural diversity to transform themselves into globalized spaces of consumption.”

(Molz 2011, 38)

As a concept, cosmopolitanism is closely linked with consumption. Many scholars (Nava 2002; Binnie et al. 2006; Molz 2011) have explained how cosmopolitan encounters with difference and diversity are channeled in daily life by commodities and the process of commodification. According to Beck, “cosmopolitanism has itself become a commodity” (2004, 150). There are two ways to study the articulation between consumption and cosmopolitanism. The first, from above, examines how cosmopolitanism is often associated with urban spaces which are branded and planned as cosmopolitan. The second approach, from below, looks at how these places are experienced by consumers in their everyday practices. Here, I focus on “the spatialization of specific forms of ‘cosmopolitan consumption’ involving new arrangements of people, objects and performances by consumers who can conform to and engage with this particular vision of a ‘cosmopolitan lifestyle’” (Binnie et al. 2006). Instead of dismissing these spaces as superficial, I argue that these spaces are crucial elements to understanding Dubai’s development and cosmopolitanism.

Since Dubai is not a major oil producer (compared to Abu Dhabi), its incredible growth is mainly due to an aggressive post-oil strategy of diversification centered on trade, finance, real estate and tourism.<fnref n="3" /> Its population has grown rapidly, from 10,000 inhabitants in 1900 to 862,000 in the early 2000s; by 2017, its population had reached three million. The growth of the last two decades was partly due to massive construction projects – like Burj al Arab, Burj Khalifa, the Palms and the World Islands – which have contributed to making Dubai famous around the world and building up its image as a global city. Backed by major real estate development groups controlled by the Dubai government, like Nakheel, Emaar or Meraas, these iconic projects have spurred the emergence of a spectacular “new Dubai” along the Shaykh Zayed inter-city highway, which contrasts sharply with the older neighborhoods.

Dubai has never been an industrial city: it has jumped directly from a small port to a global service city based on leisure and consumption. It now epitomizes the archetypal city of consumer capitalism where consumption and leisure are central activities, playing a major role in the construction of individual and group identity.

Based upon on its history as a colonial trading port between the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, Dubai's strategy has been to develop transport infrastructures to foster commerce. Its global city position was first achieved by becoming a regional hub for air and maritime transport with gigantic ports and airports. Its famous national company, Emirates, was founded in 1985. Two years before, the first duty-free store was opened in Dubai Airport. As part of destination branding, the Dubai

<footnote n="3">³Dubai ranked as the seventh-most touristic city in the world with 16,7 million visitors, putting it after Paris (16,8) but ahead of New York (12,3).</footnote>
Shopping Festival was created in 1996 to stimulate tourism and the retail sector. Since the opening of its first mall in 1981, al-Ghurair center in Deira, malls have flourished in Dubai. They are usually the most visited sites by tourists (among them, Dubai Mall) and act as the main gathering place on the weekends in the Emirates (Assaf 2017). Having transformed Dubai into the new mecca for shopping, malls embody the consumer culture which plays a key role in Dubai's success.

Providing world-class consumption and cultural infrastructure that facilitates global lifestyles (organic markets, yoga classes, cycle paths, etc.) is a way for Dubai to prove its standing as a global city. Parks, beaches, and restaurants offering international cuisine help to make people from around the world feel at home in Dubai. They also express the city's urbanity as a microcosm of the world. Labeling everything as "number one" or "world class" is a response to the tension between the need for generic places (see Duyvendak and Ley-Cervantes in this book) with homogenized global standards, on the one hand, and, on the other, the attempt to create special features that ensure that these places are worth visiting. This contradiction expresses the consumer logic of late capitalism, which takes advantage of difference and markets it, and, in so doing, eradicates it (Binnie et al. 2006).

As for other global metropolises, diversity has become an asset to promote the city at an international scale. For instance, on its official tourism platform, Dubai advertises itself as a "global culinary scene" with the slogan "Find the world in your plate." Here Dubai seems to be a perfect illustration of what has been called by Beck "culinary cosmopolitanism" (2003, 37). Branding Dubai as cosmopolitan, without using the word itself, is part of a strategy of promoting it as a global city and fostering its economy as a site for practices of global consumption. If this consumerist face of cosmopolitanism has been internalized by the government, the other face of cosmopolitanism, segregation, is not overtly acknowledged, even though it is deeply embedded in the local urban order.

## 6.2.2 Segregation as a Response to Cosmopolitanism?

Segregation, usually presented as a key feature of Gulf Cities, is thought to be a way for citizens reduced to a demographic minority (except in Saudi Arabia and Oman) to keep foreigners out and preserve a cohesive national cultural identity (Gardner 2011; Khalaf 2006). In Dubai different types of segregation coexist. As a city with extremely fragmented urban planning, designed for the private car and with few public spaces, Dubai is marked by very high residential segregation. Segregation in Dubai is often analyzed through its most extreme urban forms: labor camps and gated communities (Kathiravelu 2016). The camps, mainly consigned to the outskirts of the city, are not open to the public. Despite this ban, photographers and journalists have regularly presented documentary evidence to denounce the miserable and insalubrious living conditions of the poorest foreigners, who are paid pitiful wages (from 600 to 1500 dirhams per month, 150–350 euros). Sonapur is one such camp. North of the city near the border with the neighboring emirate of
Shopping Festival was created in 1996 to stimulate tourism and the retail sector. Since the opening of its first mall in 1981, al-Ghurair center in Deira, malls have flourished in Dubai. They are usually the most visited sites by tourists (among them, Dubai Mall) and act as the main gathering place on the weekends in the Emirates (Assaf 2017). Having transformed Dubai into the new mecca for shopping, malls embody the consumer culture which plays a key role in Dubai's success.

Providing world-class consumption and cultural infrastructure that facilitates global lifestyles (organic markets, yoga classes, cycle paths, etc.) is a way for Dubai to prove its standing as a global city. Parks, beaches, and restaurants offering international cuisine help to make people from around the world feel at home in Dubai. They also express the city's urbanity as a microcosm of the world. Labeling everything as “number one” or “world class” is a response to the tension between the need for generic places (see Duyvendak and Ley-Cervantes in this book) with homogenized global standards, on the one hand, and, on the other, the attempt to create special features that ensure that these places are worth visiting. This contradiction expresses the consumer logic of late capitalism, which takes advantage of difference and markets it, and, in so doing, eradicates it (Binnie et al. 2006).

As for other global metropolises, diversity has become an asset to promote the city at an international scale. For instance, on its official tourism platform, Dubai advertises itself as a “global culinary scene” with the slogan “Find the world in your plate.” Here Dubai seems to be a perfect illustration of what has been called by Beck “culinary cosmopolitanism” (2003, 37). Branding Dubai as cosmopolitan, without using the word itself, is part of a strategy of promoting it as a global city and fostering its economy as a site for practices of global consumption. If this consumerist face of cosmopolitanism has been internalized by the government, the other face of cosmopolitanism, segregation, is not overtly acknowledged, even though it is deeply embedded in the local urban order.

## 6.2.2 Segregation as a Response to Cosmopolitanism?

Segregation, usually presented as a key feature of Gulf Cities, is thought to be a way for citizens reduced to a demographic minority (except in Saudi Arabia and Oman) to keep foreigners out and preserve a cohesive national cultural identity (Gardner 2011; Khalaf 2006). In Dubai different types of segregation coexist. As a city with extremely fragmented urban planning, designed for the private car and with few public spaces, Dubai is marked by very high residential segregation. Segregation in Dubai is often analyzed through its most extreme urban forms: labor camps and gated communities (Kathiravelu 2016). The camps, mainly consigned to the outskirts of the city, are not open to the public. Despite this ban, photographers and journalists have regularly presented documentary evidence to denounce the miserable and insalubrious living conditions of the poorest foreigners, who are paid pitiful wages (from 600 to 1500 dirhams per month, 150–350 euros). Sonapur is one such camp. North of the city near the border with the neighboring emirate of
Sharjah, Sonapur is hemmed in by the airport, the al Qusais industrial zone, a massive dump, and a cemetery. Although it is the most populated sector of the city with approximately 163,000 inhabitants, less than 100 women live there and there are no Emirati residents. At the other extreme, over forty gated communities occupy 7% of the built urban area (Elsheshtawy 2015). In the extremely luxurious Emirates Hill, built around a golf course, a contemporary villa with eight bedrooms and a pool costs 85 million dirhams (about 20 million euros).

These two urban forms must not overshadow other kinds of housing, however. With other colleagues, I have unpacked elsewhere the complex patterns of segregation in Dubai (Elsheshtawy et al. 2018), where extreme forms of segregations coexist with more mixed housing types. Low and mid-level wage earners commonly share accommodations. The numerous postings adorning walls and poles in some areas of Dubai are clear indicators that housing units are measured either by the room, partition, or bed space.<fnref n="4" /> They generally state preferences with regard to nationality, or even religion or regional origin, for future roommates. There are many such shared accommodations in the four or five-story 1970s-era buildings in the Bur Dubai and Deira neighborhoods. Another option is to seek out lower rents in less pricey neighboring emirates like Sharjah or Ajman, but at the cost of tiring commutes and heavy traffic jams.

The upper-middle classes often live in high-rise buildings in neighborhoods like the highly sought-after Marina. These high-rises often function as autonomous units with their own gyms and roof-top pools. While much more ethnically mixed, the residents are more socially homogeneous. In these high-rises and gated communities, income level is more determinative than national background. Segregation in Dubai among foreigners is thus more social than racial; for their part, nationals tend to relocate to peripheral neighborhoods built especially for them.

Another type of segregation present in Dubai is gender segregation. Initially developed as a component of a tribal Arab Muslim society, this practice concerns mostly the Emirati (or Gulf) population. Gender segregation seems to be declining for two reasons. Firstly, the dominant values of the Dubai cosmopolitan population favor more gender mixing. Second, the desire to modernize Emirati society through education and “Emiratize” the workforce to reduce dependence upon migrants requires the presence of Emirati women outside the home and interacting with men in the workplace.

Public (and some private) schools and universities usually segregate male and female students, but a recent law in 2018 introduced mixed-classes in public schools from grades 1 to 4 but kept separate classes beyond. Some restaurants have corners reserved for families that are off-limits to men dining alone. Some spaces (club, parks, beach) may be also reserved for use by women, temporarily (one day a week) or on a regular basis.

<footnote n="4">⁴A partition is a subdivision of a room in several tiny blind spaces with just enough space for a bed or bunk bed and a cupboard.</footnote>
Sharjah, Sonapur is hemmed in by the airport, the al Qusais industrial zone, a massive dump, and a cemetery. Although it is the most populated sector of the city with approximately 163,000 inhabitants, less than 100 women live there and there are no Emirati residents. At the other extreme, over forty gated communities occupy 7% of the built urban area (Elsheshtawy 2015). In the extremely luxurious Emirates Hill, built around a golf course, a contemporary villa with eight bedrooms and a pool costs 85 million dirhams (about 20 million euros).

These two urban forms must not overshadow other kinds of housing, however. With other colleagues, I have unpacked elsewhere the complex patterns of segregation in Dubai (Elsheshtawy et al. 2018), where extreme forms of segregations coexist with more mixed housing types. Low and mid-level wage earners commonly share accommodations. The numerous postings adorning walls and poles in some areas of Dubai are clear indicators that housing units are measured either by the room, partition, or bed space.<fnref n="4" /> They generally state preferences with regard to nationality, or even religion or regional origin, for future roommates. There are many such shared accommodations in the four or five-story 1970s-era buildings in the Bur Dubai and Deira neighborhoods. Another option is to seek out lower rents in less pricey neighboring emirates like Sharjah or Ajman, but at the cost of tiring commutes and heavy traffic jams.

The upper-middle classes often live in high-rise buildings in neighborhoods like the highly sought-after Marina. These high-rises often function as autonomous units with their own gyms and roof-top pools. While much more ethnically mixed, the residents are more socially homogeneous. In these high-rises and gated communities, income level is more determinative than national background. Segregation in Dubai among foreigners is thus more social than racial; for their part, nationals tend to relocate to peripheral neighborhoods built especially for them.

Another type of segregation present in Dubai is gender segregation. Initially developed as a component of a tribal Arab Muslim society, this practice concerns mostly the Emirati (or Gulf) population. Gender segregation seems to be declining for two reasons. Firstly, the dominant values of the Dubai cosmopolitan population favor more gender mixing. Second, the desire to modernize Emirati society through education and “Emiratize” the workforce to reduce dependence upon migrants requires the presence of Emirati women outside the home and interacting with men in the workplace.

Public (and some private) schools and universities usually segregate male and female students, but a recent law in 2018 introduced mixed-classes in public schools from grades 1 to 4 but kept separate classes beyond. Some restaurants have corners reserved for families that are off-limits to men dining alone. Some spaces (club, parks, beach) may be also reserved for use by women, temporarily (one day a week) or on a regular basis.

<footnote n="4">⁴A partition is a subdivision of a room in several tiny blind spaces with just enough space for a bed or bunk bed and a cupboard.</footnote>
After having focused on the nexus between consumption, segregation, and globalization its spatial translation can be understood by analyzing two cosmopolitan peripheral spaces, Global Village and International City. These two case studies help refine the analysis of cosmopolitanism by delving, at a local scale, into the interactions between globalization and consumption (Global Village) and between globalization and segregation (International City).

## 6.3 Consuming and Experiencing the Diversity of the World in Global Village

Shopping malls are places *par excellence* of cosmopolitan consumption. Far from the exuberant luxury of Dubai Mall, Global Village is a perfect expression of a “cheap” version of consumer cosmopolitanism, illustrating a real taste for “consum-ing” foreign places. Global Village is not necessarily found in traditional print tour-ist guides, but it appears as the fifth highest-rated destination on TripAdvisor. Open from November to April, Global Village is an outdoor “world-leading multicultural festival park,” providing, as its website puts it, “world class cultural and family entertainment, along with a *cosmopolitan* and diverse shopping experience.” Like many other places in Dubai, one day a week (in its case, Mondays) is reserved for families and women. In 2017–2018, Global Village’s 10,000 exhibitors welcomed 5.6 million visitors, attracting as many tourists as residents and nationals. Besides a typical entertainment park (circus, carnival, Ferris wheel, shows), Global Village contains massive country and regional pavilions (Morocco, sub-Saharan Africa) representing about 75 countries. Each national pavilion features a fairly shoddy replica of an iconic monument; the Abu Simbel Temple, for instance, represents Egypt (Fig. 6.1). The world as represented in Global Village is not centered on the West but rather on the Middle East and Asia, which represented 15 and 7 of the 27 pavilions, respectively, for 2018–2019.

Each pavilion is supposed to sell products and food from the country it repre-sents. Global Village is in reality a gigantic mall barely disguised by the effort to introduce visitors to world cultures. It offers low-quality, attractively priced goods, generally made in China, with sometimes little or no connection to the country in whose pavilion they are sold, especially in the case of the European countries. In the evening, a musical narrates the adventures of “Globo,” the park’s mascot, who has a giant head of multicolored hair symbolizing diversity. The park also hosts around twenty free concerts a year geared toward middle-class expats; in November 2018, there were concerts featuring the Moroccan-Egyptian singer Samira Saïd, the Yemeni Fouad Abdel Wahed, the Indian pop stars Neha Kakkar and Ankit Tiwari and the Filipina star Mayward.

The history of Global Village tells much about the history of the city, revealing two types of actors. First, it is closely linked with the launching of Dubai Shopping Festival in 1996 by Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum. Global Village belongs to
After having focused on the nexus between consumption, segregation, and globalization its spatial translation can be understood by analyzing two cosmopolitan peripheral spaces, Global Village and International City. These two case studies help refine the analysis of cosmopolitanism by delving, at a local scale, into the interactions between globalization and consumption (Global Village) and between globalization and segregation (International City).

## 6.3 Consuming and Experiencing the Diversity of the World in Global Village

Shopping malls are places *par excellence* of cosmopolitan consumption. Far from the exuberant luxury of Dubai Mall, Global Village is a perfect expression of a “cheap” version of consumer cosmopolitanism, illustrating a real taste for “consum-ing” foreign places. Global Village is not necessarily found in traditional print tour-ist guides, but it appears as the fifth highest-rated destination on TripAdvisor. Open from November to April, Global Village is an outdoor “world-leading multicultural festival park,” providing, as its website puts it, “world class cultural and family entertainment, along with a *cosmopolitan* and diverse shopping experience.” Like many other places in Dubai, one day a week (in its case, Mondays) is reserved for families and women. In 2017–2018, Global Village’s 10,000 exhibitors welcomed 5.6 million visitors, attracting as many tourists as residents and nationals. Besides a typical entertainment park (circus, carnival, Ferris wheel, shows), Global Village contains massive country and regional pavilions (Morocco, sub-Saharan Africa) representing about 75 countries. Each national pavilion features a fairly shoddy replica of an iconic monument; the Abu Simbel Temple, for instance, represents Egypt (Fig. 6.1). The world as represented in Global Village is not centered on the West but rather on the Middle East and Asia, which represented 15 and 7 of the 27 pavilions, respectively, for 2018–2019.

Each pavilion is supposed to sell products and food from the country it repre-sents. Global Village is in reality a gigantic mall barely disguised by the effort to introduce visitors to world cultures. It offers low-quality, attractively priced goods, generally made in China, with sometimes little or no connection to the country in whose pavilion they are sold, especially in the case of the European countries. In the evening, a musical narrates the adventures of “Globo,” the park’s mascot, who has a giant head of multicolored hair symbolizing diversity. The park also hosts around twenty free concerts a year geared toward middle-class expats; in November 2018, there were concerts featuring the Moroccan-Egyptian singer Samira Saïd, the Yemeni Fouad Abdel Wahed, the Indian pop stars Neha Kakkar and Ankit Tiwari and the Filipina star Mayward.

The history of Global Village tells much about the history of the city, revealing two types of actors. First, it is closely linked with the launching of Dubai Shopping Festival in 1996 by Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum. Global Village belongs to
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.1** Cosmopolitan landscapes in Global Village. (Source: Pagès-El Karoui, 1 November 2016)</figcaption></figure>

Dubai Holding, property of the ruling emir. Global Village was started in 1996 from some kiosks located on Creek side, opposite Dubai Municipality, in the historical core of the city. It then moved to a more pericentral location, Oud Metha Area, near Wafi center, for five years. Since 2005, it has been in its current location on the outskirts of the city, with one of the biggest parking lots in Dubai (18,300 parking bays).

Global Village also reflects the prominent role played by the Indian community in the fabric of the global metropolis. The fate of Sunil Bhatia, a self-made man who arrived from Bombay in 1976 and worked first as a foreman and is now the owner
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.1** Cosmopolitan landscapes in Global Village. (Source: Pagès-El Karoui, 1 November 2016)</figcaption></figure>

Dubai Holding, property of the ruling emir. Global Village was started in 1996 from some kiosks located on Creek side, opposite Dubai Municipality, in the historical core of the city. It then moved to a more pericentral location, Oud Metha Area, near Wafi center, for five years. Since 2005, it has been in its current location on the outskirts of the city, with one of the biggest parking lots in Dubai (18,300 parking bays).

Global Village also reflects the prominent role played by the Indian community in the fabric of the global metropolis. The fate of Sunil Bhatia, a self-made man who arrived from Bombay in 1976 and worked first as a foreman and is now the owner
of an entertainment company, is closely intertwined with the story of Global Village.<fnref n="5" /> He claims that the largest pavilion is the 11,000-square meter Indian one; it was also the first one erected, in 1996, with 20 stalls sponsored by the Indian government. While involved in the Dubai Indian Association, Bhatia played a major role in the Indian pavilion's organization. He then started to run it by himself, organizing for vendors from India to come for the five months of the year that Global Village is open. He has since extended his business by running the China and Europe pavilions. Indian products are sold mainly to Arabs and other tourists, but not to Indians who find them too expensive compared to what they can buy at home.

As to Global Village's customers, there are two things to mention. First, the Dh15 entrance ticket (each entertainment attraction inside costs extra) makes Global Village one of the few cheap places to go in Dubai, a city where each entertainment hot spot is very expensive, out of reach of the majority of residents. It is interesting to note that, in Global Village, the marketing of Dubai's diversity targets lower or middle classes. This is a far cry from a cosmopolitanism exclusive to an elite using it as a marker of distinction. Rather, Global Village represents a vernacular cosmopolitanism, as described by Pnina Webner (2006). Second, unlike most public spaces, Global Village is one of the few places in Dubai where visitors cross paths with many nationals, who are highly visible. Several newspaper narratives, spotlighting how Global Village epitomizes an inclusive place, emphasize the dissolution of social hierarchies:

> There are people there of all nationalities, from all walks of life, representing the full gamut of Dubai's multicultural make-up; all of the city's perceived hierarchies seem to melt away. Literally and metaphorically, it is the common ground that is so often lacking in the UAE.

According to interviewees and Google reviews, visitors generally appreciate Global Village. Someone defining himself as a “white westerner” declares, “This is a very culturally diverse place (white westerners are < 5%) and seems to be where everyone else in Dubai goes.” Others write that “[the] World is here,” speak of “a truly global experience,” or indicate “having a lot of fun with my children. Surely visit again to explore more countries without Visa :).” The last quotation comes from an Indian man who appreciated his visit as a way to escape otherwise restricted mobilities in the world due to his passport. His experience in the theme park fulfills a desire to acquire worldliness and be modern by being a consumer of other cultures and places. This imagined cosmopolitanism conveys a desire to participate in global consumer culture, even if this participation is only symbolic. It is a perfect illustration of what Beck (2006) calls “banal cosmopolitanism.”

Of course, some visitors are more skeptical: “It is a fraud program. U can’t get experience and taste of different countries. It is full of business.” These observations are in line with Molz’s observation: “Cosmopolitanism often entails fantasies of

<footnote n="5">⁵Riyasbabu, “From Mumbai to Dubai in 1976”, *Khaleej Times*, March 18, 2006. https://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/general/from-mumbai-to-dubai-in-1976. Anjana Kumarn, “Global Village: Trip down memory lane”, *Gulf News*, February 04, 2015. https://gulfnews.com/going-out/society/global-village-trip-down-memory-lane-1.1451826</footnote>
of an entertainment company, is closely intertwined with the story of Global Village.<fnref n="5" /> He claims that the largest pavilion is the 11,000-square meter Indian one; it was also the first one erected, in 1996, with 20 stalls sponsored by the Indian government. While involved in the Dubai Indian Association, Bhatia played a major role in the Indian pavilion's organization. He then started to run it by himself, organizing for vendors from India to come for the five months of the year that Global Village is open. He has since extended his business by running the China and Europe pavilions. Indian products are sold mainly to Arabs and other tourists, but not to Indians who find them too expensive compared to what they can buy at home.

As to Global Village's customers, there are two things to mention. First, the Dh15 entrance ticket (each entertainment attraction inside costs extra) makes Global Village one of the few cheap places to go in Dubai, a city where each entertainment hot spot is very expensive, out of reach of the majority of residents. It is interesting to note that, in Global Village, the marketing of Dubai's diversity targets lower or middle classes. This is a far cry from a cosmopolitanism exclusive to an elite using it as a marker of distinction. Rather, Global Village represents a vernacular cosmopolitanism, as described by Pnina Webner (2006). Second, unlike most public spaces, Global Village is one of the few places in Dubai where visitors cross paths with many nationals, who are highly visible. Several newspaper narratives, spotlighting how Global Village epitomizes an inclusive place, emphasize the dissolution of social hierarchies:

> There are people there of all nationalities, from all walks of life, representing the full gamut of Dubai's multicultural make-up; all of the city's perceived hierarchies seem to melt away. Literally and metaphorically, it is the common ground that is so often lacking in the UAE.

According to interviewees and Google reviews, visitors generally appreciate Global Village. Someone defining himself as a “white westerner” declares, “This is a very culturally diverse place (white westerners are < 5%) and seems to be where everyone else in Dubai goes.” Others write that “[the] World is here,” speak of “a truly global experience,” or indicate “having a lot of fun with my children. Surely visit again to explore more countries without Visa :).” The last quotation comes from an Indian man who appreciated his visit as a way to escape otherwise restricted mobilities in the world due to his passport. His experience in the theme park fulfills a desire to acquire worldliness and be modern by being a consumer of other cultures and places. This imagined cosmopolitanism conveys a desire to participate in global consumer culture, even if this participation is only symbolic. It is a perfect illustration of what Beck (2006) calls “banal cosmopolitanism.”

Of course, some visitors are more skeptical: “It is a fraud program. U can’t get experience and taste of different countries. It is full of business.” These observations are in line with Molz’s observation: “Cosmopolitanism often entails fantasies of

<footnote n="5">⁵Riyasbabu, “From Mumbai to Dubai in 1976”, *Khaleej Times*, March 18, 2006. https://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/general/from-mumbai-to-dubai-in-1976. Anjana Kumarn, “Global Village: Trip down memory lane”, *Gulf News*, February 04, 2015. https://gulfnews.com/going-out/society/global-village-trip-down-memory-lane-1.1451826</footnote>
transcending cultural differences, but consumerist ideology tends to reproduce the
very social divisions cosmopolitanism claims to dissolve” (2011, 39).

These cosmopolitan landscapes, which may appear as “superficial” to critical
eyes, are appropriated by many residents and tourists to fulfill cosmopolitan aspira-
tions of being part of modern world society without necessarily being fooled by its
artificial character. Global Village is a rare example of global consumption available
to almost everybody (although the prices are not really cheap) in a city where prac-
tices of consumption are designed mostly for wealthy people. The same goes for
accommodation. In another margin of the city lies an interesting area, Dubai
International City, one of the few spaces designed for housing low and middle-class
foreigners.

6.4 Cosmopolitanism and Segregation in International City

International City offers an original case-study for exploring the nexus between globalization and segregation in Dubai. Like Global Village, International City is part of a globalized imaginary that is reflected in its architecture with its desire to represent the diversity of the world. But it also expresses, with the emergence of the figure of the “bachelor” in Gulf cities, the extension of logics of segregation from national family to foreign family, from core areas to peripheral areas.

6.4.1 *A Cosmopolitan Suburban Community for Low- and Middle-Class Foreign Residents*

Dubai International City (DIC) is located in the outskirts of the city (one hour by
bus from Deira, the historic center, or Burj Khalifa, the new center), between
Al-Khor Industrial Area and a sewage treatment plant. Built by Nakheel and opened
in 2007, it represents an interesting cosmopolitan landscape.<fnref n="6" /> It is one of the few
real estate projects in Dubai designed from the outset to house foreigners with mod-
erate incomes – most real estate projects in Dubai focus on upscale and luxury
apartments and villas. The project blends studio and one-bedroom apartments in
low-rise neighborhoods; it sits on one of the freehold areas where foreigners can
buy land and property. International City has the lowest rents in Dubai (Elsheshtawy
2015): 600–700 AED for a bed space (lower beds are more expensive) and 1050
AED for a partition. While planned to house 60,000 persons, in 2018 it had 97,000
inhabitants, leading to serious problems with overcrowding. From the outside, the

<footnote n="6">⁶ Funded in 2000, Nakheel is one the main real estate company belonging to Dubai Government, i.e., to the ruler. Its most famous realizations include artificial islands (the Palms, The World) and huge malls (Ibn Battuta, Dragon Mart).</footnote>
transcending cultural differences, but consumerist ideology tends to reproduce the
very social divisions cosmopolitanism claims to dissolve” (2011, 39).

These cosmopolitan landscapes, which may appear as “superficial” to critical
eyes, are appropriated by many residents and tourists to fulfill cosmopolitan aspira-
tions of being part of modern world society without necessarily being fooled by its
artificial character. Global Village is a rare example of global consumption available
to almost everybody (although the prices are not really cheap) in a city where prac-
tices of consumption are designed mostly for wealthy people. The same goes for
accommodation. In another margin of the city lies an interesting area, Dubai
International City, one of the few spaces designed for housing low and middle-class
foreigners.

6.4 Cosmopolitanism and Segregation in International City

International City offers an original case-study for exploring the nexus between globalization and segregation in Dubai. Like Global Village, International City is part of a globalized imaginary that is reflected in its architecture with its desire to represent the diversity of the world. But it also expresses, with the emergence of the figure of the “bachelor” in Gulf cities, the extension of logics of segregation from national family to foreign family, from core areas to peripheral areas.

6.4.1 *A Cosmopolitan Suburban Community for Low- and Middle-Class Foreign Residents*

Dubai International City (DIC) is located in the outskirts of the city (one hour by
bus from Deira, the historic center, or Burj Khalifa, the new center), between
Al-Khor Industrial Area and a sewage treatment plant. Built by Nakheel and opened
in 2007, it represents an interesting cosmopolitan landscape.<fnref n="6" /> It is one of the few
real estate projects in Dubai designed from the outset to house foreigners with mod-
erate incomes – most real estate projects in Dubai focus on upscale and luxury
apartments and villas. The project blends studio and one-bedroom apartments in
low-rise neighborhoods; it sits on one of the freehold areas where foreigners can
buy land and property. International City has the lowest rents in Dubai (Elsheshtawy
2015): 600–700 AED for a bed space (lower beds are more expensive) and 1050
AED for a partition. While planned to house 60,000 persons, in 2018 it had 97,000
inhabitants, leading to serious problems with overcrowding. From the outside, the

<footnote n="6">⁶ Funded in 2000, Nakheel is one the main real estate company belonging to Dubai Government, i.e., to the ruler. Its most famous realizations include artificial islands (the Palms, The World) and huge malls (Ibn Battuta, Dragon Mart).</footnote>
area has a bad reputation: weak infrastructure (incessantly overflowing sewers) and
shoddy maintenance, pestilential odors from the neighboring sewage treatment
plant, endemic prostitution, difficult access at peak hours and impossible parking
day and night.

As elsewhere in Dubai, International City was designed as an enclave with little
thought to its interactions within a larger environment. The design of the area may
be surprising, as there are no street names, with buildings identified by letter and
numbers (see Fig. 6.3). As a result, people constantly get lost and keep asking for
directions. From the inside, though, International City may function for some resi-
dents as a real neighborhood, although many of them think of it as a bedroom com-
munity with minimal social interactions with one's neighbors. It is also one of the
few places in Dubai, a city domination by cars, where people walk or bike (see
Fig. 6.3).

The district is divided into ten clusters which bear country names: Greece, Italy, Spain, France, England, Russia, Morocco, Emirates, Persia, China (Fig. 6.2). Each cluster is supposed to reproduce the architectural styles emblematic of the eponymous country. Unlike Global Village, the world of International City is marked by a strong European tropism: six countries are European, three Middle Eastern and one Asian.

Some archetypal decorative elements are easily identifiable: the dome of Florence, Orientalizing domes for Persia, the Gothic windows with ogival arches for Venice (see Fig. 6.3). However, the distinctions are generally not very visible from one cluster to another and are sometimes limited to changes in the color of the building (grey for Russia, ochre for England). The composition of the population rarely coincides with the name of the district. There are almost no Westerners or Emirati living in International City.<fnref n="7" /> Its inhabitants are mainly Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Chinese or Arabs.

The Chinese cluster is the only one where the country's name matches, partly, its
population or shops. It has become a hub for the Chinese community in Dubai. One
reason for its success is its location near Dragon Mart (opened in 2004, also by
Nakheel), a huge cheap mall for wholesale and retail products from China. As the
largest hub of Chinese products outside China, it has the reputation of having every-
thing one could desire. Dragon Mart has a clientele from all the Emirates and even
all of the Gulf (in the parking lot there are cars from Saudi Arabia or Oman). As
proof of its popularity, an extension, Dragon Mart 2, was recently opened, and other
expansions are under construction.

In the China Cluster, and more generally in International City, there are numer-
ous stores and facilities displaying large signboards with Chinese characters:
Chinese restaurants, clinics and a huge and busy supermarket, called Wenzhou,
which offers a wide range of Chinese products, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even

<footnote n="7">⁷150 Emiratis lived in DIC in 2010, according to Dubai Statistics Center.</footnote>
area has a bad reputation: weak infrastructure (incessantly overflowing sewers) and shoddy maintenance, pestilential odors from the neighboring sewage treatment plant, endemic prostitution, difficult access at peak hours and impossible parking day and night.

As elsewhere in Dubai, International City was designed as an enclave with little thought to its interactions within a larger environment. The design of the area may be surprising, as there are no street names, with buildings identified by letter and numbers (see Fig. 6.3). As a result, people constantly get lost and keep asking for directions. From the inside, though, International City may function for some residents as a real neighborhood, although many of them think of it as a bedroom community with minimal social interactions with one's neighbors. It is also one of the few places in Dubai, a city domination by cars, where people walk or bike (see Fig. 6.3).

The district is divided into ten clusters which bear country names: Greece, Italy, Spain, France, England, Russia, Morocco, Emirates, Persia, China (Fig. 6.2). Each cluster is supposed to reproduce the architectural styles emblematic of the eponymous country. Unlike Global Village, the world of International City is marked by a strong European tropism: six countries are European, three Middle Eastern and one Asian.

Some archetypal decorative elements are easily identifiable: the dome of Florence, Orientalizing domes for Persia, the Gothic windows with ogival arches for Venice (see Fig. 6.3). However, the distinctions are generally not very visible from one cluster to another and are sometimes limited to changes in the color of the building (grey for Russia, ochre for England). The composition of the population rarely coincides with the name of the district. There are almost no Westerners or Emirati living in International City.<fnref n="7" /> Its inhabitants are mainly Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Chinese or Arabs.

The Chinese cluster is the only one where the country's name matches, partly, its population or shops. It has become a hub for the Chinese community in Dubai. One reason for its success is its location near Dragon Mart (opened in 2004, also by Nakheel), a huge cheap mall for wholesale and retail products from China. As the largest hub of Chinese products outside China, it has the reputation of having everything one could desire. Dragon Mart has a clientele from all the Emirates and even all of the Gulf (in the parking lot there are cars from Saudi Arabia or Oman). As proof of its popularity, an extension, Dragon Mart 2, was recently opened, and other expansions are under construction.

In the China Cluster, and more generally in International City, there are numerous stores and facilities displaying large signboards with Chinese characters: Chinese restaurants, clinics and a huge and busy supermarket, called Wenzhou, which offers a wide range of Chinese products, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even

<footnote n="7">⁷150 Emiratis lived in DIC in 2010, according to Dubai Statistics Center.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 6.2 Map of Dubai International City</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 6.2 Map of Dubai International City</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.3** Views of International City (2018). Legend: (a) Chinese pharmacy and medical center in China cluster; (b) Russia (left) and England (right) clusters; (c) Italian cluster; (d, e, f) Chinese/ Thai & Filipino/Indian restaurants; (g) DIC CBD with high rise buildings and underground parking garages; (h) DIC is one of the rare areas of Dubai where bikes are widely used; (i) illegal hanging of laundry on balconies in the Italian cluster. (D. Pagès-El Karoui, October 2018)</figcaption></figure>

pork (whose sale is very restricted in the UAE).<fnref n="8" /> Some customers complain about the fact that the labels are not in English. And indeed, someone can survive in the Chinese cluster without speaking English. If the Chinese cluster has become a hub for middle-class Chinese, it is still far from the model of an American Chinatown, having not yet become a tourist attraction.<fnref n="9" />

<footnote n="8">⁸Totally banned in Sharjah, pork can be bought in Dubai in several supermarkets in special sections dedicated to non-Muslims.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Dubai won't stay long without a Chinatown since Emaar has announced in July 2018, during the visit of President Xi Jinping, its project to build a Chinatown inside the Dubai Creek Harbour Project.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.3** Views of International City (2018). Legend: (a) Chinese pharmacy and medical center in China cluster; (b) Russia (left) and England (right) clusters; (c) Italian cluster; (d, e, f) Chinese/ Thai & Filipino/Indian restaurants; (g) DIC CBD with high rise buildings and underground parking garages; (h) DIC is one of the rare areas of Dubai where bikes are widely used; (i) illegal hanging of laundry on balconies in the Italian cluster. (D. Pagès-El Karoui, October 2018)</figcaption></figure>

pork (whose sale is very restricted in the UAE).<fnref n="8" /> Some customers complain about the fact that the labels are not in English. And indeed, someone can survive in the Chinese cluster without speaking English. If the Chinese cluster has become a hub for middle-class Chinese, it is still far from the model of an American Chinatown, having not yet become a tourist attraction.<fnref n="9" />

<footnote n="8">⁸Totally banned in Sharjah, pork can be bought in Dubai in several supermarkets in special sections dedicated to non-Muslims.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Dubai won't stay long without a Chinatown since Emaar has announced in July 2018, during the visit of President Xi Jinping, its project to build a Chinatown inside the Dubai Creek Harbour Project.</footnote>
International City is usually presented in the Emirati press as cosmopolitan: “It is a world in one city in which people from an array of cultures and nationalities feel right at home”. If a very limited cosmopolitanism emerges from its planned land- scapes, a more tangible form emerges from the great diversity of its inhabitants. Due to its modest architecture and infrastructures and the low or middle income of its population, DIC epitomizes a kind of intermediary space, rare in Dubai, between the extreme forms of segregation found in labor camps and the luxurious environ- ment of gated communities. But, like other parts of Dubai, even such ordinary spaces are worked over by processes of segregation, symbolized by the emergence of the intermediary figure of the “bachelor.”

### 6.4.2 The Extension of the “Bachelor” Threat or the “Ethos of Non-Mixing” in International City

The category of the “bachelor,” which is widespread in the Gulf urban imaginary, expresses the feeling that single male unskilled workers unaccompanied by their families (be they married or not) constitute a moral threat to the urban order.<fnref n="10" /> Consequently, the citizenry calls for their eviction from neighborhoods described as being restricted to families and asks that “bachelors” be segregated in a “bachelors accommodation” (Gardner 2011; Sarmadi 2013; Osella and Bristol-Rhys 2016). This public discourse, frequently disseminated in the media, is rooted in the over- masculinization existing in Gulf cities as a result of migration policies. With Doha in Qatar, Dubai holds another world record: its population is 70% male.<fnref n="11" /> This demographic imbalance is the result of how migratory flows are structured (a major- ity of men migrate alone to work in jobs, especially in construction, requiring few qualifications) and of policies restricting family reunification based on income. This over-masculinization is not evenly spatially distributed. Twenty-some neighbor- hoods have male residency rates over 90% while five neighborhoods do not have a single registered female inhabitant (Elsheshtawy et al. 2018). These neighborhoods are peripheral spaces that host camps of poorly qualified workers, primarily from South Asia, who live in extremely impoverished conditions.

The social type of the bachelor incarnates the “dangerous class” *par excellence*, threatening the urban order with unhealthy practices and intrinsic violence. The two main stereotypes see bachelors as threats to cleanliness and safety (especially for women and children). This discourse using a rhetoric of “invasion” is widespread

<footnote n="10">¹⁰This categorization, marked by a strong gender bias, entirely obscures the class dimension, and is furthermore inappropriate because many of these lone men are married but had to leave their wives back home.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹This imbalance was even stronger in 2010, when women represented only 22% of the population. The city is thus in the process of re-feminizing with the arrival of many foreign women working as domestic help or in the service sector.</footnote>
International City is usually presented in the Emirati press as cosmopolitan: “It is a world in one city in which people from an array of cultures and nationalities feel right at home”. If a very limited cosmopolitanism emerges from its planned land- scapes, a more tangible form emerges from the great diversity of its inhabitants. Due to its modest architecture and infrastructures and the low or middle income of its population, DIC epitomizes a kind of intermediary space, rare in Dubai, between the extreme forms of segregation found in labor camps and the luxurious environ- ment of gated communities. But, like other parts of Dubai, even such ordinary spaces are worked over by processes of segregation, symbolized by the emergence of the intermediary figure of the “bachelor.”

### 6.4.2 The Extension of the “Bachelor” Threat or the “Ethos of Non-Mixing” in International City

The category of the “bachelor,” which is widespread in the Gulf urban imaginary, expresses the feeling that single male unskilled workers unaccompanied by their families (be they married or not) constitute a moral threat to the urban order.<fnref n="10" /> Consequently, the citizenry calls for their eviction from neighborhoods described as being restricted to families and asks that “bachelors” be segregated in a “bachelors accommodation” (Gardner 2011; Sarmadi 2013; Osella and Bristol-Rhys 2016). This public discourse, frequently disseminated in the media, is rooted in the over- masculinization existing in Gulf cities as a result of migration policies. With Doha in Qatar, Dubai holds another world record: its population is 70% male.<fnref n="11" /> This demographic imbalance is the result of how migratory flows are structured (a major- ity of men migrate alone to work in jobs, especially in construction, requiring few qualifications) and of policies restricting family reunification based on income. This over-masculinization is not evenly spatially distributed. Twenty-some neighbor- hoods have male residency rates over 90% while five neighborhoods do not have a single registered female inhabitant (Elsheshtawy et al. 2018). These neighborhoods are peripheral spaces that host camps of poorly qualified workers, primarily from South Asia, who live in extremely impoverished conditions.

The social type of the bachelor incarnates the “dangerous class” *par excellence*, threatening the urban order with unhealthy practices and intrinsic violence. The two main stereotypes see bachelors as threats to cleanliness and safety (especially for women and children). This discourse using a rhetoric of “invasion” is widespread

<footnote n="10">¹⁰This categorization, marked by a strong gender bias, entirely obscures the class dimension, and is furthermore inappropriate because many of these lone men are married but had to leave their wives back home.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹This imbalance was even stronger in 2010, when women represented only 22% of the population. The city is thus in the process of re-feminizing with the arrival of many foreign women working as domestic help or in the service sector.</footnote>
worldwide among populations rejecting immigration. If the “bachelor” appears as an intermediary figure in the Emirates, it is because this category is mobilized when there is a risk of proximity between national families and working class-migrants. It applies to those unaccompanied male migrants living in the city, close to Emiratis, who work in service and technical jobs (Bristol-Rhys 2010). The migrants living in the labor camps appear less threatening because they are already segregated (Sarmadi 2013; Osella and Bristol-Rhys 2016).

According to Osella and Bristo-Rhys (2016), there is no “bachelor panic” in the Emirates (or at least in Abu Dhabi) because bachelors are not perceived as real men: they have been neutralized sexually and are therefore not regarded as socially dangerous. Without getting into a complex debate, I rather follow Sarmadi (2013) who has analyzed the various discourses in Dubai on the connections between “overcrowding” and “bachelor accommodation” that has proliferated since the early 2000s in the English-language Emirati press. An increasing number of Emiratis have been leaving the city’s old neighborhoods to move to “new Dubai,” freeing up lodgings, apartments, and houses that are in turn be rented by migrants sharing the accommodation, a process reminiscent of the suburbanization, white-flight, and ghettoization of American inner cities. The neighborhoods of old Dubai (Deira, Bur Dubai, and Karama), for instance, are becoming majority Asian and are now perceived by Emiratis and middle to upper-class “expats” as densely packed and seedy.

Developing under the control of big groups, New Dubai has gotten away from the influence of the municipality, which intends to keep control over the oldest parts of the city. In 2008 the municipality launched an inspection campaign entitled “One villa, one family” to survey lodgings that have been divided up to maximize rental income and house a large number of foreign workers. Heavy fines are imposed on delinquent owners and water and electric services are cut until they comply. These evictions are conducted under the pretext of health and safety in order to preserve the (Emirati) “families” remaining in the neighborhood. International City was built in this context with the purpose of offering affordable accommodation to low-income migrants who were forced to share apartments or villas in the inner city.

The scholarly literature seems to limit these antagonisms between bachelors and families to the inner city and national households (Gardner 2011; Sarmadi 2013; Osella and Bristol-Rhys 2016). But similar campaigns were repeated a few years later in desert neighborhoods on the edges of the city and also in International City, by Trakhees, the regulatory authority for freehold areas. Rents in the neighborhood had plummeted by 80% after the 2008 financial crisis, when Dubai was saved in extremis from near bankruptcy by Abu Dhabi. These drop-in rents attracted workers who preferred to live 6–10 people per studio rather than a labor camp. At the same time, the lower rents also spurred families to move elsewhere, so this now unoccupied housing was rented out to “bachelors.” Meanwhile, the Nakheel company was also going through rough times, which made it less attentive to the neighborhood and infrastructure maintenance. The growing density caused by accommodation sharing leads to significant parking and access problems, depletes the local environment, and leads longer-term residents to decry the “invasion of bachelors,” whom
worldwide among populations rejecting immigration. If the “bachelor” appears as an intermediary figure in the Emirates, it is because this category is mobilized when there is a risk of proximity between national families and working class-migrants. It applies to those unaccompanied male migrants living in the city, close to Emiratis, who work in service and technical jobs (Bristol-Rhys 2010). The migrants living in the labor camps appear less threatening because they are already segregated (Sarmadi 2013; Osella and Bristol-Rhys 2016).

According to Osella and Bristo-Rhys (2016), there is no “bachelor panic” in the Emirates (or at least in Abu Dhabi) because bachelors are not perceived as real men: they have been neutralized sexually and are therefore not regarded as socially dangerous. Without getting into a complex debate, I rather follow Sarmadi (2013) who has analyzed the various discourses in Dubai on the connections between “overcrowding” and “bachelor accommodation” that has proliferated since the early 2000s in the English-language Emirati press. An increasing number of Emiratis have been leaving the city’s old neighborhoods to move to “new Dubai,” freeing up lodgings, apartments, and houses that are in turn be rented by migrants sharing the accommodation, a process reminiscent of the suburbanization, white-flight, and ghettoization of American inner cities. The neighborhoods of old Dubai (Deira, Bur Dubai, and Karama), for instance, are becoming majority Asian and are now perceived by Emiratis and middle to upper-class “expats” as densely packed and seedy.

Developing under the control of big groups, New Dubai has gotten away from the influence of the municipality, which intends to keep control over the oldest parts of the city. In 2008 the municipality launched an inspection campaign entitled “One villa, one family” to survey lodgings that have been divided up to maximize rental income and house a large number of foreign workers. Heavy fines are imposed on delinquent owners and water and electric services are cut until they comply. These evictions are conducted under the pretext of health and safety in order to preserve the (Emirati) “families” remaining in the neighborhood. International City was built in this context with the purpose of offering affordable accommodation to low-income migrants who were forced to share apartments or villas in the inner city.

The scholarly literature seems to limit these antagonisms between bachelors and families to the inner city and national households (Gardner 2011; Sarmadi 2013; Osella and Bristol-Rhys 2016). But similar campaigns were repeated a few years later in desert neighborhoods on the edges of the city and also in International City, by Trakhees, the regulatory authority for freehold areas. Rents in the neighborhood had plummeted by 80% after the 2008 financial crisis, when Dubai was saved in extremis from near bankruptcy by Abu Dhabi. These drop-in rents attracted workers who preferred to live 6–10 people per studio rather than a labor camp. At the same time, the lower rents also spurred families to move elsewhere, so this now unoccupied housing was rented out to “bachelors.” Meanwhile, the Nakheel company was also going through rough times, which made it less attentive to the neighborhood and infrastructure maintenance. The growing density caused by accommodation sharing leads to significant parking and access problems, depletes the local environment, and leads longer-term residents to decry the “invasion of bachelors,” whom
they accuse of being dirty, noisy, and threatening the neighborhood peace (women and children are said to no longer dare go into the street).

Following a news article presenting International City as a “squalor township,” an Internet debate emerged about evicting bachelors from the area. Some residents proclaimed that unless something is done, International City will become “another Sonapur,” a “bachelor city,” a “shantytown city,” or a “city of crime”: “If they do not segregate bachelors from families, this place will become a total labour camp.”<fnref n="12" /> These inhabitants, who were upset to not have received any answers to their complaints to Nakheel, clearly present an “ethos of non-mixing.”<fnref n="13" /> They have assimilated Dubai’s segregated urban order which distinguishes between areas for families and areas for “bachelors.” Other readers, who seem to belong to a higher class and do not live in DIC (“living in Dubai Marina like you and me”<fnref n="14" />), defend the laborers and shift the discussion to the lack of cheap accommodation available to workers.

So the novelty brought by the case of International City is two-fold. First, the category of “bachelors,” which initially developed as a threat to Emirati families, has become a threat to foreign middle-class residents; second, the eviction of bachelors, which initially concerned the inner city, has been extended to the peripheries. The fear of “bachelors” and the claim for more segregation thus becomes an anxiety shared by middle and upper classes beyond national differences. Should this be seen as a sign of integration into a common local urban culture in a country which denies assimilation?

## 6.5 Conclusion: Thinking Cosmopolitanism Empirically from Dubai Ordinary Spaces

One of the challenges of this book is to think cosmopolitanism outside the framework of normativity and to unravel how cosmopolitanism is grounded in specific times and urban spaces. This chapter has tried to show how Dubai, analyzed through two ordinary spaces, may be a valuable case study by broadening the base of cosmopolitanism to the low and middle-classes and to non-Western cities. Dubai embodies multiple meanings of cosmopolitanism in terms of both a cultural dimension of globalization and the coexistence of a heterogeneous population. Its cosmopolitanism, in a deeply unequal society, intertwines three main features: consumption, segregation, and globalization. In its quest for global visibility and status, the Dubai

<footnote n="12">¹²All these quotations are found in the readers’ comments following the paper « International City: Squalor township », by Jay B. Hilotin, 24 Feb. 2011, Gulfnews, https://gulfnews.com/business/property/international-city-squalor-township-1.766738</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³I’m building this expression, inspired by Susanne Wessendorf (2013)’s work on Hackney, a super-diverse area in London. She uses “ethos of mixing” to describe residents’ positive attitudes towards diversity and the difficulties they have to understand people who do not want to mix.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴Dubai Marina is an expansive area when a lot of wealthy expats live, near the beach in high rise buildings, viewing a marina.</footnote>
they accuse of being dirty, noisy, and threatening the neighborhood peace (women and children are said to no longer dare go into the street).

Following a news article presenting International City as a “squalor township,” an Internet debate emerged about evicting bachelors from the area. Some residents proclaimed that unless something is done, International City will become “another Sonapur,” a “bachelor city,” a “shantytown city,” or a “city of crime”: “If they do not segregate bachelors from families, this place will become a total labour camp.”<fnref n="12" /> These inhabitants, who were upset to not have received any answers to their complaints to Nakheel, clearly present an “ethos of non-mixing.”<fnref n="13" /> They have assimilated Dubai’s segregated urban order which distinguishes between areas for families and areas for “bachelors.” Other readers, who seem to belong to a higher class and do not live in DIC (“living in Dubai Marina like you and me”<fnref n="14" />), defend the laborers and shift the discussion to the lack of cheap accommodation available to workers.

So the novelty brought by the case of International City is two-fold. First, the category of “bachelors,” which initially developed as a threat to Emirati families, has become a threat to foreign middle-class residents; second, the eviction of bachelors, which initially concerned the inner city, has been extended to the peripheries. The fear of “bachelors” and the claim for more segregation thus becomes an anxiety shared by middle and upper classes beyond national differences. Should this be seen as a sign of integration into a common local urban culture in a country which denies assimilation?

## 6.5 Conclusion: Thinking Cosmopolitanism Empirically from Dubai Ordinary Spaces

One of the challenges of this book is to think cosmopolitanism outside the framework of normativity and to unravel how cosmopolitanism is grounded in specific times and urban spaces. This chapter has tried to show how Dubai, analyzed through two ordinary spaces, may be a valuable case study by broadening the base of cosmopolitanism to the low and middle-classes and to non-Western cities. Dubai embodies multiple meanings of cosmopolitanism in terms of both a cultural dimension of globalization and the coexistence of a heterogeneous population. Its cosmopolitanism, in a deeply unequal society, intertwines three main features: consumption, segregation, and globalization. In its quest for global visibility and status, the Dubai

<footnote n="12">¹²All these quotations are found in the readers’ comments following the paper « International City: Squalor township », by Jay B. Hilotin, 24 Feb. 2011, Gulfnews, https://gulfnews.com/business/property/international-city-squalor-township-1.766738</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³I’m building this expression, inspired by Susanne Wessendorf (2013)’s work on Hackney, a super-diverse area in London. She uses “ethos of mixing” to describe residents’ positive attitudes towards diversity and the difficulties they have to understand people who do not want to mix.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴Dubai Marina is an expansive area when a lot of wealthy expats live, near the beach in high rise buildings, viewing a marina.</footnote>
government promotes a friendly and positive image of diversity. It encourages,
through its own real estate companies, the construction of cosmopolitan landscapes
that cater to a global taste for consuming foreign places. But this extreme consumer
society is only accessible to its richest residents. Similarly, urban space is highly
segregated. This does not exclude pockets of high mixing of nationalities who gen-
erally belong to the same social milieu.

To unpack Dubai's complexity and to de-exceptionalize its glamorous image, I have chosen to present two ordinary spaces which have not yet been studied and are far less famous than Dubai's iconic spaces. For both Global Village and International City, their names convey an image of worldliness and their built environment plays on the representation of global diversity. They represent two forms of Dubai's cosmopolitan urbanism, built at its peripheries and frequented mainly by non-Westerners. Global Village, the gigantic open-air park and mall selling products from all over the world, epitomizes the commodification of difference, where cosmopolitanism is performed as a form of global consumption and where *logics of inclusion* prevail. International City is one of the few housing developments on the freehold area accessible to low and middle-income immigrants in a city in desperate need of cheap housing. When rents fall and infrastructure and physical environments deteriorate, fears rise among “families” and state agencies about “bachelors” invading the neighborhood, leading to overcrowding, filth and insecurity. This bachelor/family divide is a common feature of segregation in Gulf cities, but the novelty is the extension of the *logics of exclusion* from Emirati families to middle-class foreign residents, from inner city to peripheral areas.

In light of these two ordinary spaces, Dubai embodies a new urban formulation
of cosmopolitanism with all its contradictions, the *concomitant logics of inclusion and exclusion*. While certainly far from its original normative dimension, this complex form of cosmopolitanism is very enlightening to understanding the future logics of the new global urban order.

References

Assaf, L. (2017). Le shopping mall comme moment urbain. *Pratiques citadines et transformations des espaces marchands aux Émirats arabes unis*. *Ateliers d'anthropologie* 44 (online).

Bayat, A. (2008). Everyday cosmopolitanism. *Isim Review*, **22**, 5.

Beck, U. (2003). *Conversations with Ulrich Beck, with J. Willms*. Polity: Cambridge.

Beck, U. (2006). *Cosmopolitan vision*. Cambridge: Polity.

Binnie, J., Holloway, J., Millington, S., & Young, C. (2006). *Cosmopolitan Urbanism*. London/New York: Routledge.

Bristol-Rhys, J. (2010). « A Lexicon of Migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ». *Middle East Institute Viewpoints: Special Edition*, 24–6

Davidson, C. M. (2008). *Dubai: The vulnerability of success*. New York: Columbia University Press.

Delanty, G. (2009). The cosmopolitan imagination. *Revista CIBOB d'Afers Internacionals, 82-83*, 217-230.

Elsheshtawy, Y. (2013). *Dubai: Behind an urban spectacle*. London: Routledge.
government promotes a friendly and positive image of diversity. It encourages,
through its own real estate companies, the construction of cosmopolitan landscapes
that cater to a global taste for consuming foreign places. But this extreme consumer
society is only accessible to its richest residents. Similarly, urban space is highly
segregated. This does not exclude pockets of high mixing of nationalities who gen-
erally belong to the same social milieu.

To unpack Dubai's complexity and to de-exceptionalize its glamorous image, I have chosen to present two ordinary spaces which have not yet been studied and are far less famous than Dubai's iconic spaces. For both Global Village and International City, their names convey an image of worldliness and their built environment plays on the representation of global diversity. They represent two forms of Dubai's cosmopolitan urbanism, built at its peripheries and frequented mainly by non-Westerners. Global Village, the gigantic open-air park and mall selling products from all over the world, epitomizes the commodification of difference, where cosmopolitanism is performed as a form of global consumption and where *logics of inclusion* prevail. International City is one of the few housing developments on the freehold area accessible to low and middle-income immigrants in a city in desperate need of cheap housing. When rents fall and infrastructure and physical environments deteriorate, fears rise among “families” and state agencies about “bachelors” invading the neighborhood, leading to overcrowding, filth and insecurity. This bachelor/family divide is a common feature of segregation in Gulf cities, but the novelty is the extension of the *logics of exclusion* from Emirati families to middle-class foreign residents, from inner city to peripheral areas.

In light of these two ordinary spaces, Dubai embodies a new urban formulation
of cosmopolitanism with all its contradictions, the *concomitant logics of inclusion and exclusion*. While certainly far from its original normative dimension, this complex form of cosmopolitanism is very enlightening to understanding the future logics of the new global urban order.

References

Assaf, L. (2017). Le shopping mall comme moment urbain. Pratiques citadines et transformations des espaces marchands aux Émirats arabes unis. *Ateliers d'anthropologie* 44 (online).

Bayat, A. (2008). Everyday cosmopolitanism. *Isim Review*, 22, 5.

Beck, U. (2003). *Conversations with Ulrich Beck, with J. Willms*. Polity: Cambridge.

Beck, U. (2006). *Cosmopolitan vision*. Cambridge: Polity.

Binnie, J., Holloway, J., Millington, S., & Young, C. (2006). *Cosmopolitan Urbanism*. London/New York: Routledge.

Bristol-Rhys, J. (2010). « A Lexicon of Migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ». *Middle East Institute Viewpoints: Special Edition*, 24–6

Davidson, C. M. (2008). *Dubai: The vulnerability of success*. New York: Columbia University Press.

Delanty, G. (2009). The cosmopolitan imagination. *Revista CIBOB d'Afers Internacionals*, 82-83, 217-230.

Elsheshtawy, Y. (2013). *Dubai: Behind an urban spectacle*. London: Routledge.
Elsheshtawy, Y. (2015). *Macro Dubai: Quantifying urban growth*. Urban Research Lab (UAEU), UAE.

Elsheshtawy, Y. (2019). *Temporary cities: Resisting transience in Arabia*. Milton Park Abingdon: Routledge.

Elsheshtawy, Y., Pagès-El Karoui, D., & Bahoken, F. (2018). *Mapping patterns of segregation in Dubai: towards a new research agenda for a social geography of Gulf Cities*. Paper presented at the conference Migrants in the Globalizing City: Spaces, Places and Mobilities in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Paris, July 9–10.

Gardner, A. M. (2011). Gulf migration and the family. *Journal of Arabian Studies, 1*(1), 3–25.

Kanna, A. I. (2011). *Dubai, the City as corporation*. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kathiravelu, L. (2016). *Migrant Dubai: Low wage workers and the construction of a Global City*. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Khalaf, S. (2006). The Evolution of the Gulf City Type, Oil, and Globalization. In J. W. Fox, N. Mortada-Sabah, & M. al-Mutawwa (Eds.), *Globalization and the Gulf* (pp. 244–265). London: Routledge.

Khalaf, A., AlShehabi, O., & Hanieh, A. (2014). *Transit states: Labour, migration and citizenship in the Gulf*. London: Pluto Press.

Lamont, M., & Aksartova, S. (2002). Ordinary cosmopolitanisms: Strategies for bridging racial boundaries among working-class men. *Theory, Culture & Society, 19*(4), 1–25.

Latham, A. (2006). Sociality and the cosmopolitan imagination: National, cosmopolitan and local imaginaries in Auckland, New Zealand. In J. Binnie, J. Holloway, S. Millington, & C. Young (Eds.), *Cosmopolitan Urbanism* (pp. 89–111). London: Routledge.

Longva, A. N. (2005). Neither autocracy nor democracy but ethnocracy citizens expatriates. In P. Dresch & J. P. Piscatori (Eds.), *Monarchies and nations: Globalisation and identity in the Arab states of the Gulf* (pp. 114–135). London: I. B. Tauris.

Masad, M. (2008). Dubai: what cosmopolitan city? *Isim Review*, 22, 10–11.

Molz, J. G. (2011). Cosmopolitanism and consumption. In M. Rovisco & M. Nowicka (Eds.), *The Ashgate research companion to cosmopolitanism* (pp. 33–52). London: Routledge.

Nava, M. (2002). Cosmopolitan modernity: everyday imaginaries and the register of difference. *Theory, Culture & Society, 19*(1–2), 81–99.

Osella, C., & Bristol-Rhys, J. (2016). Neutralized Bachelors, Infantilized Arabs: Migrant and Host Gendered and Sexual Stereotypes in Abu Dhabi. In N. Lindisfarne & A. Cornwall (Eds.), *Masculinities under Neoliberalism* (pp. 111–124). London: Zed.

Pagès-El Karoui, D. (2018). Cosmopolitisme et ségrégation à Dubai. *Urbanisme, 409*, 64–67.

Pagès-El Karoui, D. (2021a). Cosmopolitan cities. In V. Cicchelli & M. Sylvie (Eds.), *Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times* (pp. 192–204). Leiden: Brill.

Pagès-El Karoui, D. (2021b, forthcoming). Ambivalent cosmopolitan narratives in Dubai: Forging landscapes of tolerance and happiness in a global city. *City, 25*(1–2).

Retaillé, D. (2012). *Les lieux de la mondialisation*. Paris: le Cavalier bleu.

Robinson, J. (2013). *Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development*. London: Routledge.

Sarmadi, B. (2013). ‘Bachelor’ in the City: Urban transformation and matter out of place in Dubai. *Journal of Arabian Studies, 3*(2), 196–214.

Vora, N. (2013). Impossible citizens: Dubai’s Indian diaspora. In *Durham*. London: Duke University Press.

Webner, P. (2006). Vernacular cosmopolitanism. *Theory, Culture & Society, 23*(2–3), 496–498.

Wessendorf, S. (2013). Commonplace diversity and the ‘Ethos of Mixing’: Perceptions of difference in a London neighbourhood. *Identities, 20*(4), 407–422.

Yeoh, B. S. A. (2004). Cosmopolitanism and its exclusions in Singapore. *Urban Studies, 41*(12), 2431–2445.
Elsheshtawy, Y. (2015). *Macro Dubai: Quantifying urban growth*. Urban Research Lab (UAEU), UAE.

Elsheshtawy, Y. (2019). *Temporary cities: Resisting transience in Arabia*. Milton Park Abingdon: Routledge.

Elsheshtawy, Y., Pagès-El Karoui, D., & Bahoken, F. (2018). *Mapping patterns of segregation in Dubai: towards a new research agenda for a social geography of Gulf Cities*. Paper presented at the conference Migrants in the Globalizing City: Spaces, Places and Mobilities in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Paris, July 9–10.

Gardner, A. M. (2011). Gulf migration and the family. *Journal of Arabian Studies, 1*(1), 3–25.

Kanna, A. I. (2011). *Dubai, the City as corporation*. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kathiravelu, L. (2016). *Migrant Dubai: Low wage workers and the construction of a Global City*. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Khalaf, S. (2006). The Evolution of the Gulf City Type, Oil, and Globalization. In J. W. Fox, N. Mortada-Sabah, & M. al-Mutawwa (Eds.), *Globalization and the Gulf* (pp. 244–265). London: Routledge.

Khalaf, A., AlShehabi, O., & Hanieh, A. (2014). *Transit states: Labour, migration and citizenship in the Gulf*. London: Pluto Press.

Lamont, M., & Aksartova, S. (2002). Ordinary cosmopolitanisms: Strategies for bridging racial boundaries among working-class men. *Theory, Culture & Society, 19*(4), 1–25.

Latham, A. (2006). Sociality and the cosmopolitan imagination: National, cosmopolitan and local imaginaries in Auckland, New Zealand. In J. Binnie, J. Holloway, S. Millington, & C. Young (Eds.), *Cosmopolitan Urbanism* (pp. 89–111). London: Routledge.

Longva, A. N. (2005). Neither autocracy nor democracy but ethnocracy citizens expatriates. In P. Dresch & J. P. Piscatori (Eds.), *Monarchies and nations: Globalisation and identity in the Arab states of the Gulf* (pp. 114–135). London: I. B. Tauris.

Masad, M. (2008). Dubai: what cosmopolitan city? *Isim Review*, 22, 10–11.

Molz, J. G. (2011). Cosmopolitanism and consumption. In M. Rovisco & M. Nowicka (Eds.), *The Ashgate research companion to cosmopolitanism* (pp. 33–52). London: Routledge.

Nava, M. (2002). Cosmopolitan modernity: everyday imaginaries and the register of difference. *Theory, Culture & Society, 19*(1–2), 81–99.

Osella, C., & Bristol-Rhys, J. (2016). Neutralized Bachelors, Infantilized Arabs: Migrant and Host Gendered and Sexual Stereotypes in Abu Dhabi. In N. Lindisfarne & A. Cornwall (Eds.), *Masculinities under Neoliberalism* (pp. 111–124). London: Zed.

Pagès-El Karoui, D. (2018). Cosmopolitisme et ségrégation à Dubai. *Urbanisme, 409*, 64–67.

Pagès-El Karoui, D. (2021a). Cosmopolitan cities. In V. Cicchelli & M. Sylvie (Eds.), *Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times* (pp. 192–204). Leiden: Brill.

Pagès-El Karoui, D. (2021b, forthcoming). Ambivalent cosmopolitan narratives in Dubai: Forging landscapes of tolerance and happiness in a global city. *City, 25*(1–2).

Retaillé, D. (2012). *Les lieux de la mondialisation*. Paris: le Cavalier bleu.

Robinson, J. (2013). *Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development*. London: Routledge.

Sarmadi, B. (2013). ‘Bachelor’ in the City: Urban transformation and matter out of place in Dubai. *Journal of Arabian Studies, 3*(2), 196–214.

Vora, N. (2013). Impossible citizens: Dubai’s Indian diaspora. In *Durham*. London: Duke University Press.

Webner, P. (2006). Vernacular cosmopolitanism. *Theory, Culture & Society, 23*(2–3), 496–498.

Wessendorf, S. (2013). Commonplace diversity and the ‘Ethos of Mixing’: Perceptions of difference in a London neighbourhood. *Identities, 20*(4), 407–422.

Yeoh, B. S. A. (2004). Cosmopolitanism and its exclusions in Singapore. *Urban Studies, 41*(12), 2431–2445.
**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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<figure><img src="image_20.png" /></figure>
**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

<figure><img src="image_20.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_21.png" /></figure>

# Chapter 7
## Everyday Cosmopolitanism in African Cities: Places of Leisure and Consumption in Antananarivo and Maputo

Catherine Fournet-Guérin

### 7.1 Introduction: “Everyday Cosmopolitanism” and Africa

African cities are oftentimes not considered to be fully part of the world, treated instead as if they are “off the map” (Robinson 2002) or underdeveloped peripheries playing no role in cultural globalization (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004). Seen from Europe, their populations are also thought to be uniformly “black,” obscuring an important ethnic diversity. But especially since the 1990s, African cities have taken in many foreigners from all over the world, including people from China, India, Brazil, and Arab and European countries, not to mention elsewhere in Africa. The high number of migrants from countries of the Global South is a new phenomenon, and they will be the focus of this chapter, approached from the perspective of urban society as a whole. This is one of the major rapid changes experienced in African urban societies, but thus far it has received much less academic attention than similar issues in Europe and North America (Cohen and Vertovec 2002). Seen from other parts of the world, “Africa” and “cosmopolitan” are too often considered as opposites, and Africa has only recently started to be mentioned in academic literature on cosmopolitanism. In this context, I will analyze the southern African metropolises and capital cities of Maputo (in Mozambique) and Antananarivo (in Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean).<fnref n="1" />

<footnote n="1">¹The materials used in this chapter were gathered during several field research trips to each of these cities, each lasting several weeks, since 2006 for Antananarivo and 2015 for Maputo. I use qualitative methods based on observation, semi-structured interviews with foreign- and native-born residents, and analysis of the discourse and representations of city residents from foreign backgrounds that are made by the media and in all manner of artistic expression. The cities were chosen with the idea of studying and shedding light on two comparably sized capitals of very poor countries in geographical proximity, the sole metropolitan city of each country but practically unknown internationally.</footnote>
Chapter 7

Everyday Cosmopolitanism in African
Cities: Places of Leisure and Consumption
in Antananarivo and Maputo

<figure><img src="image_21.png" /></figure>

Catherine Fournet-Guérin

7.1 Introduction: “Everyday Cosmopolitanism” and Africa

African cities are oftentimes not considered to be fully part of the world, treated
instead as if they are “off the map” (Robinson 2002) or underdeveloped peripheries
playing no role in cultural globalization (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004). Seen from
Europe, their populations are also thought to be uniformly “black,” obscuring an
important ethnic diversity. But especially since the 1990s, African cities have taken in
many foreigners from all over the world, including people from China, India, Brazil,
and Arab and European countries, not to mention elsewhere in Africa. The high num-
ber of migrants from countries of the Global South is a new phenomenon, and they
will be the focus of this chapter, approached from the perspective of urban society as
a whole. This is one of the major rapid changes experienced in African urban societ-
ies, but thus far it has received much less academic attention than similar issues in
Europe and North America (Cohen and Vertovec 2002). Seen from other parts of the
world, “Africa” and “cosmopolitan” are too often considered as opposites, and Africa
has only recently started to be mentioned in academic literature on cosmopolitanism.
In this context, I will analyze the southern African metropolises and capital cities of
Maputo (in Mozambique) and Antananarivo (in Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean).<fnref n="1" />

<footnote n="1">¹The materials used in this chapter were gathered during several field research trips to each of these cities, each lasting several weeks, since 2006 for Antananarivo and 2015 for Maputo. I use qualitative methods based on observation, semi-structured interviews with foreign- and native-born residents, and analysis of the discourse and representations of city residents from foreign backgrounds that are made by the media and in all manner of artistic expression. The cities were chosen with the idea of studying and shedding light on two comparably sized capitals of very poor countries in geographical proximity, the sole metropolitan city of each country but practically unknown internationally.</footnote>

<footnote>C. Fournet-Guérin (✉)
Sorbonne Université, Paris, France</footnote>
Although the metropolitan areas of Maputo and Antananarivo have populations of two to three million, they rarely figure in studies of Africa or among cities thought to incarnate modernity and globalization. In the media as in the world of academic research, they are considered to be secondary cities, provincial on the continental scale, despite the fact that they contain numerous foreigners who are either passing through or living there permanently (Fournet-Guérin 2019). Although national statistical data is lacking and often unreliable, researchers agree that the number of non-African people living in Africa in the 2000s adds up to several million (Flahaux and de Haas 2016) and that the figure is rising, a fact highlighted in a 2018 report from CNUCED estimating that there were 5.5 million people living in Africa who were not originally from the continent. To give but one example, estimates of the presence of people from China living in Africa vary from several hundred thousand to over a million.

Since the early 2000s, a body of social science research has applied the notion of cosmopolitanism to the Global South, not only demonstrating that it is possible but that one could legitimately consider the interactions between foreigners and “nationals” in places that are economically, politically, and socially dominated on the global scale – in other words, the Global South (Fouquet 2018) – to be cosmopolitan. The literature has also developed a broader acceptance of what is termed “vernacular” cosmopolitanism (Diouf 2000) or “working class cosmopolitanism,” developed by Werbner (1999) to span the diversity of empirical situations existing in the Global North and South alike.

Moreover, comparisons between cities of the Global North and South are now widespread, leading to a renewal of analytical paradigms of the urban (Edensor and Jayne 2012; Myers 2011; Robinson 2006) and the inclusion of everyday life in many analyses of cities in particular (beginning with Appadurai 1996). Since the early 2000s, a large and flourishing body of work has also developed in another thematic field, that of the little-known cosmopolitan character of African cities (Brachet 2009; Boesen and Marfaing 2007; Malaquais 2005). These two fields have very little overlap, however, or at least in Africa: few studies are devoted to cosmopolitanism from a very local, micro, and everyday perspective, based on the experience of residents and the frequentation of certain places. A few such studies exist, such as Amandine Spire’s research on foreigners in Lomé and Accra (2011), Thomas Fouquet’s work on nocturnal places and practices (2018),<fnref n="2" /> Ola Söderström’s work comparing Hanoi and Ougadougou (2013), and Bunkenborg’s work on the daily life of Chinese migrants settled in Maputo (2014). This chapter pursues and further contributes to this line of work that has emerged in recent years (Fournet-Guérin 2017).

The question is whether or not cosmopolitan interactions develop in everyday settings such as neighborhoods, or even at the micro-level, in places like corner grocery stores or hair salons. I approach the issue through places: their architecture and décor, what makes them lively, and who frequents them (Fourchard et al. 2009).

<footnote n="2">²This nocturnal approach is not included here.</footnote>
Although the metropolitan areas of Maputo and Antananarivo have populations of two to three million, they rarely figure in studies of Africa or among cities thought to incarnate modernity and globalization. In the media as in the world of academic research, they are considered to be secondary cities, provincial on the continental scale, despite the fact that they contain numerous foreigners who are either passing through or living there permanently (Fournet-Guérin 2019). Although national statistical data is lacking and often unreliable, researchers agree that the number of non-African people living in Africa in the 2000s adds up to several million (Flahaux and de Haas 2016) and that the figure is rising, a fact highlighted in a 2018 report from CNUCED estimating that there were 5.5 million people living in Africa who were not originally from the continent. To give but one example, estimates of the presence of people from China living in Africa vary from several hundred thousand to over a million.

Since the early 2000s, a body of social science research has applied the notion of cosmopolitanism to the Global South, not only demonstrating that it is possible but that one could legitimately consider the interactions between foreigners and “nationals” in places that are economically, politically, and socially dominated on the global scale – in other words, the Global South (Fouquet 2018) – to be cosmopolitan. The literature has also developed a broader acceptance of what is termed “vernacular” cosmopolitanism (Diouf 2000) or “working class cosmopolitanism,” developed by Werbner (1999) to span the diversity of empirical situations existing in the Global North and South alike.

Moreover, comparisons between cities of the Global North and South are now widespread, leading to a renewal of analytical paradigms of the urban (Edensor and Jayne 2012; Myers 2011; Robinson 2006) and the inclusion of everyday life in many analyses of cities in particular (beginning with Appadurai 1996). Since the early 2000s, a large and flourishing body of work has also developed in another thematic field, that of the little-known cosmopolitan character of African cities (Brachet 2009; Boesen and Marfaing 2007; Malaquais 2005). These two fields have very little overlap, however, or at least in Africa: few studies are devoted to cosmopolitanism from a very local, micro, and everyday perspective, based on the experience of residents and the frequentation of certain places. A few such studies exist, such as Amandine Spire’s research on foreigners in Lomé and Accra (2011), Thomas Fouquet’s work on nocturnal places and practices (2018),<fnref n="2" /> Ola Söderström’s work comparing Hanoi and Ougadougou (2013), and Bunkenborg’s work on the daily life of Chinese migrants settled in Maputo (2014). This chapter pursues and further contributes to this line of work that has emerged in recent years (Fournet-Guérin 2017).

The question is whether or not cosmopolitan interactions develop in everyday settings such as neighborhoods, or even at the micro-level, in places like corner grocery stores or hair salons. I approach the issue through places: their architecture and décor, what makes them lively, and who frequents them (Fourchard et al. 2009).

<footnote n="2">²This nocturnal approach is not included here.</footnote>
This work falls within the field of social geography, which examines how social
differences manifest in space, and in the field of the sociology of everyday life
(Goffman 1963). The cosmopolitan places visited in this chapter include modest
places frequented by the residents of working-class neighborhoods and more
socially selective places that are often, but not always, geographically central in the
city. The chapter explores the extent to which one can speak of “places of cosmo-
politan sociability” in these everyday spaces.<fnref n="3" /> Cosmopolitanism is taken to mean
the deliberate search for the foreign character of a place or a group of people by
others. The hypothesis is that people frequent places of cosmopolitan sociability
and consumption precisely because they present a clear connection with someplace
else (a foreign owner, clientele, décor, cuisine, etc.) and that the people involved
consider the interactions that occur there, in a peaceful and calm setting of co-
presence, to be pleasant. Both foreign migrants and nationals living in the city think
that such interactions are beneficial to local urbanity.<fnref n="4" />

## 7.2 New Places of Cosmopolitan Sociability in African Cities

The appearances of Maputo and Antananarivo have changed since the early 2000s,
especially due to the creation of many places of sociability related to the presence
of foreigners (mostly from the Global South) and international influences that local
entrepreneurs seized upon in a search for novelty. They are places devoted to leisure
and/or consumption that reflect either the local incorporation of foreign models or
the presence of new foreign groups in the city. This means allowing two meanings
for cosmopolitanism, one based on migrants’ own practices and representations in
connection with the host society (a consequence of new international circulations
and migrations), the other referring to the globalization of models that circulate in
the world, be they related to culture, architecture, food, or more general consump-
tion styles (Appadurai 1996; Söderström 2013; Fouquet 2018; Choplin and
Pliez 2018).

First of all, some places of consumption and leisure are directly imported from
standardized international models and constitute what Jacques Lévy (1997) calls
“generic places” (see the chapters by Jan Willem Duyvendak and Melissa Ley-
Cervantes in this volume). These are big chain hotels, restaurants, spas, shopping

<footnote n="3">³Not all kinds of place of sociability are studied here – only privately-owned ones relating to consumption and leisure practices.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴According to Ulf Hannerz, the classic definition of cosmopolitanism is expressed by positive interactions: “Cosmopolitanism … includes a stance toward diversity itself, toward the co-existence of cultures in the individual experience. A more genuine cosmopolitanism is first of all an orientation, a willingness to engage with the other. It entails an intellectual and aesthetic openness toward divergent cultural experiences, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity” (1990, 239). This is the definition of cosmopolitanism used in the limited scope of this chapter, although I recognize the importance of relations of hostility and indifference between foreigners and natives.</footnote>
This work falls within the field of social geography, which examines how social
differences manifest in space, and in the field of the sociology of everyday life
(Goffman 1963). The cosmopolitan places visited in this chapter include modest
places frequented by the residents of working-class neighborhoods and more
socially selective places that are often, but not always, geographically central in the
city. The chapter explores the extent to which one can speak of “places of cosmo-
politan sociability” in these everyday spaces.<fnref n="3" /> Cosmopolitanism is taken to mean
the deliberate search for the foreign character of a place or a group of people by
others. The hypothesis is that people frequent places of cosmopolitan sociability
and consumption precisely because they present a clear connection with someplace
else (a foreign owner, clientele, décor, cuisine, etc.) and that the people involved
consider the interactions that occur there, in a peaceful and calm setting of co-
presence, to be pleasant. Both foreign migrants and nationals living in the city think
that such interactions are beneficial to local urbanity.<fnref n="4" />

## 7.2 New Places of Cosmopolitan Sociability in African Cities

The appearances of Maputo and Antananarivo have changed since the early 2000s,
especially due to the creation of many places of sociability related to the presence
of foreigners (mostly from the Global South) and international influences that local
entrepreneurs seized upon in a search for novelty. They are places devoted to leisure
and/or consumption that reflect either the local incorporation of foreign models or
the presence of new foreign groups in the city. This means allowing two meanings
for cosmopolitanism, one based on migrants’ own practices and representations in
connection with the host society (a consequence of new international circulations
and migrations), the other referring to the globalization of models that circulate in
the world, be they related to culture, architecture, food, or more general consump-
tion styles (Appadurai 1996; Söderström 2013; Fouquet 2018; Choplin and
Pliez 2018).

First of all, some places of consumption and leisure are directly imported from
standardized international models and constitute what Jacques Lévy (1997) calls
“generic places” (see the chapters by Jan Willem Duyvendak and Melissa Ley-
Cervantes in this volume). These are big chain hotels, restaurants, spas, shopping

<footnote n="3">³Not all kinds of place of sociability are studied here – only privately-owned ones relating to consumption and leisure practices.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴According to Ulf Hannerz, the classic definition of cosmopolitanism is expressed by positive interactions: “Cosmopolitanism … includes a stance toward diversity itself, toward the co-existence of cultures in the individual experience. A more genuine cosmopolitanism is first of all an orientation, a willingness to engage with the other. It entails an intellectual and aesthetic openness toward divergent cultural experiences, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity” (1990, 239). This is the definition of cosmopolitanism used in the limited scope of this chapter, although I recognize the importance of relations of hostility and indifference between foreigners and natives.</footnote>
centers – places that are identical in any city of the world. Even if these generic
places are less present and numerous than in other African metropoles, there is a
Radisson Blu hotel in Maputo and both cities have malls with architecture, layout,
and décor identical to others worldwide. Indeed, shopping centers are a new type of
place of sociability developed according to foreign models (Houssay-Holzschuch
and Teppo 2009). Like other major East African cities, the forms currently in style
in Antananarivo and Maputo are borrowed more from South Africa, the Gulf coun-
tries, and emergent countries in Asia and Latin America than from Europe or North
America. These generic places are expressions of an international circulation of
models of urban forms representing an international culture, and it is through local
practices and the representations made of such places that they become distinctive
in each particular locale.

A second type of place of sociability consists of reconstructed or locally created
places of global inspiration. They are places inspired by models that circulate inter-
nationally, often within more limited cultural contexts (such as the Arab-Muslim or
Chinese worlds), but with local roots that ensure that they are original and non-
standardized. Their particularity lies in how they transform generic models locally,
either by foreigners importing foreign models or by nationals tapping into them.
These include casinos, billiard halls, Chinese and other trendy restaurants (some-
times in regional or national chains, like La Gastronomie Pizza in Madagascar), and
independent hotels and private guestroom rentals. For instance, La Gastronomie
Pizza was founded by nationals in Antananarivo in the 2000s and features a “drive-
in” service (the site is itself accessible by mini-bus) where employees deliver orders
in the unpaved parking lot, an attention-grabbing décor (dominated by the color red,
neon lights, eye-catching posters) intended to look “Western,” and an active
Facebook page. Numerous elements that made fast-food chains internationally suc-
cessful in Europe and North America are borrowed and adapted to the local setting:
certainly, the prices are high for most of the population, but they are cheaper than
restaurants downtown.

Hotels advertised as “boutique hotels” also illustrate this type of place. They are
inspired by international codes while also claiming to be unique and rooted in their
cultural environment and local architecture. The owner of the Hotel du Louvre in
Antananarivo is a Madagascar-born descendent of a French colonist family, and he
described the marketing concept of the boutique hotel as “feeling at home and being
able to possess the decorative objects you see there” (interview, July 2011). His
reference for the décor of the hotel, opened in 2009, was the Hotel Urban in Madrid,
whose website presents it as “a meeting place so different and cosmopolitan.”
Initially, however, designers of this kind of hotel intended to promote a style that
was unique and rooted in its local environment, in stark contrast to international
chain hotels. Although each boutique hotel may indeed be unique, the global model
presiding over the design of all of them nonetheless leads to repetition the world
over. So such hotels, considered unique reflections of a particular city, are subject to
uses making them territories of the world economy and revelatory of an international
centers – places that are identical in any city of the world. Even if these generic
places are less present and numerous than in other African metropoles, there is a
Radisson Blu hotel in Maputo and both cities have malls with architecture, layout,
and décor identical to others worldwide. Indeed, shopping centers are a new type of
place of sociability developed according to foreign models (Houssay-Holzschuch
and Teppo 2009). Like other major East African cities, the forms currently in style
in Antananarivo and Maputo are borrowed more from South Africa, the Gulf coun-
tries, and emergent countries in Asia and Latin America than from Europe or North
America. These generic places are expressions of an international circulation of
models of urban forms representing an international culture, and it is through local
practices and the representations made of such places that they become distinctive
in each particular locale.

A second type of place of sociability consists of reconstructed or locally created
places of global inspiration. They are places inspired by models that circulate inter-
nationally, often within more limited cultural contexts (such as the Arab-Muslim or
Chinese worlds), but with local roots that ensure that they are original and non-
standardized. Their particularity lies in how they transform generic models locally,
either by foreigners importing foreign models or by nationals tapping into them.
These include casinos, billiard halls, Chinese and other trendy restaurants (some-
times in regional or national chains, like La Gastronomie Pizza in Madagascar), and
independent hotels and private guestroom rentals. For instance, La Gastronomie
Pizza was founded by nationals in Antananarivo in the 2000s and features a “drive-
in” service (the site is itself accessible by mini-bus) where employees deliver orders
in the unpaved parking lot, an attention-grabbing décor (dominated by the color red,
neon lights, eye-catching posters) intended to look “Western,” and an active
Facebook page. Numerous elements that made fast-food chains internationally suc-
cessful in Europe and North America are borrowed and adapted to the local setting:
certainly, the prices are high for most of the population, but they are cheaper than
restaurants downtown.

Hotels advertised as “boutique hotels” also illustrate this type of place. They are
inspired by international codes while also claiming to be unique and rooted in their
cultural environment and local architecture. The owner of the Hotel du Louvre in
Antananarivo is a Madagascar-born descendent of a French colonist family, and he
described the marketing concept of the boutique hotel as “feeling at home and being
able to possess the decorative objects you see there” (interview, July 2011). His
reference for the décor of the hotel, opened in 2009, was the Hotel Urban in Madrid,
whose website presents it as “a meeting place so different and cosmopolitan.”
Initially, however, designers of this kind of hotel intended to promote a style that
was unique and rooted in its local environment, in stark contrast to international
chain hotels. Although each boutique hotel may indeed be unique, the global model
presiding over the design of all of them nonetheless leads to repetition the world
over. So such hotels, considered unique reflections of a particular city, are subject to
uses making them territories of the world economy and revelatory of an international
urban culture that has emerged and spread worldwide since the late nineteenth
century. Moreover, boutique hotels first emerged in North American cities like
New York: their spread illustrates how permeable African capitals are to the latest
international influences emanating from the most symbolic of Euro-American
metropolises. Regardless, in their very design combined with their rootedness in a
unique local urban space, boutique hotels are indeed places of local translation and
reconfiguration of a globally circulating model, which makes them cosmopolitan.

Lastly, places of cosmopolitan sociability can be neo-colonial places, meaning
recently created or re-created based on colonial-era models and presented as such.
They are based on the colonial imaginary and play on the nostalgia that they pro-
mote through their décor, name, and/or location – often in the colonial center of the
city. They may be cinemas, bars, restaurants, old train stations converted into shop-
ping centers, jazz clubs, or sporting clubs hosting a range of festive events. Such
sites include the Africa Cinema and the seaside Naval Club in Maputo or the Café
de la Gare in Antananarivo, which opened in 2009 and was modeled after the
colonial-era Buffet de la Gare, a mythic place for the cultural and economic elite. Its
owners use this colonial nostalgia to successfully attract a local and international
clientele. Such places are recreated, restored, or even built new by foreign investors
and are frequented by a very diverse local and foreign clientele attracted to the tem-
poral exoticism of their appealing colonial setting.

## 7.3 Users of Cosmopolitan Places: Diverse and Changing Profiles

In the first approach, these new places of sociability are frequented by the clientele for which they were designed and to which they appeal directly. In the newest Chinese restaurants of the two capitals, a significant proportion of the customers are people originally from China who have settled there permanently since the late 1990s (Park 2006; Ma Mung 2008; Chichava and Duran 2014). We can thus speak of so-called “ethnic” places, meaning that they are both well-known for a specific foreign group and well identified as such by residents from local backgrounds; that being the case, there is nothing original about them. Many residents of Maputo and Antananarivo could easily indicate places frequented by the Chinese, Indians, and other Africans – usually downtown hotels and restaurants, upscale or more working-class, serving as everyday meeting places and sites for community sociability. For instance, members of the Guinean diaspora in Maputo use the centrally located Hotel 2001 due to the lack of pleasant public places or associative clubs for this purpose.

In such new places of sociability, one can find businessmen from Mozambique/
Madagascar and foreign countries alongside employees of foreign companies and
international organizations on mission for a few weeks as well as tourists and
evangelical missionaries from Africa or the Americas (Brazil, the United States).
urban culture that has emerged and spread worldwide since the late nineteenth
century. Moreover, boutique hotels first emerged in North American cities like
New York: their spread illustrates how permeable African capitals are to the latest
international influences emanating from the most symbolic of Euro-American
metropolises. Regardless, in their very design combined with their rootedness in a
unique local urban space, boutique hotels are indeed places of local translation and
reconfiguration of a globally circulating model, which makes them cosmopolitan.

Lastly, places of cosmopolitan sociability can be neo-colonial places, meaning
recently created or re-created based on colonial-era models and presented as such.
They are based on the colonial imaginary and play on the nostalgia that they pro-
mote through their décor, name, and/or location – often in the colonial center of the
city. They may be cinemas, bars, restaurants, old train stations converted into shop-
ping centers, jazz clubs, or sporting clubs hosting a range of festive events. Such
sites include the Africa Cinema and the seaside Naval Club in Maputo or the Café
de la Gare in Antananarivo, which opened in 2009 and was modeled after the
colonial-era Buffet de la Gare, a mythic place for the cultural and economic elite. Its
owners use this colonial nostalgia to successfully attract a local and international
clientele. Such places are recreated, restored, or even built new by foreign investors
and are frequented by a very diverse local and foreign clientele attracted to the tem-
poral exoticism of their appealing colonial setting.

## 7.3 Users of Cosmopolitan Places: Diverse and Changing Profiles

In the first approach, these new places of sociability are frequented by the clientele for which they were designed and to which they appeal directly. In the newest Chinese restaurants of the two capitals, a significant proportion of the customers are people originally from China who have settled there permanently since the late 1990s (Park 2006; Ma Mung 2008; Chichava and Duran 2014). We can thus speak of so-called “ethnic” places, meaning that they are both well-known for a specific foreign group and well identified as such by residents from local backgrounds; that being the case, there is nothing original about them. Many residents of Maputo and Antananarivo could easily indicate places frequented by the Chinese, Indians, and other Africans – usually downtown hotels and restaurants, upscale or more working-class, serving as everyday meeting places and sites for community sociability. For instance, members of the Guinean diaspora in Maputo use the centrally located Hotel 2001 due to the lack of pleasant public places or associative clubs for this purpose.

In such new places of sociability, one can find businessmen from Mozambique/
Madagascar and foreign countries alongside employees of foreign companies and
international organizations on mission for a few weeks as well as tourists and
evangelical missionaries from Africa or the Americas (Brazil, the United States).
The Chinese tend to frequent hotels owned by fellow Chinese, like the New Century in Antananarivo and the Moderna Guest House in Maputo, just as the Congolese and Indians have their own favored addresses. A whole collection of community-specific addresses can be found on the Internet, especially on social networks in the language of each community.

The most interesting part of studying the phenomenon of new places of sociabil-
ity is that they are also frequented by people from Madagascar or Mozambique,
often to the point of being a majority. It is thus possible to speak of genuine cosmo-
politan places since these places created by and for foreigners come to be frequented
by nationals as well, which can lead to these groups meeting and conversing.

Places opened by foreigners are highly sought after by Malagasies in Antananarivo. The habit developed among the elites in the colonial era. In the 1990s the phenomenon expanded into new places, a sign of international circulations reactiviated by the openness resulting from liberalization and the development of air links to Asia. Mozambique developed similarly, according to the same timeframe. Foreign-run places of sociability, especially Chinese ones, have been adopted immediately in recent years, so Malagasies are a significant share of the clientele of Chinese establishments of all kinds built since 2000 – restaurants, billiard halls, massage parlors, and bars. The downtown Chinese hotel New Century has a vast hall with several billiards tables that are mostly used by Malagasy students, who use it as a spacious, centrally located, and accessible place to meet up and relax while enjoying a leisure activity that is central to student sociability. Residents of Antananarivo also enjoy the newly opened Chinese restaurants, which are popular for festive family events like weddings, birthdays and baptisms. Revealingly, in newly-opened foreign restaurants, the menus are written in the country's dominant European language (French or Portuguese) in addition to Mandarin (for example) and contain photographs of the dishes in order to reach the widest number of people possible. The same is true in Maputo, where Chinese-owned groceries and working-class neighborhood bars are thronged with Mozambicans coming to have a drink, play and bet on a board or card game, or watch a subscription satellite channel broadcast in the establishment. A little grocery owned by a Chinese couple in Catembe, a leisure neighborhood, has a few slot machines used by neighborhood residents, making it another place of sociability for all.

The mixing of nationals and foreigners can also be observed in generic places,
leading to a change in how they are used as clients develop local practices that
modify and reconfigure their standardized international dimension. One example
found widely in southern African cities is the American fast-food chain KFC: as in
other cities, the KFC in Maputo is very popular with native-born Maputo residents
as well as with foreigners, all seeking a globally standardized setting and flavor.<fnref n="5" />
This is also true for the uses of spaces of sociability in grand hotels, which are fre-
quented by the business bourgeoisie as well as the upper middle classes who hold

<footnote n="5">⁵ KFC opened its very first restaurant in Antananarivo in November 2019. A study of the clientele has yet to be made.</footnote>
The Chinese tend to frequent hotels owned by fellow Chinese, like the New Century in Antananarivo and the Moderna Guest House in Maputo, just as the Congolese and Indians have their own favored addresses. A whole collection of community-specific addresses can be found on the Internet, especially on social networks in the language of each community.

The most interesting part of studying the phenomenon of new places of sociabil-
ity is that they are also frequented by people from Madagascar or Mozambique,
often to the point of being a majority. It is thus possible to speak of genuine cosmo-
politan places since these places created by and for foreigners come to be frequented
by nationals as well, which can lead to these groups meeting and conversing.

Places opened by foreigners are highly sought after by Malagasies in Antananarivo. The habit developed among the elites in the colonial era. In the 1990s the phenomenon expanded into new places, a sign of international circulations reactiviated by the openness resulting from liberalization and the development of air links to Asia. Mozambique developed similarly, according to the same timeframe. Foreign-run places of sociability, especially Chinese ones, have been adopted immediately in recent years, so Malagasies are a significant share of the clientele of Chinese establishments of all kinds built since 2000 – restaurants, billiard halls, massage parlors, and bars. The downtown Chinese hotel New Century has a vast hall with several billiards tables that are mostly used by Malagasy students, who use it as a spacious, centrally located, and accessible place to meet up and relax while enjoying a leisure activity that is central to student sociability. Residents of Antananarivo also enjoy the newly opened Chinese restaurants, which are popular for festive family events like weddings, birthdays and baptisms. Revealingly, in newly-opened foreign restaurants, the menus are written in the country's dominant European language (French or Portuguese) in addition to Mandarin (for example) and contain photographs of the dishes in order to reach the widest number of people possible. The same is true in Maputo, where Chinese-owned groceries and working-class neighborhood bars are thronged with Mozambicans coming to have a drink, play and bet on a board or card game, or watch a subscription satellite channel broadcast in the establishment. A little grocery owned by a Chinese couple in Catembe, a leisure neighborhood, has a few slot machines used by neighborhood residents, making it another place of sociability for all.

The mixing of nationals and foreigners can also be observed in generic places,
leading to a change in how they are used as clients develop local practices that
modify and reconfigure their standardized international dimension. One example
found widely in southern African cities is the American fast-food chain KFC: as in
other cities, the KFC in Maputo is very popular with native-born Maputo residents
as well as with foreigners, all seeking a globally standardized setting and flavor.<fnref n="5" />
This is also true for the uses of spaces of sociability in grand hotels, which are fre-
quented by the business bourgeoisie as well as the upper middle classes who hold

<footnote n="5">⁵ KFC opened its very first restaurant in Antananarivo in November 2019. A study of the clientele has yet to be made.</footnote>
family celebrations there in a practice of conspicuous consumption. Those frequent-
ing these places of generic sociability thus do so for different reasons, according to
their social and geographical background, transforming these places through their
practices and prompting encounters between very different people in a shared and
peaceful setting. People interviewed in such places (in 2011, 2015, 2017) mention
the pleasure of being there in the company of foreigners. These generic places are
often characterized as deterritorialized, but they are actually appropriated and
reconfigured locally by a very wide range of people who contribute to making them
unique through their practices in the space. Starting with the real experience of the
place, the people frequenting it, and what they hope to find and do there enriches
analysis of places of sociability of any kind (Tuan 1977).

If many of the previously mentioned places are centrally located and frequented
by a rather well-off, or even wealthy, clientele, they should not be reduced to this
socially elite dimension alone (Hiebert 2002; Werbner 1999). The well-off clientele
is a good illustration of the development of a local bourgeoisie, newly emerged
since the 2000s, that takes advantage of the opening of international exchange and
consumes heavily in the city where it resides, just like many affluent foreigners
whose presence in the city is expressed in a lifestyle of ostentatious consumption.<fnref n="6" />
It is readily observable in Maputo and Antananarivo, capitals of countries whose
low human development indicators demonstrate an otherwise extremely poor popu-
lation and considerable social and spatial inequalities, especially between the capi-
tal and the rest of the country, but also between city residents themselves.

Beyond that, it should be mentioned that there are other places with more
working-class kinds of sociability that are frequented by people of modest means:
cheap Chinese restaurants and casinos, bars, neighborhood groceries owned by
Chinese or foreign African immigrants (the latter only in Maputo: Fournet-Guérin
2019), churches run by foreign evangelical Christian groups (mainly from Congo,
South Africa or Brazil), and supermarkets, which are a walking destination for city
residents who cannot afford to treat themselves but who are drawn to the place, its
scale, its lights, or the abundance of goods on display. In both cities, Chinese-owned
supermarkets mainly selling products imported from China are also frequented by
nationals, who are drawn by the novelty and exoticism of the goods as well as the
décor, musical ambiance, spaciousness, and low prices. In both Maputo and
Antananarivo, there is an observable development of such places of local consump-
tion that also serve as places of sociability predominantly frequented by nationals;
foreigners open these varied and modest shops in peripheral and often working-
class neighborhoods, and the shops become fully integrated in everyday neighbor-
hood life.

<footnote n="6">⁶This is a well-known phenomenon that was aptly recounted in Adichie’s novel *Americanah* (2013), set in Lagos.</footnote>
family celebrations there in a practice of conspicuous consumption. Those frequent-
ing these places of generic sociability thus do so for different reasons, according to
their social and geographical background, transforming these places through their
practices and prompting encounters between very different people in a shared and
peaceful setting. People interviewed in such places (in 2011, 2015, 2017) mention
the pleasure of being there in the company of foreigners. These generic places are
often characterized as deterritorialized, but they are actually appropriated and
reconfigured locally by a very wide range of people who contribute to making them
unique through their practices in the space. Starting with the real experience of the
place, the people frequenting it, and what they hope to find and do there enriches
analysis of places of sociability of any kind (Tuan 1977).

If many of the previously mentioned places are centrally located and frequented
by a rather well-off, or even wealthy, clientele, they should not be reduced to this
socially elite dimension alone (Hiebert 2002; Werbner 1999). The well-off clientele
is a good illustration of the development of a local bourgeoisie, newly emerged
since the 2000s, that takes advantage of the opening of international exchange and
consumes heavily in the city where it resides, just like many affluent foreigners
whose presence in the city is expressed in a lifestyle of ostentatious consumption.<fnref n="6" />
It is readily observable in Maputo and Antananarivo, capitals of countries whose
low human development indicators demonstrate an otherwise extremely poor popu-
lation and considerable social and spatial inequalities, especially between the capi-
tal and the rest of the country, but also between city residents themselves.

Beyond that, it should be mentioned that there are other places with more
working-class kinds of sociability that are frequented by people of modest means:
cheap Chinese restaurants and casinos, bars, neighborhood groceries owned by
Chinese or foreign African immigrants (the latter only in Maputo: Fournet-Guérin
2019), churches run by foreign evangelical Christian groups (mainly from Congo,
South Africa or Brazil), and supermarkets, which are a walking destination for city
residents who cannot afford to treat themselves but who are drawn to the place, its
scale, its lights, or the abundance of goods on display. In both cities, Chinese-owned
supermarkets mainly selling products imported from China are also frequented by
nationals, who are drawn by the novelty and exoticism of the goods as well as the
décor, musical ambiance, spaciousness, and low prices. In both Maputo and
Antananarivo, there is an observable development of such places of local consump-
tion that also serve as places of sociability predominantly frequented by nationals;
foreigners open these varied and modest shops in peripheral and often working-
class neighborhoods, and the shops become fully integrated in everyday neighbor-
hood life.

<footnote n="6">⁶This is a well-known phenomenon that was aptly recounted in Adichie’s novel *Americanah* (2013), set in Lagos.</footnote>
## 7.4 Cosmopolitan Imaginations: Why Are These Places Successful with Nationals?

In academic literature, generic places are sometimes described as being standardized (see, for example, Cauna 2002 on the Caudan Waterfront in Mauritius) and thus supposedly soulless, devoid of local ties, and with no affective dimension for people frequenting it. Behind these value judgments may hide an intellectual social position essentially decrying places touched by international and commercial capitalism. But to do so is to ignore what the people using them actually think and how they actually experience the place, through their practices and representations.

### 7.4.1 Participating in a Desired International Modernity

Cosmopolitan places combine exogenous models and local practices and representations: developed by foreigners, in many cases for their own use, they are rapidly appropriated by nationals and come to be used by both population types. In that, they incarnate new forms of sociability. It furthermore means, contrary to what is regularly asserted, that city residents frequent and appreciate new generic places of sociability not by default but for what they are – as places incarnating a standardized international modernity. Frequenting these new places allows them to take part in life as it is lived around the world, even though they live at the world’s periphery and may be bitter about that, if only for the many restrictions on their ability to travel abroad due to their low incomes relative to international standards and the difficulty for citizens of Mozambique or Madagascar to obtain visas to many countries.<fnref n="7" /> The desire for modernity, standardized consumption, and not feeling like you are on the fringe of the world are all powerful motivations that cannot be denied to residents of African cities. Perhaps deploring such practices in the name of the supposed cultural poverty and standardization of these places is a way for Euro-American observers to stick an obsolete image onto societies of the Global South, out of a desire to restrict them to supposedly “authentic” and “traditional” practices? My position is that residents of African cities have the same rights as other urbanites worldwide to frequent generic places, seek the mundane there and try to imitate others, all practices putting them in line with a universal urban experience (for this phenomenon in other settings, see Roy and Ong 2011; Söderström 2013; Myers 2011).

<footnote n="7">⁷As Thomas Fouquet notes, cosmopolitan practices in Africa are first and foremost those of people who cannot travel, “non-mobile individuals” (2018, 6).</footnote>
## 7.4 Cosmopolitan Imaginations: Why Are These Places Successful with Nationals?

In academic literature, generic places are sometimes described as being standardized (see, for example, Cauna 2002 on the Caudan Waterfront in Mauritius) and thus supposedly soulless, devoid of local ties, and with no affective dimension for people frequenting it. Behind these value judgments may hide an intellectual social position essentially decrying places touched by international and commercial capitalism. But to do so is to ignore what the people using them actually think and how they actually experience the place, through their practices and representations.

### 7.4.1 Participating in a Desired International Modernity

Cosmopolitan places combine exogenous models and local practices and representations: developed by foreigners, in many cases for their own use, they are rapidly appropriated by nationals and come to be used by both population types. In that, they incarnate new forms of sociability. It furthermore means, contrary to what is regularly asserted, that city residents frequent and appreciate new generic places of sociability not by default but for what they are – as places incarnating a standardized international modernity. Frequenting these new places allows them to take part in life as it is lived around the world, even though they live at the world’s periphery and may be bitter about that, if only for the many restrictions on their ability to travel abroad due to their low incomes relative to international standards and the difficulty for citizens of Mozambique or Madagascar to obtain visas to many countries.<fnref n="7" /> The desire for modernity, standardized consumption, and not feeling like you are on the fringe of the world are all powerful motivations that cannot be denied to residents of African cities. Perhaps deploring such practices in the name of the supposed cultural poverty and standardization of these places is a way for Euro-American observers to stick an obsolete image onto societies of the Global South, out of a desire to restrict them to supposedly “authentic” and “traditional” practices? My position is that residents of African cities have the same rights as other urbanites worldwide to frequent generic places, seek the mundane there and try to imitate others, all practices putting them in line with a universal urban experience (for this phenomenon in other settings, see Roy and Ong 2011; Söderström 2013; Myers 2011).

<footnote n="7">⁷As Thomas Fouquet notes, cosmopolitan practices in Africa are first and foremost those of people who cannot travel, “non-mobile individuals” (2018, 6).</footnote>
### 7.4.2 The Quest for a New and Not Exclusively Euro-American Exoticism

While some places of sociability are sought after because they offer access to globalized practices in a standardized setting, others are in demand for their exotic character, associated with a fantasized imaginary of someplace else.<fnref n="8" /> This can be found in décor, cuisine, a kind of activity, or an image of modernity. This is the case for the newly opened Chinese restaurants of Antananarivo, Maputo, and elsewhere in Africa: you eat a locally unknown cuisine in a colorful and busy décor (for example, a profusion of photographs and/or paintings of stereotypical Chinese landscapes on the walls), greatly appreciated by Africans, and in a bright, modern setting that contrasts with many local restaurants, which often have a dim and dreary ambiance. The attraction is clearly exoticism through novelty, escapism, and the consumption of elsewhere. In this sense, the residents of these cities can be said to develop cosmopolitan imaginaries of new places of sociability, meaning that they are sought out for their foreignness. At La City, Antananarivo's most upscale shopping center opened in the early 2010s, the food court has several restaurants offering foreign cuisines. One of them has a menu presenting certain cuisines as exotic in how they are named, such as “yassa” for Senegalese dishes and “caris” or “dishes with coco-nut” for Creole and Indian dishes. Until recently, in fact, the only foreign cuisines in the capital of Madagascar were French and Chinese, or rather, Cantonese in the version that spread around the world since the late nineteenth century. At Khana Razana, an upscale Indian-Chinese restaurant in downtown Maputo, the owner – an Indian man from Bombay – speaks English with his customers rather than Portuguese (the local lingua franca). The restaurant is very popular with city elites, Mozambicans of Indian descent,<fnref n="9" /> Chinese, and Europeans. Today it is possible to dine on the cuisines of northern Indian Muslims, northern China, Arab countries, Thailand, Vietnam, and beyond.

This goes to show that African city-dwellers do seek exoticism, according to the same criteria identified in Euro-American consumers. Frequenting places that artificially recreate someplace else in a commercial logic is just as desirable for Africans as it is for Europeans and all city people of the world.

<footnote n="8">⁸In French, “exoticism” was first defined from an ethnocentric point of view, as illustrated by the definition in the Petit Robert dictionary (1984): “that which does not belong to our Occidental civilizations, that which comes from far-off countries.” But the “Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé” (Digital Treasury of the French Language; https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/exotisme) takes a neutral approach: “that which relates or belongs to a foreign country, generally far-off or little known” – meaning that exoticism is conceivable anywhere in the world. It is this second definition that I use here.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹By Malagasies/Mozambicans “of Indian descent” or “with Indian roots” I mean the descendants of late-nineteenth century emigrants from the British Indian empire who settled in Africa and on islands in the western Indian Ocean. Their descendants have formed well-identified communities that are often disliked by nationals of African origin. They are quite visibly present in the city and they play a significant role in the national economy.</footnote>
### 7.4.2 The Quest for a New and Not Exclusively Euro-American Exoticism

While some places of sociability are sought after because they offer access to globalized practices in a standardized setting, others are in demand for their exotic character, associated with a fantasized imaginary of someplace else.<fnref n="8" /> This can be found in décor, cuisine, a kind of activity, or an image of modernity. This is the case for the newly opened Chinese restaurants of Antananarivo, Maputo, and elsewhere in Africa: you eat a locally unknown cuisine in a colorful and busy décor (for example, a profusion of photographs and/or paintings of stereotypical Chinese landscapes on the walls), greatly appreciated by Africans, and in a bright, modern setting that contrasts with many local restaurants, which often have a dim and dreary ambiance. The attraction is clearly exoticism through novelty, escapism, and the consumption of elsewhere. In this sense, the residents of these cities can be said to develop cosmopolitan imaginaries of new places of sociability, meaning that they are sought out for their foreignness. At La City, Antananarivo's most upscale shopping center opened in the early 2010s, the food court has several restaurants offering foreign cuisines. One of them has a menu presenting certain cuisines as exotic in how they are named, such as “yassa” for Senegalese dishes and “caris” or “dishes with coco-nut” for Creole and Indian dishes. Until recently, in fact, the only foreign cuisines in the capital of Madagascar were French and Chinese, or rather, Cantonese in the version that spread around the world since the late nineteenth century. At Khana Razana, an upscale Indian-Chinese restaurant in downtown Maputo, the owner – an Indian man from Bombay – speaks English with his customers rather than Portuguese (the local lingua franca). The restaurant is very popular with city elites, Mozambicans of Indian descent,<fnref n="9" /> Chinese, and Europeans. Today it is possible to dine on the cuisines of northern Indian Muslims, northern China, Arab countries, Thailand, Vietnam, and beyond.

This goes to show that African city-dwellers do seek exoticism, according to the same criteria identified in Euro-American consumers. Frequenting places that artificially recreate someplace else in a commercial logic is just as desirable for Africans as it is for Europeans and all city people of the world.

<footnote n="8">⁸In French, “exoticism” was first defined from an ethnocentric point of view, as illustrated by the definition in the Petit Robert dictionary (1984): “that which does not belong to our Occidental civilizations, that which comes from far-off countries.” But the “Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé” (Digital Treasury of the French Language; https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/exotisme) takes a neutral approach: “that which relates or belongs to a foreign country, generally far-off or little known” – meaning that exoticism is conceivable anywhere in the world. It is this second definition that I use here.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹By Malagasies/Mozambicans “of Indian descent” or “with Indian roots” I mean the descendants of late-nineteenth century emigrants from the British Indian empire who settled in Africa and on islands in the western Indian Ocean. Their descendants have formed well-identified communities that are often disliked by nationals of African origin. They are quite visibly present in the city and they play a significant role in the national economy.</footnote>
The frequentation of African urbanites of such pastiche settings signals both a new and expanded imaginary and the local appropriation and adoption of models in global circulation. La Casbah, a “shisha lounge bar restaurant” in Antananarivo, provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. Opened in a neighborhood on the edge of downtown in the 2010s by a Madagascar-born man with Indian roots, its name and décor draw upon an aesthetic that is simultaneously part Arab cultural world, part global standardization: “shisha,” “la casbah,” and the Arab-Moorish décor are explicit references to an imagined Arab universe that even makes a nod to French colonialism, while the term “lounge” refers to a kind of comfortable setting more associated with English-speaking countries, but in a very internationalized and deterritorialized form. Nothing in the décor or name connects it to Antananarivo or Africa; it could be located anywhere in the world. The space can be understood as an incarnation of a “feature of modernity” based on renewed Orientalism (Dittgen 2017). Clients appreciate the exotic character of the place, its eclectic décor combining several foreign influences, and the presence of socially and ethnically diverse people, even if their gaze is filtered through folklore. The composite décor and cuisine served there are exactly what they are looking for. J.-L. Amselle (2009) has critically examined the idealization of such hybridized places whose clientele have no interest in the actual “elsewhere” they evoke, concluding that the fashion for cultural mixing in Euro-American cities is empty artifice. Regardless, this trend is becoming apparent in every city of the world, including cities that are considered dominated in international representations (Ye 2019) that no one wants to protect from marketed exoticism. In Antananarivo as in Paris and Shanghai, some residents love nothing more than going to places of sociability that they see as cosmopolitan for a dose of the Other and cultural mixing. This could certainly be seen and denounced as a cultural variation of the domination of capitalism, but it can also be seen as providing groups that are symbolically dominated on the global scale access to a kind of freedom of consumption and expression of desire for other places (Appadurai 1996).

## 7.5 Conclusion

In recent decades, the residents of the two African cities studied here have developed new imaginaries and a new sense of exoticism looking to the entire world, no longer just Euro-American references. Their consumption practices, frequentation of generic places, and activities have led them to develop a kind of sociability motivated by yearning for a change of scene. Invested with cosmopolitan representations, these places express the diffusion of globalization and the circulation of standardized international ideas and practices, which some consider artificial. Far from being limited to an elite, this movement expressing openness toward others concerns a wide swathe of society, but not the entire population. Cosmopolitanism is thus far from marginal in Africa, as the wide-ranging spaces described in this chapter all embody the globalization of imaginaries and references and serve as eloquent illustrations of contemporary transformations in cosmopolitan practices and spaces.
The frequentation of African urbanites of such pastiche settings signals both a new and expanded imaginary and the local appropriation and adoption of models in global circulation. La Casbah, a “shisha lounge bar restaurant” in Antananarivo, provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. Opened in a neighborhood on the edge of downtown in the 2010s by a Madagascar-born man with Indian roots, its name and décor draw upon an aesthetic that is simultaneously part Arab cultural world, part global standardization: “shisha,” “la casbah,” and the Arab-Moorish décor are explicit references to an imagined Arab universe that even makes a nod to French colonialism, while the term “lounge” refers to a kind of comfortable setting more associated with English-speaking countries, but in a very internationalized and deterritorialized form. Nothing in the décor or name connects it to Antananarivo or Africa; it could be located anywhere in the world. The space can be understood as an incarnation of a “feature of modernity” based on renewed Orientalism (Dittgen 2017). Clients appreciate the exotic character of the place, its eclectic décor combining several foreign influences, and the presence of socially and ethnically diverse people, even if their gaze is filtered through folklore. The composite décor and cuisine served there are exactly what they are looking for. J.-L. Amselle (2009) has critically examined the idealization of such hybridized places whose clientele have no interest in the actual “elsewhere” they evoke, concluding that the fashion for cultural mixing in Euro-American cities is empty artifice. Regardless, this trend is becoming apparent in every city of the world, including cities that are considered dominated in international representations (Ye 2019) that no one wants to protect from marketed exoticism. In Antananarivo as in Paris and Shanghai, some residents love nothing more than going to places of sociability that they see as cosmopolitan for a dose of the Other and cultural mixing. This could certainly be seen and denounced as a cultural variation of the domination of capitalism, but it can also be seen as providing groups that are symbolically dominated on the global scale access to a kind of freedom of consumption and expression of desire for other places (Appadurai 1996).

## 7.5 Conclusion

In recent decades, the residents of the two African cities studied here have developed new imaginaries and a new sense of exoticism looking to the entire world, no longer just Euro-American references. Their consumption practices, frequentation of generic places, and activities have led them to develop a kind of sociability motivated by yearning for a change of scene. Invested with cosmopolitan representations, these places express the diffusion of globalization and the circulation of standardized international ideas and practices, which some consider artificial. Far from being limited to an elite, this movement expressing openness toward others concerns a wide swathe of society, but not the entire population. Cosmopolitanism is thus far from marginal in Africa, as the wide-ranging spaces described in this chapter all embody the globalization of imaginaries and references and serve as eloquent illustrations of contemporary transformations in cosmopolitan practices and spaces.
## References

- Adichie, C. N. (2013). *Americanah*. New York: Knopf.

- Amselle, J.-L. (2009[1990]). *Logiques métisses. Anthropologie de l'identité en Afrique et ailleurs*. Paris: Payot.

- Appadurai, A. (1996). *Modernity at large*. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

- Boessen, E., & Marfaing, L. (2007). *Les nouveaux urbains dans l'espace Sahara-Sahel. Un cosmopolitisme par le bas*. Paris: Karthala.

- Brachet, J. (2009). *Migrations transsahariennes: vers un désert cosmopolite et morcelé. Bellecombe-en-Bauges: Croquant*.

- Bunkenborg, M. (2014). All part of the master plan? Ethnographic encounters with the Chinese in Mozambique. In C. Alden & S. Chichava (Eds.), *China and Mozambique: From comrades to capitalists* (pp. 50–66). Auckland Park: Jacana Media.

- Cauna (de), Alexandra. (2002). *Du front de mer aux parcs de Port-Louis (Maurice). Géographie et cultures, 41, 39–56*.

- Chichava, S., & Duran, J. (2014). Migrants or sojourners? The Chinese Community in Maputo. In C. Alden & S. Chichava (Eds.), *China and Mozambique: From comrades to capitalists* (pp. 188–198). Auckland Park: Jacana Media.

- Choplin, A., & Pliez, O. (2018). *La mondialisation des pauvres. Loin de Wall Street et de Davos*. Paris: Seuil.

- Cohen, R., & Vertovec, S. (Eds.). (2002). *Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Diouf, M. (2000). The Mourid trade diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitanism. *Codesria Bulletin, 1*, 19–30.

- Dittgen, R. (2017). Features of modernity, development and ‘orientalism’: Reading Johannesburg through its ‘Chinese’ urban spaces. *Journal of Southern African Studies, 43*(5), 979–996.

- Edensor, T., & Jayne, M. (Eds.). (2012). *Urban theory beyond the west: A world of cities*. London: Routledge.

- Flahaux, M. L., & De Haas, H. (2016). African migration: Trends, patterns, drivers. *Comparative Migration Studies, 4*(1). https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-015-0015-6

- Fouquet, T. (2018). Grassroots cosmopolitics: Critical notes on a cosmopolitan Africa. *African Identities, 16*, 219–230.

- Fourchard, L., Goerg, O., & Gomez-Perez, M. (Eds.). (2009). *Lieux de sociabilité urbaine en Afrique*. Paris: L'Harmattan.

- Fournet-Guérin, C. (2017). *L'Afrique cosmopolite. Circulations internationales et sociabilités citadines*. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

- Fournet-Guerin, C. (2019). Un cosmopolitisme de voisinage dans les quartiers populaires de Maputo (Mozambique). *European Journal of International Migrations, 35*(3 & 4), 239–265.

- Goffman, E. (1963). *Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings*. Glencoe: Free Press of Glencoe.

- Hannerz, U. (1990). Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), *Global culture: Nationalism, globalisation and modernity* (pp. 237–251). London: Sage.

- Hiebert, D. (2002). Cosmopolitanism at the local level: The development of transnational neighborhoods. In R. Cohen & S. Vertovec (Eds.), *Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice* (pp. 209–224). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Houssay-Holzschuch, M., & Teppo, A. (2009). A mall for all? Race and public space in post-apartheid Cape Town. *Cultural Geographies, 16*(3), 351–379.

- Lévy, J. (1997). Penser la ville: un impératif sous toutes les latitudes. *C.E.M.O.T.I.*, 24, 27–30.

- Ma Mung, E. (2008). The new Chinese migration flows to Africa. *Social Science Information, 47*, 643. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018408096452

- Malaquais, D. (2005). Villes flux. Imaginaires de l'urbain en Afrique aujourd'hui. *Politique africaine, 100*, 17–37.
## References

Adichie, C. N. (2013). *Americanah*. New York: Knopf.

Amselle, J.-L. (2009[1990]). *Logiques métisses. Anthropologie de l'identité en Afrique et ailleurs*. Paris: Payot.

Appadurai, A. (1996). *Modernity at large*. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Boessen, E., & Marfaing, L. (2007). *Les nouveaux urbains dans l'espace Sahara-Sahel. Un cosmopolitisme par le bas*. Paris: Karthala.

Brachet, J. (2009). *Migrations transsahariennes: vers un désert cosmopolite et morcelé. Bellecombe-en-Bauges: Croquant*.

Bunkenborg, M. (2014). All part of the master plan? Ethnographic encounters with the Chinese in Mozambique. In C. Alden & S. Chichava (Eds.), *China and Mozambique: From comrades to capitalists* (pp. 50–66). Auckland Park: Jacana Media.

Cauna (de), Alexandra. (2002). *Du front de mer aux parcs de Port-Louis (Maurice). Géographie et cultures, 41, 39–56*.

Chichava, S., & Duran, J. (2014). Migrants or sojourners? The Chinese Community in Maputo. In C. Alden & S. Chichava (Eds.), *China and Mozambique: From comrades to capitalists* (pp. 188–198). Auckland Park: Jacana Media.

Choplin, A., & Pliez, O. (2018). *La mondialisation des pauvres. Loin de Wall Street et de Davos*. Paris: Seuil.

Cohen, R., & Vertovec, S. (Eds.). (2002). *Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diouf, M. (2000). The Mourid trade diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitanism. *Codesria Bulletin, 1*, 19–30.

Dittgen, R. (2017). Features of modernity, development and ‘orientalism’: Reading Johannesburg through its ‘Chinese’ urban spaces. *Journal of Southern African Studies, 43*(5), 979–996.

Edensor, T., & Jayne, M. (Eds.). (2012). *Urban theory beyond the west: A world of cities*. London: Routledge.

Flahaux, M. L., & De Haas, H. (2016). African migration: Trends, patterns, drivers. *Comparative Migration Studies, 4*(1). https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-015-0015-6

Fouquet, T. (2018). Grassroots cosmopolitics: Critical notes on a cosmopolitan Africa. *African Identities, 16*, 219–230.

Fourchard, L., Goerg, O., & Gomez-Perez, M. (Eds.). (2009). *Lieux de sociabilité urbaine en Afrique*. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Fournet-Guérin, C. (2017). *L'Afrique cosmopolite. Circulations internationales et sociabilités citadines*. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

Fournet-Guerin, C. (2019). Un cosmopolitisme de voisinage dans les quartiers populaires de Maputo (Mozambique). *European Journal of International Migrations, 35*(3 & 4), 239–265.

Goffman, E. (1963). *Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings*. Glencoe: Free Press of Glencoe.

Hannerz, U. (1990). Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), *Global culture: Nationalism, globalisation and modernity* (pp. 237–251). London: Sage.

Hiebert, D. (2002). Cosmopolitanism at the local level: The development of transnational neighborhoods. In R. Cohen & S. Vertovec (Eds.), *Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice* (pp. 209–224). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Houssay-Holzschuch, M., & Teppo, A. (2009). A mall for all? Race and public space in post-apartheid Cape Town. *Cultural Geographies, 16*(3), 351–379.

Lévy, J. (1997). Penser la ville: un impératif sous toutes les latitudes. *C.E.M.O.T.I.*, 24, 27–30.

Ma Mung, E. (2008). The new Chinese migration flows to Africa. *Social Science Information, 47*, 643. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018408096452

Malaquais, D. (2005). Villes flux. Imaginaires de l'urbain en Afrique aujourd'hui. *Politique africaine, 100*, 17–37.
Mbembe, A., & Nuttall, S. (2004). Writing the world from an African Metropolis. *Public Culture, 16*(3), 347–372.

Myers, G. (2011). *African cities: Alternative visions of urban theory and practice*. New York: Zed.

Park, Y. J. (2006). Sojourners to settlers: Early constructions of Chinese identity in South Africa. *African Studies, 65*(2), 201–223.

Robinson, J. (2002). Global and world cities: A view from off the map. *Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26*(3), 531–554.

Robinson, J. (2006). *Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development*. London: Routledge.

Roy, A. (2011). In O. Aihwa (Ed.), *Worlding cities: Asian experiments and the art of being global*. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Söderström, O. (2013). What traveling urban types do: Postcolonial modernization in two globalizing cities. In O. Söderström et al. (Eds.), *Critical mobilities* (pp. 29–57). London: Routledge.

Spire, A. (2011). *L'étranger et la ville en Afrique de l'Ouest. Lomé au regard d'Accra*. Paris: Karthala.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). *Place and space: The perspective of experience*. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Werbner, P. (1999). Global pathways: Working-class cosmopolitans and the creation of transnational ethnic worlds. *Social Anthropology, 1*(7), 17–35.

Ye, J. (2019). Re-orienting geographies of urban diversity and coexistence: Analyzing inclusion and difference in public space. *Progress in Human Geography, 43*(3), 478–495.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>
Mbembe, A., & Nuttall, S. (2004). Writing the world from an African Metropolis. *Public Culture*, *16*(3), 347–372.

Myers, G. (2011). *African cities: Alternative visions of urban theory and practice*. New York: Zed.

Park, Y. J. (2006). Sojourners to settlers: Early constructions of Chinese identity in South Africa. *African Studies, 65*(2), 201–223.

Robinson, J. (2002). Global and world cities: A view from off the map. *Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26*(3), 531–554.

Robinson, J. (2006). *Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development*. London: Routledge.

Roy, A. (2011). In O. Aihwa (Ed.), *Worlding cities: Asian experiments and the art of being global*. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Söderström, O. (2013). What traveling urban types do: Postcolonial modernization in two global-izing cities. In O. Söderström et al. (Eds.), *Critical mobilities* (pp. 29–57). London: Routledge.

Spire, A. (2011). *L'étranger et la ville en Afrique de l'Ouest. Lomé au regard d'Accra*. Paris: Karthala.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). *Place and space: The perspective of experience*. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Werbner, P. (1999). Global pathways: Working-class cosmopolitans and the creation of transna-tional ethnic worlds. *Social Anthropology, 1*(7), 17–35.

Ye, J. (2019). Re-orienting geographies of urban diversity and coexistence: Analyzing inclusion and difference in public space. *Progress in Human Geography, 43*(3), 478–495.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>
Chapter 8

# What's in a Street? Exploring Suspended Cosmopolitanism in Trikoupi, Nicosia

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /></figure>

Check for
updates

Karen Akoka, Olivier Clochard, Iris Polyzou, and Camille Schmoll

## 8.1 A Street-Level Approach to Urban Cosmopolitanism

The island of Cyprus is an appealing and yet under-researched case of a highly diverse setting. Located at the intersection of three continents, Cyprus has historically been a multicultural, multilingualistic and multi-confessional space, with an ethnically diverse population originating from the Mediterranean region composed of Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians (many arriving in the aftermath of the 1917 Genocide), Egyptians, Syrians, Palestinians (many arriving after the creation of the State of Israel), Turks, Greeks from Turkey (who left after the population exchange following the First World War), as well as Greeks from Egypt (who left after 1956, with the Suez Crisis and Nasser's regime).

Cyprus remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the EU (Eurostat 2019). According to the latest census (2011), foreigners comprise 21% of the overall population, 62% of whom originate from an EU country. Services, agriculture and domestic work are the primary economic sectors for the migrant population. The principal countries of origin are Romania, Bulgaria, the Philippines, Vietnam,

K. Akoka
ISP, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, Nanterre, France
e-mail: k.akoka@parisnanterre.fr

O. Clochard
CNRS MIGRINTER, Université de Poitiers, IC Migrations, Poitiers, France
e-mail: olivier.clochard@univ-poitiers.fr

I. Polyzou
Ecole Française d'Athènes, Athens, Greece

C. Schmoll (✉)
Géographie-Cités, École des Hautes Études and Sciences Sociales, IC Migrations, Paris, France
e-mail: camille.schmoll@ehess.fr
Chapter 8

# What's in a Street? Exploring Suspended Cosmopolitanism in Trikoupi, Nicosia

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /></figure>

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Karen Akoka, Olivier Clochard, Iris Polyzou, and Camille Schmoll

## 8.1 A Street-Level Approach to Urban Cosmopolitanism

The island of Cyprus is an appealing and yet under-researched case of a highly diverse setting. Located at the intersection of three continents, Cyprus has historically been a multicultural, multilingualistic and multi-confessional space, with an ethnically diverse population originating from the Mediterranean region composed of Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians (many arriving in the aftermath of the 1917 Genocide), Egyptians, Syrians, Palestinians (many arriving after the creation of the State of Israel), Turks, Greeks from Turkey (who left after the population exchange following the First World War), as well as Greeks from Egypt (who left after 1956, with the Suez Crisis and Nasser's regime).

Cyprus remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the EU (Eurostat 2019). According to the latest census (2011), foreigners comprise 21% of the overall population, 62% of whom originate from an EU country. Services, agriculture and domestic work are the primary economic sectors for the migrant population. The principal countries of origin are Romania, Bulgaria, the Philippines, Vietnam,

K. Akoka
ISP, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, Nanterre, France
e-mail: k.akoka@parisnanterre.fr

O. Clochard
CNRS MIGRINTER, Université de Poitiers, IC Migrations, Poitiers, France
e-mail: olivier.clochard@univ-poitiers.fr

I. Polyzou
Ecole Française d'Athènes, Athens, Greece

C. Schmoll (✉)
Géographie-Cités, École des Hautes Études and Sciences Sociales, IC Migrations,
Paris, France
e-mail: camille.schmoll@ehess.fr
Sri Lanka and Russia. International migration to Cyprus is strongly feminized, with 122 female migrants for every 100 male migrants. This chapter explores the issue of cosmopolitanism in Cyprus, drawing on fieldwork undertaken in the capital city, Nicosia, where one-third of the non-Cypriot population currently lives (Cystat 2015).

Recent research has witnessed an increasing interest in street-level approaches in migration and urban studies (Hall 2013). Important works such as Glick-Schiller and Caglar’s “Locating Migration” (2011) have shown that the investigation of local situations enables for a better understanding of the complexities and entanglements of the multiple scales at work in shaping the situation of international migrants. In short, a local glance does not mean falling into the trap of “localism.” Following such trends in urban studies and migration research, this chapter looks at the street as a compelling lens to understand less-documented forms of cohabitation, contested citizenship, and power relations.

We conducted a collective *in situ* observation in Trikoupi Street, a main thoroughfare in the southern part of the old city. Trikoupi Street makes an interesting case study because it has undergone contradictory processes of urban change and heavy migration inflows in a context of restrictive asylum and migration policies. These factors make it a good case study for investigating cohabitations and tensions in a context of social and political change.

We asked people about their trajectories, looked at the way they inhabited the street and listened to how they described their environs. We paid attention to shared and contested stories in order to grasp common as well as contrasting neighborhood practices and to situate the multivocality of the street’s history.<fnref n="1" /> Very importantly, we collected information both from “locals” – that is, Cypriot nationals – as well as from international migrants.

## 8.2 Locating Vulnerability: International Migration in Nicosia's City Center

Looking at Trikoupi Street through the prism of its inhabitants’ eyes and practices allows for an exploration of a number of complex spatial and temporal connections. Urban change in Trikoupi Street has been embedded within multi-layered spaces and temporalities, including the daily rhythm of street-level interactions, the historically generated features of urban history, and the accelerations/decelerations of urban redevelopment programs. As an urban palimpsest, the street retains traces of significant conflictual episodes (Amin and Thrift 2002). In Trikoupi Street’s recent history, generations of internal and international migrants and refugees and

<footnote n="1">¹We triangulate sometimes divergent oral accounts with accounts given by the local media and interviews with various key informants such as public servants, NGO members involved in migration issues and institutional actors (municipality, asylum services, UNHCR, Ombudsman). This not only allows us to check on the information provided but also addresses the interpretative conflicts which are part of city making.</footnote>
Sri Lanka and Russia. International migration to Cyprus is strongly feminized, with 122 female migrants for every 100 male migrants. This chapter explores the issue of cosmopolitanism in Cyprus, drawing on fieldwork undertaken in the capital city, Nicosia, where one-third of the non-Cypriot population currently lives (Cystat 2015).

Recent research has witnessed an increasing interest in street-level approaches in migration and urban studies (Hall 2013). Important works such as Glick-Schiller and Caglar's "Locating Migration" (2011) have shown that the investigation of local situations enables for a better understanding of the complexities and entanglements of the multiple scales at work in shaping the situation of international migrants. In short, a local glance does not mean falling into the trap of "localism." Following such trends in urban studies and migration research, this chapter looks at the street as a compelling lens to understand less-documented forms of cohabitation, contested citizenship, and power relations.

We conducted a collective *in situ* observation in Trikoupi Street, a main thoroughfare in the southern part of the old city. Trikoupi Street makes an interesting case study because it has undergone contradictory processes of urban change and heavy migration inflows in a context of restrictive asylum and migration policies. These factors make it a good case study for investigating cohabitations and tensions in a context of social and political change.

We asked people about their trajectories, looked at the way they inhabited the street and listened to how they described their environs. We paid attention to shared and contested stories in order to grasp common as well as contrasting neighborhood practices and to situate the multivocality of the street's history.<fnref n="1" /> Very importantly, we collected information both from “locals” – that is, Cypriot nationals – as well as from international migrants.

## 8.2 Locating Vulnerability: International Migration in Nicosia's City Center

Looking at Trikoupi Street through the prism of its inhabitants' eyes and practices allows for an exploration of a number of complex spatial and temporal connections. Urban change in Trikoupi Street has been embedded within multi-layered spaces and temporalities, including the daily rhythm of street-level interactions, the historically generated features of urban history, and the accelerations/decelerations of urban redevelopment programs. As an urban palimpsest, the street retains traces of significant conflictual episodes (Amin and Thrift 2002). In Trikoupi Street's recent history, generations of internal and international migrants and refugees and

<footnote n="1">¹We triangulate sometimes divergent oral accounts with accounts given by the local media and interviews with various key informants such as public servants, NGO members involved in migration issues and institutional actors (municipality, asylum services, UNHCR, Ombudsman). This not only allows us to check on the information provided but also addresses the interpretative conflicts which are part of city making.</footnote>
generations of traders, artisans and small-scale industrial activities have followed one after another. Many diverse kinds of people on the move – asylum seekers, refugees, students, permanent and temporary foreign workers – live, work, and consume in Trikoupi Street. A simple look at the storefronts gives an idea of the ethnically diverse atmosphere of the neighborhood: halal butcheries and groceries as well as Middle Eastern restaurants and barber shops cohabit with Filipino and Eastern European second-hand shops; Asian food shops are next money transfer services; Internet boutiques and shipping services cross stores selling African hair locks and beauty products.

Most of the migrants we met in Trikoupi – with the exception of EU citizens, who are allowed to stay and work – were clearly in a precarious legal and financial situation. Their vulnerability is closely connected to migration policy: although Cyprus has progressively adopted a number of EU directives since 2004 and even composed its first Action Plan for the integration of markets in 2011, the overall policy approach remains restrictive in terms of access to social protection and participation.

Three main issues are important to consider when it comes to non-EU migrants in Cyprus. First, the island has witnessed an increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Asylum seekers remain in a state of vulnerability because they receive only limited social and economic support and overall rejection rates remain high (AIDA-ECRE 2018; UNHCR Cyprus 2018; Commissioner for Administration and Human Rights (Ombudsman) 2019). Second, Cyprus, and especially Nicosia, hosts a large number of international students which tend to abandon their studies in order to seek employment (24h.com 2017). Third, most international migrants to Cyprus are defined as “migrant workers.” The Cypriot legal framework for migration promotes the model of a temporary presence, proposing short-term work visas linked to a specific employer and limited to a number of predetermined economic sectors – the domestic work visa, for instance, is strictly limited to a six-year stay (Trimikliniotis 2016). As scholars point out, Cyprus’s labor migration regime, linked as it is to the country’s economic growth during the last few decades which created a huge demand for low-paid workers, is an authoritarian one. After three decades of heavy migratory movements flows, third-country nationals are still seen as a flexible and low-paid workforce. Since many of these migrant workers overstay their visas, they find themselves in an irregular situation and, as such, particularly vulnerable.

For these vulnerable groups, the Trikoupi area was an attractive location due to its affordable accommodation. The recent history of Nicosia city center helps explain this state of affairs. The city has not yet undergone processes of gentrification similar to those that have occurred in many European cities (Carmenos and Sabrié 2017). This is firstly due to the conflict opposing the northern and southern parts of the island: following the occupation of the northern part of the island by Turkey in 1974 the city was divided and experienced a slow and steady process of desertification. The conflict, whose scars remain visible in Nicosia’s urban landscape, led to many vacancies in the residential and commercial building stock in the southern part of the city. As an immediate result of the conflict, the Turkish-Cypriot
generations of traders, artisans and small-scale industrial activities have followed one after another. Many diverse kinds of people on the move – asylum seekers, refugees, students, permanent and temporary foreign workers – live, work, and consume in Trikoupi Street. A simple look at the storefronts gives an idea of the ethnically diverse atmosphere of the neighborhood: halal butcheries and groceries as well as Middle Eastern restaurants and barber shops cohabit with Filipino and Eastern European second-hand shops; Asian food shops are next money transfer services; Internet boutiques and shipping services cross stores selling African hair locks and beauty products.

Most of the migrants we met in Trikoupi – with the exception of EU citizens, who are allowed to stay and work – were clearly in a precarious legal and financial situation. Their vulnerability is closely connected to migration policy: although Cyprus has progressively adopted a number of EU directives since 2004 and even composed its first Action Plan for the integration of markets in 2011, the overall policy approach remains restrictive in terms of access to social protection and participation.

Three main issues are important to consider when it comes to non-EU migrants in Cyprus. First, the island has witnessed an increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Asylum seekers remain in a state of vulnerability because they receive only limited social and economic support and overall rejection rates remain high (AIDA-ECRE 2018; UNHCR Cyprus 2018; Commissioner for Administration and Human Rights (Ombudsman) 2019). Second, Cyprus, and especially Nicosia, hosts a large number of international students which tend to abandon their studies in order to seek employment (24h.com 2017). Third, most international migrants to Cyprus are defined as “migrant workers.” The Cypriot legal framework for migration promotes the model of a temporary presence, proposing short-term work visas linked to a specific employer and limited to a number of predetermined economic sectors – the domestic work visa, for instance, is strictly limited to a six-year stay (Trimikliniotis 2016). As scholars point out, Cyprus’s labor migration regime, linked as it is to the country’s economic growth during the last few decades which created a huge demand for low-paid workers, is an authoritarian one. After three decades of heavy migratory movements flows, third-country nationals are still seen as a flexible and low-paid workforce. Since many of these migrant workers overstay their visas, they find themselves in an irregular situation and, as such, particularly vulnerable.

For these vulnerable groups, the Trikoupi area was an attractive location due to its affordable accommodation. The recent history of Nicosia city center helps explain this state of affairs. The city has not yet undergone processes of gentrification similar to those that have occurred in many European cities (Carmenos and Sabrié 2017). This is firstly due to the conflict opposing the northern and southern parts of the island: following the occupation of the northern part of the island by Turkey in 1974 the city was divided and experienced a slow and steady process of desertification. The conflict, whose scars remain visible in Nicosia’s urban landscape, led to many vacancies in the residential and commercial building stock in the southern part of the city. As an immediate result of the conflict, the Turkish-Cypriot
population abandoned their properties, which amounted to around 30% of the city's buildings – most of these abandoned properties remain vacant today.<fnref n="2" /> Moreover, desertification was reinforced during the 1980s and 1990s by the progressive suburbanization of the Greek-Cypriot population. Most Greek-Cypriot households prefer to settle in the periphery of the city, which has actually become its economic and commercial center. However, the desertification of the downtown has been progressively altered through urban policies. This process started in the early 1980s within the framework of the bi-communal project “Nicosia Master Plan” (NMP). The NMP aimed to revitalize the area and attract new residents in under-populated sections on both sides of the city center. This redevelopment plan grew even stronger by the addition of new actors after Cyprus’s integration in the EU and a warming of relations between the two sides of the divided island. The range of actors currently involved in the rehabilitation project is therefore very wide: local and national actors (municipalities), regional actors (the EU) and transnational/supranational actors (UNESCO and the UN). Trikoupi Street has thus in recent years undergone a process of urban change, attracting a new population of foreign investors and Cypriots who see it as a centrally-located, historically charming area with significant economic potential. Only a few parts of Nicosia, however, can be described as “gentrified,” since very few Greek-Cypriots settle in the old city center – the overwhelming majority prefer to live in the modern residential outskirts of the city. Other limited forms of gentrification appear connected to practices of consumption. The middle and upper-class Greek-Cypriot population started to meet in bars and cafés. They shopped in trendy stores and international clothing chains with recently opened stores in Nicosia center (in Ledras Street, in particular). Moreover, tourists, who tended to disregard the city as a possible attraction, have recently started taking day trips to downtown Nicosia.

The old city center remains, though, partially abandoned and the redevelopment process has been left unfinished.<fnref n="3" /> Downtown Nicosia somehow stands in a sort of limbo between an apparent but very low and limited gentrification process and an urban sprawl process that eventually decelerated. For these diverse reasons, the area has since the 1990s been an affordable place for foreign residents. The large number of vacant apartments, the low rental prices, the centrality of the area and its proximity to the main bus station all proved to be important factors that led to the settlement of migrants in the available housing stock of a number of areas close to Trikoupi, Rigenis and Arsinois Streets. As mentioned above, the vulnerable and

<footnote n="2">²The Turkish Cypriot Properties Department of the Ministry of Interior is responsible for managing those properties. Mainly, they can be lent to Greek Cypriots for housing or commercial activities. The rent and conditions for utilizing such properties are based on a contract between the occupant and the Department. The management of these properties has been controversial since, in many cases, the rental price is quite low and a number of Greek Cypriot entrepreneurs who occupy them make considerable profits. The mismanagement of Turkish Cypriot properties is a topic fully covered in the daily Greek Cypriot press. See https://politis.com.cy/article/to-megalo-parti-ton-periousion</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³The development of the centrally located Eleftherias square and the new municipal building are the two main projects under construction.</footnote>
population abandoned their properties, which amounted to around 30% of the city's buildings – most of these abandoned properties remain vacant today.<fnref n="2" /> Moreover, desertification was reinforced during the 1980s and 1990s by the progressive suburbanization of the Greek-Cypriot population. Most Greek-Cypriot households prefer to settle in the periphery of the city, which has actually become its economic and commercial center. However, the desertification of the downtown has been progressively altered through urban policies. This process started in the early 1980s within the framework of the bi-communal project “Nicosia Master Plan” (NMP). The NMP aimed to revitalize the area and attract new residents in under-populated sections on both sides of the city center. This redevelopment plan grew even stronger by the addition of new actors after Cyprus’s integration in the EU and a warming of relations between the two sides of the divided island. The range of actors currently involved in the rehabilitation project is therefore very wide: local and national actors (municipalities), regional actors (the EU) and transnational/supranational actors (UNESCO and the UN). Trikoupi Street has thus in recent years undergone a process of urban change, attracting a new population of foreign investors and Cypriots who see it as a centrally-located, historically charming area with significant economic potential. Only a few parts of Nicosia, however, can be described as “gentrified,” since very few Greek-Cypriots settle in the old city center – the overwhelming majority prefer to live in the modern residential outskirts of the city. Other limited forms of gentrification appear connected to practices of consumption. The middle and upper-class Greek-Cypriot population started to meet in bars and cafés. They shopped in trendy stores and international clothing chains with recently opened stores in Nicosia center (in Ledras Street, in particular). Moreover, tourists, who tended to disregard the city as a possible attraction, have recently started taking day trips to downtown Nicosia.

The old city center remains, though, partially abandoned and the redevelopment process has been left unfinished.<fnref n="3" /> Downtown Nicosia somehow stands in a sort of limbo between an apparent but very low and limited gentrification process and an urban sprawl process that eventually decelerated. For these diverse reasons, the area has since the 1990s been an affordable place for foreign residents. The large number of vacant apartments, the low rental prices, the centrality of the area and its proximity to the main bus station all proved to be important factors that led to the settlement of migrants in the available housing stock of a number of areas close to Trikoupi, Rigenis and Arsinois Streets. As mentioned above, the vulnerable and

<footnote n="2">²The Turkish Cypriot Properties Department of the Ministry of Interior is responsible for managing those properties. Mainly, they can be lent to Greek Cypriots for housing or commercial activities. The rent and conditions for utilizing such properties are based on a contract between the occupant and the Department. The management of these properties has been controversial since, in many cases, the rental price is quite low and a number of Greek Cypriot entrepreneurs who occupy them make considerable profits. The mismanagement of Turkish Cypriot properties is a topic fully covered in the daily Greek Cypriot press. See https://politis.com.cy/article/to-megalo-parti-ton-periousion</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³The development of the centrally located Eleftherias square and the new municipal building are the two main projects under construction.</footnote>
transitory social status of international migrants led to the search of affordable housing solutions. As a result, multiple forms of cohabitation, of shared apartments and precarious ways of living, emerged.

## 8.3 Inhabiting Trikoupi

Dina Vaiou (2007) define urban interstices as temporary situations in which pieces of the city become accessible to the most vulnerable and disempowered, most often for a relatively short period of time, before strong processes of urban change appear. The notion of “spatial interstice,” in particular, refers to abandoned, neglected, or marginal spaces underutilized by the locals: gardens, roundabouts, sidewalks, spaces at the margins of urban regeneration operations, wastelands undergoing regeneration, or planning operations that have failed. For vulnerable migrants and refugees, Trikoupi Street clearly is this kind of place: a place where they can find cheap rentals and even work opportunities.

But what kind of people inhabit Trikoupi today? How do they inhabit it? We use the term “inhabit” in a very broad sense, not limited to residents, in order to point to how the street has become a crossroad of different usages and practices. Such usages, as we shall see, are profoundly interconnected. Trikoupi is a place to settle, to shop, to work, to search for work. It is a place to settle since many immigrants, students and asylum seekers have their residence in the neighborhood. It is a place to shop, as goods from all over the world are sold. It is a crossroad, as migrants scattered across Cyprus congregate here on Sundays in order to meet friends, have drinks, get a haircut, buy food, or do deals. It is a meeting place for finding work: at the roundabout at the end of the street, male migrants assemble in the morning, waiting for employers to take them to work in the fields or in urban services. It is a workplace for shop owners and employees, as well as for the Turkophone Bulgarian sex workers who occupy the street's sidewalks. It is an ambiguous “emotional labour” place, a blurred zone between sex work and flirting, as migrant domestic workers rent flats to host boyfriends and clients during their free days. Finally, it is a religious place, since Trikoupi street is located near the Omerye mosque where Muslim residents and visitors come and pray.

Mass-media representations of the street's diversity tend to be negative. Some newspaper articles see Trikoupi as a “dangerous” area associated with criminality, ghettoization and prostitution – but other press articles see a symbol of Cyprus's positive multicultural identity. The articles adopting a negative view of Trikoupi's diversity tend to depict migrants as directly or indirectly responsible for the urban and social decay of the area, which is called a “ghetto of migrants”: “during the night you won't see any Greek-Cypriot, only migrants on the streets of the abandoned buildings” (“Three Problems” 2013). A documentary produced by a local TV channel, entitled “The Broken Shopfront of the Capital” (2015), underlined the point that the concentration of stores run by or for migrants went hand in hand with “dirt,” alcohol and the desertification of the area. At the same time, a very different