Serial diasporas : how emigrating gulf noncitizens evolve into new diasporas

How do diaspora identities and engagements transform when migrants emigrate after long-term residence from a site of protracted noncitizenship? Unlike Global South-rooted communities in Euro-American contexts, whose diasporic identities are historically understood through citizenship, settlement, and mobility, Gulf-based South and Southeast Asians inhabit an order structured by serial migration, legal precarity, and noncitizenship. Drawing on 23 life-story interviews in English, Hindi, and Filipino with long-term resident Indian and Filipino nationals emigrating from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), we theorise serial diasporas – noncitizen groups with a diasporic homeland outside state formation, ethnicity, or nationality. In the Gulf, we argue that the emergence of serial diaspora is a byproduct of long-term homemaking practices and transnational belonging amid protracted noncitizenship and serial migration. We sketch three illustrative sub-types of serial diasporas – ambivalent, cosmopolitan, and entrepreneurial – each engaged in increasing levels of sociopolitical claims-making and Gulf-centric community formation abroad. Ultimately, we advance diaspora and migration debates by featuring the emergence of serial diasporas and retheorising diaspora ‘origins’, ethnicity, and claims-making in contemporary South-South migration-centric contexts.