The Other Diaspora: South Asian Migrants in The Gulf States

Abstract

Temporary People (2017), a collection of stories by Deepak Unnikrishnan brings to light the forgotten and ignored experiences of South Asian work migrants in the Gulf States. Those immigrants are simultaneously excluded from their home country and from the Emirati society, deemed by both as redundant and disposable. The precarious situations of these immigrants are aggravated by a fraught socioeconomic and ecological structures at home (forever deprived of human and civil rights) and in the host country (always considered an Other, a foreigner). Those migratory routes to the Gulf have not been included within South Asian diasporic discourse as those laborers have ambivalent relationships with the homeland. Unnikrishnan, once a Gulf boy, now lives in the USA, sheds light on contested meanings of being a “Pravasi” away from “Veed”. In this article, I examine the ways in which South Asian laborers in the Gulf are groundless beings with fragile roots back in the homeland in selected stories in Temporary People.