Despite not posting anything over all of break I do have stuff to say (and a PoTW that will go up soon) about it. I’ve noticed this before but for some reason it seemed particularly acute this time around, the UAE is incredibly consumeristic, disgustingly so. It’s as if they took consumerism from the US, and kicked it up a few notches and when they ran out of room they added another notch and moved it there. This dial now goes go 11.
This trend is an increasing one as well. Since I was in Abu Dhabi last winter break two full size malls have opened (one while I was there this last time) and a huge addition has been made to one of the existing ones. Everyone has heard of the Dubai palms and judging by the cars parked outside some of the apartments there the grotesquely rich certainly have.
We talk about social stratification and exclusion of American emigrants to the United States but the UAE has taken that system to a whole new level as well. Hundreds of thousands (I say this conservatively since I don’t know the actual figure, it’s probably millions) of guest workers are employed in the UAE with few rights and no chance of becoming citizens. For the most part these people have the jobs that Emirates don’t want, you know construction, and taxi drivers, and grocery store clerks, fast food servers. Sound strange? Yeah, even Americans will work at McDonalds but don’t expect to see an Emiratie standing on the other side of the drive through window. In America we export our labor, in the UAE they import the people.
It’s enough to make you a little queasy really.
I'm Trevin Ward, I'm a Political Science Student at Iowa State University in Ames, IA.