The cramped and crowded room: The search for a sense of belonging and emotional well-being among temporary low-wage migrant workers

Recent scholarship on belonging examines how temporary transnational low-wage migrant workers find belonging in the host country. While this is possible for some migrant groups, it overlooks those groups who cannot. This study examines how mutually reinforcing socio-spatial processes converge to produce the unequal distribution of belonging experienced by low-wage migrants at the margins of the margin. Drawing from the emotional narratives of forty-four temporary migrant workers from eleven different countries employed in low-wage work in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the study reveals the exclusionary processes that limit belonging. These processes are rooted in historical hierarchies established by the state and socioeconomic elite along the lines of nationality, race, and ethnicity. The hierarchies are reinforced using socio-spatial disciplinary mechanisms that create and maintain low-wage labor. Social exclusion and the devaluing of certain nationalities are further reinforced within the space of worker accommodation in relation to the stratification of low-wage migrant groups whose behavior replicates society's vertical hierarchies. Analysis focuses specifically on the scale of the room—the cramped, confined space that low-wage migrants share—, how it was experienced spatially, socially, and emotionally, and how it can be a pathway or barrier to accessing a sense of belonging.