Expat' in Abu Dhabi: Whiteness and national group construction among French migrants.

Summary Based on an ethnography combining observation and interviews, this thesis analyzes the migratory experiences of French residents in Abu Dhabi. Nuancing the portrait of "expatriates" frequently presented as hypermobile, it shows that they in fact take marked migratory routes. These routes are notably shaped by the encounter between Emirati politics and the transnational French state, in a context of postcolonial competition that translates into strategies of distancing themselves from British colonialism and US imperialism. The construction of the national group, framed by migratory institutions, unfolds in the delimitation of borders associating franchness and whiteness, through interactions with Emirati nationals as well as with other migrant groups. If the relationship with the South Asian majority population is marked by a distancing, albeit disrupted by the frequency of domestic employment, the relationship with Emirati citizens engages a singular disturbance in the postcolonial order. French residents thus experience a limited but anxiety-provoking vulnerability to Emiratis who are perceived as omnipotent. In this way, French migration to Abu Dhabi reveals itself as a place of destabilization as well as a solidification of whiteness. By highlighting the way in which these white reconfigurations intersect with a gender regime in which hetero-conjugality is reinforced, the thesis makes a contribution to the plural analysis of social relations in North-South migrations.