Whiteness, upper-class authenticity and legitimacy in the Gulf: 'expatriation' as a struggle in social ranking.

This article discusses the social position of 'expatriation' in Abu Dhabi, in terms of the ranking struggles that distinguish it from the Emirati population, in cultural practices and in the workplace. It shows how strategies, discourses and practices of distinction involve racialised representations of social hierarchies within a transnational space and emphasises the alignment of whiteness, upper-class authenticity and deservingness. This distinction can be seen as a post-colonial struggle over social ranking between racialised segments of the upper classes, characterised by the feeling of losing some of the economic, political and symbolic advantages that colonisation used to guarantee to white migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]