A vivid ethnography of Egyptian migrants to the Arab Gulf states, Migrant Dreams is about the imagination which migration thrives on, and the hopes and ambitions generated by the repeated experience of leaving and returning home. What kind of dreams for a good or better life drives labor migrants? What does being a migrant worker do to one's hopes and ambitions? How does the experience of migration to the Gulf, with its attendant economic and legal precarities, shape migrants' particular dreams of a better life? What do those dreams-be they realistic and productive, or fantastic and unlikely-do to the social worlds of the people who pursue them, and to their families and communities back home upon their return? Based on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork and conversations with Egyptian men from mostly low-income rural backgrounds who migrated as workers to the Gulf, returned home, and migrated again over a period of about a decade, this fine-grained study explores and engages with these questions and more, as the men reflect on their strivings and the dreams they hope to fulfill. Throughout the book, Samuli Schielke highlights the story of one man, Tawfiq, who is particularly gifted at analyzing his own situation and struggles, resulting in a richly nuanced account that will appeal not only to Middle East scholars, but to anyone interested in the lived lives of labor migrants and what their experiences ultimately mean to them.

An intimate portrait of Egyptian migrants' lives and hopes, and their return home.

About the Author
Samuli Schielke is a research fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of numerous publications including most recently, Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence before and after 2011 (2015) and The Perils of Joy: Contesting Mulid Festivals in Contemporary Egypt (2012).

Reviews

"At its best, anthropology does not only make you learn about certain people. It positions you among them and makes you learn with them. You gain a sense of not only where they are, but also where they want to be and don't want to be. Thus you start thinking the world anew with the people you are reading about. Migrant Dreams is anthropology at its best."-Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne

"Timely in its focus and innovative in its style, this book is a welcomed and valuable contribution to the anthropology of migration in general and the Middle East in particular. Moving us beyond rigid binaries between structure and agency, individual and society, and money and morals, this ethnography promises to enrich our understanding of migrants' dreams, imaginations, struggles, frustrations, and triumphs." -Farha Ghannam, Swarthmore College

"This is a book to cherish for scholars and students of labor migration across the global South."-Gerasimos Tsourapas, University of Birmingham

"Migrant Dreams will make an excellent addition to any library and undergraduate or graduate course reading list, particularly those on global migration and capital flows, hope and subjectivity, or the Middle East. Highly recommended."-CHOICE

"Schielke has clearly engaged his subjects, Tawfiq and friends. The rich descriptions where he deliberately includes himself make the reader feel as though they are by his side, talking and observing along with him. It is worth reading."-Middle East Journal

"[This] multi-sited ethnographic approach, coupled with the sensitivity that the author demonstrates in his conversations with Egyptian migrants, make for an empirically rich account of labor migration to the Gulf. . . This is a book to cherish for scholars and students of labor migration across the global South."-Mashriq & Mahjar

"The book is a captivating read, written in a veryfluent manner. . . Schielke's curiosity is contagious: in the chaptersthere are brief discussions of Sufi poetry, white privilege, comparisons ofromance and flirting in the Arab world, views on Nepalese conceptions of natureand numerous other topics. . . The book radiates fresh perspectives to bigquestions of our times and is recommended reading for everyone who wishes to understandthe world through an anthropologist's eyes."-Suomen Antropologi, Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society

"Inherently interesting work of original scholarship. . . an extraordinary study and one that should be a part of every college and university library Contemporary Egyptian Social Issues collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists."-Midwest Book Review

Book Information
ISBN 9789774169564
Author Samuli Schielke
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint The American University in Cairo Press
Publisher The American University in Cairo Press
Weight(grams) 214g