The quote at the core of Yasser Elsheshtawy’s video…
The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk—an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose
bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it.
Dubai’s multiculturalism, however, is mostly joyless because it’s completely tied to work. If you are a foreigner in this city, you must have a job. Multiculturalism cannot truly flourish in such a condition; it’s always stunted by the dead end of employment. What we learn from Dubai is that work is often the beginning but never the end of a migrant’s substance.
