Subaltern Migrant Foodscapes: Writing Global Dubai/Muscat and Singapore from Below

Abstract From the dense body of historical literature on the Indian Ocean region to the recent geopolitical construct of the “Indo-Pacific,” studies centered on the region seem to be partially stuck in a binary of the past and a future that is being understood through a security lens. This article examines migrant worker food spaces in Dubai, Muscat, and Singapore as registers of memory and present-day archives of the Indian Ocean. These migrant worker food places, although transnational, are considered ethnic ghettos rather than deserving participants in a global discourse. By presenting these migrant foodscapes as repositories of a long durée history of the Indian Ocean, these subaltern places are brought into dialogue with the “global” register on equal terms.