What Does It Mean to Age in Dubai? Exploring Life and Retirement in a City of Migration
Aging is a universal experience, but where and how people grow older is shaped profoundly by their environment, culture, and personal histories. Turkish researcher Idil Akinci delves into this intricate interplay through her fascinating work focused on the Emirate of Dubai. In April, she unveiled a compelling exhibition at Alserkal Avenue titled Afterlives of Retirement: A Multigenerational Archive of Aging and Migration. This immersive showcase featured photography, audio, and video, offering a window into Akinci’s broader research on how long-term residents in the UAE navigate retirement and aging.
Akinci’s focus centers on multigenerational families who arrived in the UAE during the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom have spent the bulk of their working lives in Dubai. For these families, the UAE is no longer just a place of labor or temporary residence — it has become home. It’s where children were raised, careers were built, and deep bonds formed. Now, as the first generation transitions into retirement, Akinci explores crucial questions: Where do retirees envision spending their later years? Do they plan to remain in Dubai or return to their countries of origin? How do caregiving and family roles evolve with age? And importantly, how does the very concept of “home” shift across generations?
The theme of migration and home resonates deeply with Akinci personally. In 2008, she relocated from Turkey to Dubai, embarking on her first extended stay abroad. Early memories include sharing a room in Oud Metha near Lamcy Plaza, an emblematic mall of Dubai’s past now shuttered and sold. The mall, once sporting a colorful clown mascot, epitomized the kind of places deeply etched in the collective memory of residents who grew up during the city’s rapid transformation in the 1990s and 2000s. This anchor of nostalgia and belonging reflects how in an ever-evolving metropolis, physical spaces can embody a sense of home.
Akinci recalls her early days in Dubai as a time of discovery, often on foot and within tightly shared living quarters, where friendships transcended backgrounds from South Asia to North Africa and the Levant. These experiences shaped her understanding of migration not as a mere bureaucratic label but as a lived, complex reality — one she personally inhabited and studied. This personal connection inspired her academic pursuits, leading her in 2013 to research the perspectives of young adults born and raised in the UAE. She was curious about how these individuals conceptualized identity, belonging, and their futures in a transnational, urban landscape.
Over the years, conversations with participants often shifted to their ageing parents and the questions retirement stirred: How do these families envision care? What plans exist for financial security and social support? This evolving dialogue illuminated a broader and less explored narrative — the experience of aging for residents in a region often characterized as youthful and transient.
Despite Dubai’s reputation as a city of young, mobile workers, the demographic landscape is shifting. The population of residents over 65 is growing steadily, signaling that more people are contemplating a future of retirement within the UAE rather than returning abroad. Policy changes have played a role, including the introduction of retirement visas, golden visas, and longer-term residency options, alongside voluntary pension schemes. These measures allow residents to rethink their long-term life plans, influencing decisions on whether to remain, leave, or invest in aging in place.
Akinci’s decade-long research exposes significant generational shifts in the concept of retirement. For the first generation of migrants, retirement was often imagined as a return “home” elsewhere. Their financial priorities frequently revolved around their children’s education or sending remittances abroad, rather than their own retirement within the UAE. Conversely, younger generations raised or born in Dubai view the Emirate as their sole home, redefining ideas of belonging and retirement horizons.
Crucially, Akinci invites us to rethink aging and migration not as separate experiences but as deeply interwoven phenomena. She draws parallels with Europe’s own journey, where the idea of migrants aging in place or making late-life migrations to their adopted countries only recently entered public discourse. In Dubai today, similar shifts are underway as families transition into their second and third generations, with some reaching retirement where they have lived most of their lives.
Policy innovations such as retirement visas and family sponsorship schemes facilitate proximity between aging parents and their families, reshaping social and demographic dynamics. These changes articulate new ways of imagining life post-work, offering valuable insights for policymakers about what shapes retirement choices — whether to stay, invest, or move elsewhere.
Although Akinci now resides in Edinburgh, her bond with Dubai remains strong. Witnessing her research come alive in her exhibition, she observed visitors deeply engaging with the stories and images, nodding in recognition, smiling, even shedding tears. It reaffirmed a universal truth: the questions about what it means to grow old, where life leads after retirement, and how these experiences connect across borders and cultures — these are questions that bind us all.
