The United Arab Emirates and Diaspora Reconnection

The short version

The overwhelming majority of people in the UAE were born elsewhere, and most of the country as it now looks was built inside one lifetime. For a traveller who comes to this site through an interest in diaspora and return, that makes the UAE a different proposition from an ancestral-homeland trip. The subject here is migration as an ongoing condition.

The older connections

None of this began with oil. This coast sat inside an Indian Ocean network for centuries, trading pearls, dates and textiles with India, East Africa and Persia and moving people in both directions with the goods. The Gujarati and Persian influence in the older districts is the visible residue of that, and it long predates the state.

What a visitor can actually see

The restored districts of the old ports show the trading town underneath the modern city. At Al Ain the falaj channels show the older, inland, agricultural country that the coast depended on. The everyday version is in the markets and the cafeterias of the working neighbourhoods, which is where most of the population actually lives and eats.

What we do not claim

We will not present a Gulf trip as a roots journey when for most of our travellers it is not one. What it can be is a serious encounter with a society where arrival is the norm rather than the exception, and with the labour that built it, which is a subject worth travelling for honestly rather than around.

Verify Before You Travel

The Al Ain inscription record is on UNESCO's page for the Cultural Sites of Al Ain. Next: culture and etiquette and the food guide.

Sources

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: the inscription of the Cultural Sites of Al Ain in 2011 under criteria (iii)(iv)(v). Accessed 15 September 2026.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: the UAE’s State Party record: three properties inscribed on the World Heritage List. Accessed 15 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: United Arab Emirates travel advice: the FCDO issues no advisory against travel to any part of the UAE. Accessed 15 September 2026.