Out now in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space where I discuss how remittances from Dubai-based Indian diasporas are being financialized for elite infrastructure projects in Indian cities thus furthering uneven urban development. Details below:

Menon, S. (2025). Dubai diasporas, transnational remittances and intimate infrastructures of finance in India. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 57(6): 719–738. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X251344129

Abstract

Recently, cities across India and the Global South have been constructing ‘world-class’ infrastructures. Scholars have examined the global financial instruments and investment vehicles facilitating this infrastructure boom in Southern cities, which is furthering uneven urban development. But we know little about other more intimate flows of capital that are also supporting Southern urban transformations. In this paper, I examine how remittances from middle- class Indian diasporas in Dubai, UAE become financial instruments to fund luxury real estate projects in Kochi city in Kerala, India. I do this by examining the everyday financial practices of transnational actors, including Kochi-based real estate developers, Dubai-based Indian diasporas and Indian banks and financial institutions. I show that by packaging remittances into standardized debt-based instruments, Indian banks act as financial intermediaries between developers and diasporas to manage risks associated with transnational investments. Thus, Indian banks and financial institutions act as ‘shadow actors’ during the production of unevenly developed urban spaces in India. My work extends literature in economic geography, financial geography and global urban studies by highlighting how informal sources of capital are financialized and made visible to formal financial circuits, furthering uneven development in Southern cities.

Keywords

Urban development, real estate, financialization, remittances, migration, Global South

Acknowledgements

This article has benefitted from discussions at the Center for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, India where I was affiliated as a PhD Research Scholar from 2022 to 2023, the ‘Global Development, Speculative Urbanism and Infrastructure: Critical Approaches to Capital and Difference’ panel at AAG Honolulu in April 2024, at Antipode’s 9th Institute for Geographies of Justice at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis in June 2024, at the ‘Ordinary Places: Thinking about Space, Scale, and Region in South Indian Cities’ panel at the 52nd Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison in November 2024, at the Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World Graduate Student Research Workshop at NYU Abu Dhabi in February 2025, at the ‘Remittance and Resilience: Towards New Geographies of Transnational Urbanism in the Global South’ panel at AAG Detroit in March 2025. I’d like to thank Michael Goldman, Eric Sheppard, Beverly Mullings, Araby Smyth, Rhea Zaimi, Andre Ortega, Llerena Searle, Shubhra Gururani, Kajri Jain, Nikhil Rao, Indivar Jonnalagadda, Thomas Oommen, Erin Pettigrew, Nathalie Peutz, George Jose, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Neha Vora, Anju Mary Paul, Michelle Buckley, Maritza Cristina García Pallas, Aurelie Varrel, and Marta Erdal for their comments which have strengthened this article. I’m extremely grateful to Kris Olds and Stephen Young for their feedback on the final version of this article. Lastly, I want to thank Susanne Soderberg, Katie Nudd, and two anonymous EPA reviewers for their academic labor in getting this article published.