Education and the making of mobile livelihoods: Dubai Indian families’ trajectories over time and space

Abstract This paper examines how Indian migrant families in Dubai actively sustain mobile livelihoods across the Indian Ocean and beyond, paying attention to the role played by education in the unfolding of such migrant lives. This paper aims to nuance the experiences of Gulf migrants that have broadly focused on systemic vulnerabilities produced by the legal, economic and social structures encountered in Gulf destinations. This paper builds on the stories of three families from the southern Indian state of Kerala with diverse mobility trajectories over time and space, which is conceptualized in relation to the practice of specific livelihoods, focusing on the patterns and impacts of mobility at different life stages and across generations. Literature engaging with the migration‐education nexus, which reveals that education is an integral part of mobile livelihoods worldwide, provides an analytical backdrop. The paper shows distinct ways in which education forms a crucial part of complex agendas, informing family migration to and from the Gulf region. Furthermore, it captures how migrants’ educational agendas are continuously being adjusted in processes of migration, and how this relates to the ongoing transformation of individual and collective social identities and the remaking of mobile livelihoods.