Application summary

How do businesses and entrepreneurs adapt when economic and geopolitical conditions change rapidly? And how do new patterns of mobility reshape the relationships between businesses, cities and global markets? Dubai has become an important destination for internationally mobile businesspeople and professionals from a range of countries, including Russia. This project examines the experiences and strategies of Russian businesspeople who have relocated to Dubai since 2022, focusing on how they navigate a changing international economic environment and develop new forms of business, identity, belonging, professional and social connection. Combining ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews and analysis of economic and policy data, the research explores how businesspeople establish themselves in a new environment, maintain and develop transnational networks and belonging. Rather than treating mobility simply as the movement of capital between countries, the project examines the social relationships, institutions and everyday practices through which transnational business is organised. By connecting individual experiences with broader changes in patterns of international business mobility, the project contributes to research on globalisation, migration, entrepreneurship and transnational economic networks. Dubai provides a particularly valuable setting for examining how internationally connected business communities respond to a rapidly changing global economy and how new commercial and social connections emerge across regions.