Dubai diasporas, transnational remittances and intimate infrastructures of finance in India

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.