Consuming Home: LuLu Malls as Cultural Infrastructures of the Gulf Migrant Imagination

LuLu Enterprises is one of the largest migrant-origin retail corporations in the GCC, and it has grown substantially in Asia over the years. LuLu malls serve as dynamic models of transnational commerce and cultural production, catering primarily to the South Asian migrant community. This chapter traces LuLu’s evolution from its inception as a migrant origin enterprise in the UAE to its growing presence across the GCC and Asia. The study conceptualises these malls as a key cultural and commercial infrastructure that facilitates transregional circuits of goods, labour, and identities across West and South Asia. It reads the malls as socio-cultural texts that reflect the lived experiences of migrant communities, specifically from Kerala, moving beyond viewing them as mere physical shopping spaces. The analysis draws from interviews with return-second-generation migrants who grew up in the UAE, focusing on their experiences with these spaces. The study interrogates the mall’s role in constructing a sense of belonging, affective consumption, and consumer citizenship among migrants. LuLu malls serve as spaces of economic exchange and exist as cultural touchpoints where migrants consume home and engage in identity and community formation practices. This chapter argues that LuLu operates as a material and symbolic node within an emerging Asia Commons, where transregional labour, capital, and culture flows intersect for imagined worlds. The research reimagines migration as a process of shared world-making, enabled by modern infrastructures like LuLu that blur the line between the home-host divide by bridging borders and diasporic imaginaries.