The Migrant Professor

Back on August 20th the New York Times ran this article [ungated version here at IHT] on migrant professors in the UAE. An excerpt:

Then there is Peter Mitias, the migrant professor.

An economist with a Louisiana doctorate and a Mississippi drawl, he shocked his friends when he left a tenured job in Virginia for the American University of Sharjah, a school conjured from nothing by a sheik in the suburbs of Dubai. But when he lists the benefits of working abroad, Mr. Mitias crows.

He has free housing and utilities. (''Sweet!'') He has international experience on his résumé. (''Huge!'') He has cheap household help, good schools for his children and a BMW and a Mercedes he was able to buy by paying no income tax. Not to mention plenty of American fast food.

''Papa John's delivers to my house,'' he said. ''It's all here!''

This is migrant work, Ph.D.-style -- a lesson about labor, a comment on class, a window onto globalization and a phenomenon on the rise.
...
Mr. Mitias, a football-loving, squirrel-hunting, anything-but-alienated graduate of Louisiana State, has found himself the accidental internationalist, thrilling to possibilities he had not previously glimpsed.

He describes life abroad as a successive discovery of freedoms: freedom from taxes, freedom from mortgages, freedom from crime, freedom from the sex and violence his daughters would see on American television. He and his wife have taken them to places as different as London and Vietnam, and to Thailand three times. ''The world's at your fingertips,'' he said.
...
Mr. Mitias's favorite metaphor is a spinning globe. ''I could go to Europe. I could go to Asia. I could go to South America,'' he said.

Economists would say it's a truism. You may gripe about this or that about the place, but the reason you are here is that the UAE is best for you at this time. Otherwise you'd chosen somewhere else to be. Enjoy.