Dominic Volek: Why Dubai Draws Global Wealth

What does 'global citizens' mean here?

Rather than positioning itself simply as an immigration or residency-advisory firm, Henley & Partners describes its identity around the concept of 'global citizens.'

Clients who are not tied to a single country by default, but who actively choose where to live based on a rational comparison of what each jurisdiction offers.

That framing is not incidental. It reflects a broader shift in how a growing segment of wealthy individuals think about residency and citizenship: less as a fixed accident of birth, and more as one input among several in an ongoing decision about where to base a life and a portfolio.

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Language like this also does real commercial work for the firm using it. Describing clients as 'global citizens' rather than, say, tax migrants or wealthy expatriates reframes the entire activity in a more neutral, even aspirational light — which matters for a business whose core service is helping people leave one jurisdiction for another.

What is Dominic Volek forecasting?

Dominic Volek, one of the firm's more prominent representatives, has predicted that the number of dollar-millionaires will keep growing further into next year, and that migration among this group is establishing itself as the new default trend for the wealthy, rather than a temporary post-pandemic phenomenon.

That is a notable claim to make publicly, since it implies the current wave of relocation activity — the same activity feeding Dubai's lead in the migration rankings — is expected to accelerate rather than plateau, which has direct implications for demand in the residency and prime-property markets that serve this segment.

It is also worth treating any single firm's forward-looking prediction with the same caution applied to the underlying migration data itself: Volek has an obvious professional interest in the trend continuing, since his firm's growth depends on it.

That does not make the forecast wrong, but it is a reason to look at it alongside independent indicators rather than taking it at face value on its own.

What is Nomad Capitalist?

Part of the cultural momentum behind this trend is amplified through channels like Nomad Capitalist, run by Andrew Henderson, which reviews countries specifically for investment potential, residency options and paths to citizenship for an international audience actively considering relocation.

The channel's central thesis is compact and repeated often: once someone accumulates meaningful wealth, they naturally start looking around at where they currently live, comparing it against alternatives, and realizing that better options exist elsewhere — at which point the process of actually moving begins.

What is useful about content like this, independent of any single reviewer's take, is that it functions as a public, ongoing comparison of jurisdictions for exactly the audience Henley & Partners calls 'global citizens.'

That is part of why the two — a data-driven consultancy and a commentary-driven channel — end up reinforcing the same underlying narrative from different directions.

What economic pattern sits underneath?

Underneath both the Henley data and the Nomad Capitalist narrative sits the same broader economic story: the number of dollar-millionaires keeps growing, wealth keeps concentrating increasingly at the top of the distribution, and the middle class in many established economies keeps eroding relative to that top tier.

That combination produces a specific and durable kind of demand: a growing pool of increasingly wealthy individuals who are, by definition, more mobile than the population around them, and who are actively looking for somewhere better to relocate to as their means expand.

It is also a pattern that tends to be self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting in the short term.

As more of this mobile wealth concentrates in a smaller number of favoured destinations, those destinations become more visible and more discussed, which in turn accelerates the same migration trend among the next tier of newly wealthy individuals watching where their peers are choosing to relocate.

Why does it keep pointing back to Dubai?

As the earlier migration data already showed, Dubai leads this migration specifically because of the qualities that this same wealthy, mobile population is looking for — safety, banking access, quality of life and a straightforward path to residency, without many of the trade-offs attached to competing destinations.

For the Dubai property market, the practical implication of this pattern is continuity rather than a one-off spike: if both Henley's forecast and the Nomad Capitalist thesis hold, the pool of internationally mobile wealthy buyers feeding demand in this market is more likely to keep expanding over the coming years than to level off.

The most useful way I have found to apply this, working directly with clients arriving from very different starting countries, is to treat the migration story as background context rather than a sales argument on its own.

A buyer who has already decided to relocate for their own reasons does not need to be convinced that Dubai is a safe haven — what they need is a clear-eyed walk-through of how the local property market actually works, which is a very different conversation.

Frequently asked

What does Henley & Partners call its own clients?

'Global citizens' — a framing that reflects clients choosing where to live based on comparing jurisdictions, rather than staying tied to their country of origin by default.

What is Dominic Volek's forecast for millionaire migration?

He predicts the number of dollar-millionaires will keep growing next year, and that migration is becoming the new default trend for the wealthy.

What is the Nomad Capitalist channel about?

Run by Andrew Henderson, it reviews countries for investment potential, residency and citizenship paths, built around the idea that wealthy individuals naturally look for better places to live as their means grow.