Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
“If you don't fit the idea of trafficking and you are a sex worker you are a criminal,
andifyouaren'tasexworkerbutyouareanAfricanwoman,youareseenasacriminal,”
said Suad. If a migrant woman outside the sex industry experiences force, fraud, or co-
ercion,sheisoftennotconsidered“trafficked,”andifsheis,theoutreachgiventoheris
either deportation or detention. If a man experiences force, fraud, or coercion and seeks
out-reach in the name of having been trafficked, he is emasculated and often has no av-
enues to turn to.
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The rhetoric seeks to discipline bodies and this discipline is at the level of the state,
outreachefforts,andmigrantworkers.Theresultof“developmentdiscipline”isthatmi-
grant women feel under increased scrutiny, and often fear the after effects of “rescue.”
Menarenolongerconsidered ariskcategory,regardless ofthemyriadabusestheyface.
The UAE government is also put in a precarious position in that they need to perform
a certain way in order to be perceived as being in adherence with U.S. antitrafficking
policies. To conform to American expectations they have to show increased prosecu-
tions of “sex traffickers” and demonstrate a commitment to fighting “sex trafficking”
byincreasing lawenforcement and“tightening borders,”regardless ofwhether thismay
increasechallengesmigrantworkersface,orthefactthatthiseclipsesthelargerissueof
migrants' rights.
Producing Panic, Necessitating “Rescue”
movement of female bodies across borders that feeds rhetoric about the need to rescue
“victims of human trafficking.” Around the world today, conversations about labor, mi-
gration, sex work, and trafficking have been on a collision course. Policy makers, aca-
demics, and activists working within these fields of concern have conflated issues of
authoritarianism, race, class, and gender in ways that have served to marginalize the
populations most affected by policies and portraits painted about their lives. Most not-
ably,migrantGulfresidents,andparticularlywomen,foreignresidents,and“trafficked”
persons have been excluded from the opportunity to contribute their own narratives to
the programmatic paradigms that they have been scripted into. This research seeks to
ameliorate this gap in our understanding while responding to the development efforts
that deploy outreach in the name of “antitrafficking activism” to regulate and restrict
the movement of certain bodies (gendered and racialized) in certain spaces and discuss
ways in which existing narratives about the Gulf mask the complexity of the messy in-
tersections of race, class, nationality, and gender in the rapidly changing urban and in-
stitutional spaces of the post petro-dollars Gulf states.
Theconstructionsof“traffickedvictim”and“sexworker”arehighlygendered,raced,
and sexualized. Labels such as “migrant” and “trafficked victim” are often placed on
