Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
various populations without interrogation. It is for these reasons that many scholars
(such as Denise Brennan 2013;Laura Agustín 2007; and Kamala Kempadoo, 2005) ar-
gue for a larger conceptualization of trafficking within a broader framework of forced
labor and migration, while recognizing the race, class, and gender biases that may ac-
company such labels. It is useful to interrogate the terms we use to describe the exper-
ience of moving to work abroad. As we enter the 21st century, we find ourselves in an
era where the movement of bodies, ideas, and discourses occurs rapidly. While the term
trafficked
is mistakenly used mostly to refer to women, usually in the sex industry, the
term
migrant
, especially in the Gulf, has a very masculine connotation, and one that
is classed as well. In the UAE, “migrant” typically refers to unskilled, low-wage male
workers.
Unskilledfemaleworkersintheformaleconomyarereferredtoashousemaids(
khad-
damah)
or nannies, or more commonly as “the help.” So too the concept of “laborer”
is often gendered, used to refer primarily to low-wage male workers, while women are
viewedas“helping”inthedomesticsphere.Theconceptof“laboring”shouldbeexpan-
ded to include women's work as well. In the UAE, the term
migrant
is never used for
workers of Western backgrounds, who are exclusively referred to as “expatriates.” The
term
expat
implies highly skilled, Western guest workers in the Gulf and can be applied
to people of both genders who come from a certain class and country of origin.
The “War on Terror” and the “War on Trafficking” have both contributed to the pro-
duction of gendered, racialized bodies perceived to be in need of protection/monitoring/
control. As Junaid Rana notes, “the 'War on Terror' exacerbated migrant control, reg-
ulation and discipline to create deportable subjects racialized through notions of illeg-
ality and criminality” (Rana 2011, 137). The “War on Trafficking” is also racialized,
gendered, and sexualized, and quite fixated on prosecution and criminalization. As
many scholars have noted, the trafficking protocol is “framed within the convention on
transnational organized crime … packaged within a protocol on smuggling, [and] re-
flects a preoccupation with illegal immigration as part and parcel of a supposed security
threat posed by transnational organized crime as opposed to a concern with the human
rights of migrants” (Davidson 2006).
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Similar to the raced but faceless “terrorists,” “trafficked” persons, migrant laborers,
and sex workers have been problematically excluded from the opportunity to contribute
their own narratives to the programmatic paradigms that they have been scripted into.
Additionally, global rhetoric about human trafficking is markedly focused on sex traf-
ficking and has constructed the issue (in the minds of the public and policy makers
alike) in specifically gendered, raced, and classed ways. The archetypal trafficking vic-
timsarewomen,minors,orfemaleminorswhohavebeentrickedorforcedinto“human
slavery,” often for the explicit purpose of sexual exploitation. Men, or women outside
