Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

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GRIDLOCK

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Prologue...................................................11 Trafficking Trafficking..................................112 Dubai Inc................................................343 Sex Work.................................................614 Migration in Context.....................................915 Labor Outside Law........................................1256 An (Un)Civil Society.....................................1487 Building Towers, Building Structures.....................1858 Building Castles in the Sand.............................212Acknowledgments............................................225Notes......................................................229Bibliography...............................................239Index......................................................245

Chapter One

AT THE HEART OF THIS BOOK lies a question: How do popular discourses and policies about human trafficking and migration, hammered out in EuroAmerica (principally Washington D.C.), reflect and impact life in countries with different political and social topographies? Using qualitatively based, on-the-ground research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), among the largest migrant-receiving countries in the world today, this work examines the uneasy marriage of policy, paradigms, and reality; namely, how policies conceived elsewhere affect the lived experience of migration, forced labor, and trafficking. Dialogue about human trafficking has itself been "trafficked" or taken over by innumerous policymakers, advocates, and lobbyists, and the resulting implementation of policies and laws on trafficking inevitably shortchanges the intended beneficiaries: persons undergoing situations of abuse or rights violations. Thus examining migrants' experiences is vital for understanding how policies on trafficking, designed to reduce abuse and rights violations, have in their implementation had just the opposite effect on the lives of many migrants in the Gulf. Once we grasp the contrast between policy/ discourse and lived experience, policies that truly serve to protect the rights of migrant workers can be designed and more effectively implemented.

Added to the question of policy is the question of discourse: How do global conversations about trafficking (and media and journalistic representations such as Taken or MTV's EXIT program) create an image of the experiences of migration, forced labor, and sex work in the minds of the public? How do these global stereotypes and caricatures affect policy at the global and local levels in places such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi? And in turn, how do these policies, as well as the global conversations informing them, affect the lives of migrants and trafficked persons? If we look at trafficking as an issue of migration or labor gone awry, we can see the need to frame the concept within the conversations about migration and forced labor. Moreover, it is time to move away from the criminalization framework of current policies and toward reconceptualizing trafficking as a human rights issue.

Given the ways in which trafficking and migration in the Gulf have been castigated in recent policy and discourse, the UAE provides an ideal spot for studying the contrasts between discourse and experience. Between 2004 and 2009 I made several extended trips to the UAE to interview men and women working in various service industries such as domestic work, construction work, and sex work, who came from such diverse places as the Philippines, Iran, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. I also spent several months interviewing government officials in the UAE about labor, migration, and trafficking policies as well as members of the U.S. State department involved in trafficking policy. Overall, I interviewed 60 migrant workers, 30 social service providers, and 20 policymakers, bringing my interviewee total to 110. The research was conducted primarily over the course of four summers, and I was fortunate to benefit from the assistance of three students from the Claremont Colleges (where I teach) throughout my time in the field. One student in particular, Christine (Chris) Sargent (introduced in the Prologue), assisted me throughout the project, accompanying me to several interviews in the field and helping with research and analysis when we returned to the United States. When the term "we" is used throughout the text, I am referring to interviews and experiences shared with Chris.

Sarah Burgess and Abby DiCarlo provided administrative and occasional research assistance in the field. Our research team, consisting of myself and these three students, employed anthropological research methods of participant observation (immersion in a field setting to observe the population of interest) and in-depth interviews with migrant workers, informal service providers, and officials working on forced labor and migration issues in the UAE. For the sake of confidentiality I have changed the names of all the interviewees in this book. In general, I have retained institutional names in order to reflect interviewees' desires to provide exposure of their organizations' work. Throughout the book I draw on the experiences of my interviewees, not to generalize from my small sample, but rather to show examples of lived experience and examine the disconnect between migrant narratives and policies written about them. I do not mean to imply that all migrant workers undergo the same challenges, nor do I believe that my small sample of activists is representative of all who are involved in building civil society or establishing policy. This sample, gathered over the course of my fieldwork, is comprised of migrant workers, activists, and policymakers I engaged with in the field. While not comprehensive or representative, I believe that these narratives show important disconnects in our understandings of forced labor, migration, and "human trafficking."

* * *

Throughout my fieldwork, and also in my review of policy documents, I observed that policymakers, activists, and opinion leaders place various labels on certain migrant groups, labels that are often not only inaccurate and arbitrary but also gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized. For example, the word trafficked, a contested term that at once claims too much and too little, has grown (in popular discourse) to refer to the experience of all women who migrate primarily into the sex industry. The legal definition refers to abuse characterized by the elements of force, fraud, and/or coercion. Though it stems from a desire to protect the rights of human beings from abuse and exploitation, the discourse around human trafficking in the U. S. that has been constructed through the lens of activism and media sensationalism tends to refer only to women migrating into sex work, while excluding women and men outside the sex industry. The misconception is thus perpetuated that human trafficking refers primarily to a woman, often young, who has been duped or forced into sex work. This construction of trafficking that hinges primarily on the sex industry has shaped the implementation of policies (at least in the UAE) over the past decade. The current disconnect—between the broad legal definition that embraces any...