Suchergebnisse

Across the Middle East, two key dynamics characterize disability rights movements: dynamism and fragility. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities accelerated regional recognition of disability as central to human development and social justice initiatives. New communication platforms, legislative interventions, and institutional capacity-building reflect currents of change and innovation—frequently driven by ground-up initiatives led by or in collaboration with disabled persons' organizations. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic and protracted humanitarian crises pose threats to health and well-being across the region, with grave implications for disabled persons and their movements.

This paper investigates interactions between issues of labor, gender, sexuality, migration, and statehood through the lens of Dubai's unskilled foreign migrant workers. Using ethnographic research methods, including participant observation and in-depth interviews, this paper explores the conflation of discourses on trafficking, migration, and sex work through migrants' narratives. The study is organized around three central questions: 1) What are the social, economic, and political circumstances and structures that make Dubai a major migration and trafficking destination? 2) How do policies about global migration and trafficking, written and brought to fruition in Washington, DC, contrast with lived experiences of migration and forced labor in different countries with different social and political topographies? 3) How do cultural norms about gender, sexuality, morality, and migration influence the implementation of anti-trafficking policy and legal enforcement in Dubai? This study aims to question and deepen our understandings of labor, migration, and socioeconomic development in a rapidly changing, urbanizing environment while contributing to differing discourses on migration, trafficking, and prostitution in the Gulf countries.