Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Michiel Baas, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait are both amongst the largest migrant receiving countries in the world. In the Emirate of Dubai migrant workers comprise eighty percent of the population, while in neighboring Kuwait migrants outnumber citizens three to one. But while these Gulf states are heavily reliant on migrant labor, they are hesitant to offer citizenship rights and protections to migrants, even those who have been born within their borders. The Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC) do not offer jus solis or land-based birthright, only jus sanguinis or blood-based citizenship transfer – mostly through the father.

In this presentation I draw on ethnographic field work with migrant mothers and stateless children to show how national and transnational policies hinder the lives of stateless migrants. The past decade has seen an increase in the number of female migrants to the region as women come from Asia and Africa mostly to take up jobs as domestic workers, nannies, beauticians, and service workers. But the problem is that these women are contractually sterilized. The kefala system- a guest worker program that structures migrant labor in many Gulf countries- mandates that female workers not engage in sexual relations for the duration of their contracts. Note also that most women who migrate to the Gulf do so during their most fertile years, and many spend five to ten years in their host countries. While some engage in consensual relations with boyfriends or partners, others are raped by abusive employers. When they become pregnant, it is a visible marker that they have violated both the kefala contours requiring contractual sterilization, as well as sharia laws about sex outside of marriage or zina. Migrant women are then incarcerated when their pregnancies are discovered. They give birth in jail, stand trial for their crimes and are often deported back to their sending countries – without their babies. The children remain in Kuwait or the UAE because they are stateless due to laws about citizenship transfer.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Pardis Mahdavi, PhD is Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology and Director of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College. Her research interests include gendered labor, migration, sexuality, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health in the context of changing global and political structures. She is the author of four books: her first book, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution was published with Stanford University Press in 2008, and her second book, Gridlock: Labor, Migration and “Human Trafficking” in Dubai, also Stanford University Press, was published in 2011. Mahdavi’s third book, entitled From Trafficking to Terror: Constructing a Global Social Problem was published by Routledge on October 1, 2013, and her fourth book, Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives also Stanford University Press was published in April 2016.

Pardis was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the Asia Society, and has received fellowships and awards from institutions such as Google Ideas, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Drug Research Institute, the American Public Health Association, and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She has consulted for a wide array of organizations including the US government, Google Inc., and the United Nations. In 2012, she won the Wig Award for teaching at Pomona College.

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