ABSTRACT
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the United Arab Emirates, this chapter tries to foreground the experiences and engagements of women as migrant domestic workers in the state and non-state activities that are embedded in transnational migration. On the course of their travels, women domestic workers encounter and engage with different levels of legal systems and their journeys are often marked by various events in the complex web of transnational migration. The dominant discourses available to us usually consider women as transnational subjects – domestic workers in particular – as vulnerable victims or the dangerous other. By mapping the spatial stratification of migrant women domestic workers in two emirates in UAE (Dubai and Sharjah), the emphasis is to understand the context in which women move into different locations and the possibilities that produces in terms of freedom, accessibility, and mobility. This chapter also looks at the way migrant women view the city spaces and various negotiations they make which often challenge the normative understanding of women’s lives as migrant labourers. Through this chapter, it is hoped, a conversation can be opened up to move away from the overproduction of trafficking narratives and other victims’ narratives, and to see women domestic workers as significant agents in shaping the way a city space has been viewed.
