ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the term race to mean perceived race to reflect the local vernacular and hierarchical racialisation of labour in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The social and physical topography of Dubai is important in marginalising or privileging various groups of sex workers which correlates race, space and place with income-generating potential. While the racialisation and spatialisation outlined encompasses a majority of the social topography of sex work in Dubai. The way that racism structures the spaces in which various groups participate in sex work stands in sharp contrast with their spatialisation within the discourse on victimhood and rights. The increase in sex workers of different nationalities has produced a form of racism embedded in spatialised structures of desire constructing specific locations. Street-based sex workers can access services with greater ease; however, this is directed by an underlying saving sentiment similar to efforts written about by Spivak and Abu-Lughod to save Brown women from Brown men.
