Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai

Mahdavi, Pardis

ISBN 10: 0804772207 / ISBN 13: 9780804772204

Published by Stanford University Press (edition 1), 2011

About this Item

With dust jacket. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Seller Inventory # 0804772207-8-1-29

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai
• Publisher: Stanford University Press (edition 1)
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804772207
• ISBN 13: 9780804772204
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

The images of human trafficking are all too often reduced to media tales of helpless young women taken by heavily accented, dark-skinned captors—but the reality is a far cry from this stereotype. In the Middle East, Dubai has been accused of being a hotbed of trafficking. Pardis Mahdavi, however, draws a more complicated and more personal picture of this city filled with migrants. Not all migrant workers are trapped, tricked, and abused. Like anyone else, they make choices to better their lives, though the risk of ending up in bad situations is high. Legislators hoping to combat human trafficking focus heavily on women and sex work, but there is real potential for abuse of both male and female migrants in a variety of areas of employment—whether on the street, in a field, at a restaurant, or at someone's house. Gridlock explores how migrants' actual experiences in Dubai contrast with the typical discussions—and global moral panic—about human trafficking. Mahdavi powerfully contrasts migrants' own stories with interviews with U.S. policy makers, revealing the gaping disconnect between policies on human trafficking and the realities of forced labor and migration in the Persian Gulf. To work toward solving this global problem, we need to be honest about what trafficking is—and is not—and to finally get past the stereotypes about trafficked persons so we can really understand the challenges migrant workers are living through every day.

About the Author

Pardis Mahdavi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pomona College and is currently an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellow. She is the author of Passionate Uprisings: Iran's Sexual Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2008). She previously was editor-in-chief for Slant Magazine, as well as a consultant for the United Nations Population Fund, and has written for the Los Angeles Times Magazine.