Migrants and the State: Structures of Violence, Co-ethnic Exploitation and the Transnationalisation of Rights

Abstract

Esther was an Ethiopian domestic worker for an Emirati family in Dubai, one of many African women for whom migration to the Gulf was a viable livelihood strategy. She was in her early twenties, and was nursing her baby boy, Ibrahim, when I first met her at a social worker’s flat. Soon after I met them, Esther and her son would return to an uncertain reception from her family in Addis Ababa. Esther was forced to leave the UAE as she had become pregnant — a situation that typically results in the deportation of domestic workers. Under their terms of employment, childbearing is conceived of as illegitimate, and in breach of contractual obligations as workers in the emirate.