Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Global Transformation of Borders and Mobility
- Section I Experiencing Borders in South Asia
- 1 Spaces of Refusal: Rethinking Sovereign Power and Resistance at the Border
- 2 Border Layers: Formal and Informal Markets Along the India-Bangladesh Border
- 3 Experiencing the Border: The Lushai People and Transnational Space
- Section II Mobility in and Beyond South Asia
- 4 Of Insiders, Outsiders, and Infiltrators: The Politics of Citizenship and Inclusion in Contemporary South Asia
- 5 Renegotiating Boundaries: Exploring the Lives of Undocumented Bangladeshi Women Workers in India
- 6 ‘The Immoral Traffic in Women’: Regulating Indian Emigration to the Persian Gulf
- 7 The Journey to Europe: A Young Afghan’s Experience on the Migrant Route
- 8 Hardening Regional Borders: Changes in Mobility from South Asia to the European Union
- Section III Representations of Borders and Mobility in Diaspora
- 9 The Borders of Integration: Paperwork between Bangladesh and Belgium
- 10 Disordering History and Collective Memory in Gunvantrai Acharya’s Dariyalal 229
- 11 Fragmented Lives: Locating ‘Home’ in the Poems of Sudesh Mishra
- Conclusion
- Index
6 - ‘The Immoral Traffic in Women’: Regulating Indian Emigration to the Persian Gulf
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Global Transformation of Borders and Mobility
- Section I Experiencing Borders in South Asia
- 1 Spaces of Refusal: Rethinking Sovereign Power and Resistance at the Border
- 2 Border Layers: Formal and Informal Markets Along the India-Bangladesh Border
- 3 Experiencing the Border: The Lushai People and Transnational Space
- Section II Mobility in and Beyond South Asia
- 4 Of Insiders, Outsiders, and Infiltrators: The Politics of Citizenship and Inclusion in Contemporary South Asia
- 5 Renegotiating Boundaries: Exploring the Lives of Undocumented Bangladeshi Women Workers in India
- 6 ‘The Immoral Traffic in Women’: Regulating Indian Emigration to the Persian Gulf
- 7 The Journey to Europe: A Young Afghan’s Experience on the Migrant Route
- 8 Hardening Regional Borders: Changes in Mobility from South Asia to the European Union
- Section III Representations of Borders and Mobility in Diaspora
- 9 The Borders of Integration: Paperwork between Bangladesh and Belgium
- 10 Disordering History and Collective Memory in Gunvantrai Acharya’s Dariyalal 229
- 11 Fragmented Lives: Locating ‘Home’ in the Poems of Sudesh Mishra
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter draws on ethnographic and archival research conducted in the United Arab Emirates and India to investigate how the Indian government developed and implemented emigration policies. The chapter is specifically concerned with how the idea of ‘vulnerable subjects’ is constructed in conjunction with trafficking. Bringing together contemporary and historic narratives on trafficking, it examines how gender, sexuality, and religion influence contemporary laws. The chapter pays particular attention to how the British colonial administration used trafficking as a way to regulate both women's labour and their movement, and it compares this approach with the attitudes of Indian nationalists. In the postcolonial period, it draws on a case study from the 1950s concerning the illegal trafficking of women. The chapter argues that these policies unevenly impact working class and, particularly, Muslim women. What emerges is the uneven distribution of state power as bureaucrats restrict emigration.
Keywords: trafficking, gender, Muslim, British colonialism, Indian nationalism, Persian Gulf
Introduction
The labour conditions of workers in the Arabic-speaking Persian Gulf are under considerable scrutiny, and domestic workers are thought to be particularly vulnerable. Recently, Amnesty International found that some domestic workers are abused, over-worked, and not compensated for their work (Amnesty International 2014). Transnational institutions, such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), argue that a central contributing factor to the abuse of domestic workers is the prevalence of trafficking in the Arabian Sea. Trafficking of persons to the Gulf countries, according to the United Nations, leads to the exploitation of workers’ physical and sexual labour (United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women 2014). In the worst cases, poor women from South Asia or the Philippines are recruited to work in the Gulf by people who promise them good paying jobs. In these scenarios, after women arrive in the Gulf, they are treated poorly by their employer and not paid for their work. They are unable to return to their home countries due to a lack of funds, the large amounts of debt borrowed to pay for their emigration, and/or physical restrictions on their movements from their employers. In discussions by Amnesty International and other nongovernmental organizations, the exploitation of trafficked women is often explained as largely the result of the practices used to exclude non-citizens in the Arabic-speaking countries of the Persian Gulf.
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- Borders and Mobility in South Asia and Beyond , pp. 145 - 166Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018