Contesting Narratives of Victimization in Migration to the Arab Gulf States: A Reading of Mia Alvar’s In the Country

Abstract

The experiences of migrant workers in the Arab Gulf States tend to be understood through narratives of victimization. This article aims to problematize such narratives through an analysis of three short stories set in the Gulf by Filipina-American writer Mia Alvar from her debut collection In the Country (2015). Mapping out ways in which these stories depart from narratives that revolve around themes of exploitation and exclusion, the article demonstrates that fiction can critically engage with the tension between the need to represent and make visible the reality of migrant experiences in the Gulf, and the need to question the essentialism and inflexibility through which they tend to be framed. Using the insights of recent anthropological and ethnographic research on the Gulf’s non-citizen population, I argue that Alvar’s stories both expose the structural inequality that facilitates victimization and pave the way for a more nuanced understanding of migrant experiences in the Gulf.