Broken spaces; bounded realities: Foreign female domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates

This dissertation studies the phenomenon of foreign female domestic workers (FFDW) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), within the context of the feminization of migration. It examines the impact of the migration process on the lives of the FFDW, their working conditions, and their interaction with their social and spatial surroundings. This study is based on a field work conducted in Dubai, the second largest city in the UAE. The field work consists of 51 extended interviews with the FFDW, and 34 limited interviews with their employers. The questionnaire is semi-structured and comprises open-ended questions that cover the period from the beginning of the migration journey to the FFDW's interview. The FFDW's migration journey is reported as a narrative that combines the quantitative and qualitative inquiry into research design. This inquiry was based on four aspects of the migration journey called the Four Cs. These aspects are: the composition factors of the FFDW in the sample; the causes of their migration journey; their working conditions; and finally the consequences of this trip on their lives, their situated selves, their families and children, and finally on UAE society at large.