Sarah I. Han Snow

In the United Arab Emirates, the distinction between privileged, minority local Arabs and migrant South Asian workers is presumed by residents and scholars to be distinct and discrete (Dakkak 2022; Günel 2019; Vora 2013). However, Baloch women, whose ethnicity is tied to a region that stretches across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, are (mis)recognized as locals when they wear an abaya with a veil. Though they may possess a range of migration statuses from Emirati citizens to documented and undocumented long-term residents, these women do not neatly fit into categories of citizen or temporary migrant. Rather, they traverse and rework borders of ethnic and national belonging through their sartorial choices, which I analyze through what I term “borderwork.” Studying borderwork takes seriously the ways that boundaries and borders are traversed, unraveled, and woven into aesthetic and sartorial practices of migrant women. Through innovative ethnography including multimodal methods of film and embroidery, I examine how Baloch women use adornment laden with symbolic meanings of citizenship, ethnicity, class, gender, and religion to navigate and rework the borders of these very categories.