Pardis Mahdavi

An activist and human-trafficking expert became her own case study when she feared her daughter was kidnapped by her ex-husband--she utilized illicit trade networks to smuggle herself across the globe to save her, igniting a feminist movement. Pardis Mahdavi has always been caught between worlds, whether between the expectations of her Iranian-American family stuck in the 1970s versus the reality of living in Iran during the sexual revolution in the early 2000s; the demands of her traditional, controlling husband and the responsibility that came with her research into the globe's most vulnerable women; or the pipe dream of justice from a legal system that abandoned her in contrast to the efficiency of grassroots organizations that served to traffic goods and people around the world. When she feared her two-year-old daughter was kidnapped by her ex-husband, Pardis believed she had a twenty-four-hour window before her daughter might be lost forever. With the police unable to help, Pardis called the one man she still trusted: Sumac, who had been her jailer in Iran four years earlier, when she was put under house arrest and interrogated during the sexual revolution. In a Los Angeles courtroom fighting for custody, Pardis met other women stymied by an unjust justice system. The women, marginalized since birth, used underground feminist networks to make lasting changes in human trafficking laws and reproductive rights. This Goes Out to the Underground is a harrowing account by an Iranian-American journalist, activist, and mother about the power of justice feminism, and a testament to the world-shaking bond between a mother and daughter.

A Mother, Her Daughter, and How We All Rise Together

This Goes Out to the Underground

Ian Bogost

Christopher Schaberg

Hyphen

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate has been a central point of controversy since before the imprinting of the first Gutenberg Bible. And yet, the hyphen has persisted, bringing and bridging new words and concepts. Hyphen follows the story of the hyphen from antiquity-"Hyphen” is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning “to tie together” -to the present, but also uncovers the politics of the hyphen and the role it plays in creating identities. The journey of this humble piece of connective punctuation reveals the quiet power of an orthographic concept to speak to the travails of hyphenated individuals all over the world. Hyphen is ultimately a compelling story about the powerful ways that language and identity intertwine. Mahdavi-herself a hyphenated Iranian-American-weaves in her own experiences struggling to find a sense of self amidst feelings of betwixt and between. Through stories of the author and three other individuals, Hyphen collectively considers how to navigate, articulate, and empower new identities. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Gridlock explores how migrant workers' actual experiences in Dubai contrast with the typical discussions—and global moral panic—about human trafficking.

Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai

Gridlock

The lines between what constitutes migration and what constitutes human trafficking are messy at best. State policies rarely acknowledge the lived experiences of migrants, and too often the laws and policies meant to protect individuals ultimately increase the challenges faced by migrants and their kin. In some cases, the laws themselves lead to illegality or statelessness, particularly for migrant mothers and their children. Crossing the Gulf tells the stories of the intimate lives of migrants in the Gulf cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait City. Pardis Mahdavi reveals the interconnections between migration and emotion, between family and state policy, and shows how migrants can be both mobilized and immobilized by their family relationships and the bonds of love they share across borders. The result is an absorbing and literally moving ethnography that illuminates the mutually reinforcing and constitutive forces that impact the lives of migrants and their loved ones—and how profoundly migrants are underserved by policies that more often lead to their illegality, statelessness, deportation, detention, and abuse than to their aid.

Love and Family in Migrant Lives

Crossing the Gulf

A panic surrounds human trafficking and terrorism. The socially constructed 'war on terror’ and ‘war on trafficking’ are linked through discourses that not only combine the two, but help promote an anti-Muslim sentiment. Using ethnographic data and stories, From Trafficking to Terror presents the need to challenge the trafficking and terror paradigm, and rethink approaches to the large scale challenges these discourses have created. This book is ideal for courses on gender, labor, migration, human rights and globalization.

Constructing a Global Social Problem

From Trafficking to Terror

The images of human trafficking are all too often reduced to media tales of helpless young women taken by heavily accented, dark-skinned captors—but the reality is a far cry from this stereotype. In the Middle East, Dubai has been accused of being a hotbed of trafficking. Pardis Mahdavi, however, draws a more complicated and more personal picture of this city filled with migrants. Not all migrant workers are trapped, tricked, and abused. Like anyone else, they make choices to better their lives, though the risk of ending up in bad situations is high. Legislators hoping to combat human trafficking focus heavily on women and sex work, but there is real potential for abuse of both male and female migrants in a variety of areas of employment—whether on the street, in a field, at a restaurant, or at someone's house. Gridlock explores how migrants' actual experiences in Dubai contrast with the typical discussions—and global moral panic—about human trafficking. Mahdavi powerfully contrasts migrants' own stories with interviews with U.S. policy makers, revealing the gaping disconnect between policies on human trafficking and the realities of forced labor and migration in the Persian Gulf. To work toward solving this global problem, we need to be honest about what trafficking is—and is not—and to finally get past the stereotypes about trafficked persons so we can really understand the challenges migrant workers are living through every day.

Sara L. Friedman

Migrant Encounters examines what happens when migrants across Asia encounter both the restrictions and opportunities presented by state actors and policies, some that leave deep marks on migrants' own life trajectories and others that produce fragmentary, uneven traces. With a focus on those who migrate to perform intimate labor—domestic, care, and sex work—or whose own intimate and familial lives are redefined through migration, marriage, and sometimes parenthood, this volume argues that such encounters transform both migrants and the states between which they move. Written by an international group of anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers, these essays offer richly detailed and insightful accounts of the intimate consequences of migration and the transformative effects of migrant-state encounters across Asia. Addressing a range of topics from the fate of children born to unmarried migrant mothers to the everyday negotiations of cross-border couples and migrant domestic workers, the contributors situate themselves at various points along the extensive migration routes that extend from northeast Asia all the way to the Gulf region. The authors draw on ethnographic research and policy analysis to illustrate the texture of migrants' interactions with state actors and forces. From a range of perspectives, they explore what these encounters teach us about migrant agency and the workings of state power in a region now rife with diverse forms of cross-border mobility. Contributors: Heng Leng Chee, Nicole Constable, Sara L. Friedman, Hsiao-Chuan Hsia, Mark Johnson, Hyun Mee Kim, Pardis Mahdavi, Filippo Osella, Nobue Suzuki, Christoph Wilcke, Brenda S. A. Yeoh.

Intimate Labor, the State, and Mobility Across Asia

Migrant Encounters

Investigates the emerging, new sexual culture of Iranian youth, in which sexuality represents freedom and engaging in sex can be considered political activism.

Pardis Mahdavi

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