In the last two decades we have seen a global increase in what scholars term the 'feminization of migration'. Migration to the Gulf in particular has become increasingly feminized, with the vast majority of female migrants looking for employment in the informal economy or the semi-formal domestic work/entertainment/care industries (these slashes do not imply that these industries demand the same type of labor, but rather, that those participating in one industry often either migrate to another or engage in multiple industries at the same time). The feminization of migration necessarily interacts and reacts volatilely with a whole host of theoretical debates and practical realities defining the beginning of the 21st century. The movement of female bodies can be viewed through multiple and overlapping lenses: gender inequality and discrimination, the politics and instrumentalization of citizenship, security concerns in a post 9-11 world, and radical reconfigurations of the normative nuclear family in both the developed and developing world due to distinct but interrelated issues of economic participation and marginalization, disease, and war. This presentation looks at gender, labor, migration and 'trafficking' in Dubai. Around the world today, conversations about labor, migration, sex work and trafficking have been on a collision course. In the Middle East, Dubai has become the center for labor migration and has been accused of being a 'hotbed of trafficking'. The constructions of 'trafficked victim' and 'migrant worker' are highly gendered, raced and sexualized. Qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork with sex workers, migrant women, and those that provide services to them assessed the experiences of migrant women and sex workers, labeled as "trafficked" by the international community. The presentation seeks to describe the experiences of these migrant women in the Middle East, and how their narratives have been constructed and mis-heard by policy makers and activists seeking to legislate on and label their experiences.