While there is a significant and voluminous literature on the rigid and hierarchical structure of migration sponsorship in the Gulf (kafala) and how it determines migrant experiences, scholars have paid far less attention to how migrant identities are fluid and contingent upon geographical location, interactions with other Gulf residents, and a range of other factors that make migrants not pre-determined but rather always in a process of becoming. In this paper, we explore our experiences as both American and non-white anthropological field researchers in the Gulf as a means to illuminate our roles in the structural and material conditions and meanings of migration in the contemporary Gulf. How do differently situated actors experience the position of temporary residence and contract work in the region, and how does this shift as they move through Gulf cities and interact with various other residents? In what ways does the category of migrant homogenize diverse gendered, national, class, and embodied experiences? Reflecting on our own positionalities as employed researchers in Dubai and Doha—we are both US citizens of color—we utilize our own experiences of discrimination, privilege, and misrecognition to explore how we were categorized in relation to local Gulf notions of belonging and outsiderness, how we ourselves participated in categorizing others, and—most importantly—how our identities were not fixed but negotiated and interpellated in relation to the spaces we occupied, our insider/outsider belonging in existing diasporic communities, and our privileged positions as American citizens and researchers. How can the position of the foreign anthropologist, especially the anthropologist who traverses various boundaries of identity, be a fruitful site for the critical analysis if the anthropology of migration? We argue that reflexive accounts by Gulf scholars can reveal how scholars themselves play a role in the production of the notion of migration (and of migrants) as an object of knowledge, and that in interrogating the scholar-as-migrant, anthropology of migration in the Gulf could potentially problematize Western categories that still underpin our understandings of contemporary life in the region.

International medical travel – patients traveling in order to pursue diagnostic and therapeutic options in other countries – has become a worldwide phenomenon over the past decade. Studies of this phenomenon, commonly referred to as “medical tourism,” have also proliferated. Many of these studies have focused on patients from relatively wealthy countries seeking care and recovery in equal or less wealthy destinations. Few studies have examined the motivations and experiences of patients from low-income countries (beyond the elite) who sacrifice greatly to travel abroad for care that is unavailable in their own countries. This paper revisits over two years of ethnographic data from the 1990s in Yemen and among Yemeni medical travelers in Jordan and India in light of recent scholarship on medical tourism in order to underscore important commonalities and differences within the trend of international medical travel. For example, medical journeys worldwide entail the common logistics of transportation and accommodations, although the specific ways of meeting these needs can vary dramatically. Medical journeys are often motivated by the desire to alleviate suffering; the particular circumstances and procedures involved are worth illuminating, however. Medical journeys are usually undertaken because of the unfulfilled expectations that patients have for their nation-state and its provision of care; the expectations themselves and the reasons behind the lack of care locally need to be uncovered. Except for medical journeys for “natural” therapies, international medical travel often involves procedures that are technological; the specific technologies and their development are worth exploring. Finally, medical journeys occur within a common global arena; however, medical travelers, as well as their nation-states, have differing access to the resources available within this global arena. As this paper demonstrates, ethnographic data on the international medical travel of patients from Yemen highlight necessary complexities within the global phenomenon of what has been called medical tourism.

Dubai is an emerging global city and a new medical tourism hub. In the 21st century, thousands of infertile couples are traveling from parts of Africa, Asia, Euro-America, and the Middle East to Dubai in desperate quests for conception. These reproductive travelers are often fleeing home countries where IVF services are absent, inaccessible, illegal, or harmful. As an emerging global “reprohub,” Dubai sits squarely in the center of a “reproscape”—a world of assisted reproduction in motion—characterized by new “reproflows” of actors, technologies, and body parts. This paper explores the reproductive travel of 125 infertile couples from 50 different nations of origin who are seeking assisted conception in Dubai’s in vitro fertilization (IVF) sector. Conceive, the “medically cosmopolitan” clinic featured in this study, attempts to delivers high-quality, patient-centered IVF across national, ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural boundaries to its many incoming “reprotravelers.” Yet, cosmopolitan clinics such as Conceive are rare within the Emirates and the Middle East at large. Patients often lament the fact that medically and culturally competent care is lacking in the UAE, as well as in countries “back home.” Furthermore, access to a full range of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) is seriously challenged by the UAE’s recent Federal Law No. 11, which can be considered one of the most draconian ART laws in the world. The new law, coupled with preferential treatment for Emiratis in the government’s only publically funded IVF clinic, means that reprotravelers to Dubai face high costs, catastrophic expenditures, and legally imposed religious bans on donor eggs, sperm, embryos, surrogacy, and selective abortion of excess IVF fetuses. These legal bans force some infertile couples to become “reproductive outlaws,” moving betwixt and between the UAE and countries such as India and Lebanon, in order to procure the reproductive services they need. Despite the new law, preimplantation genetic diagnosis to screen IVF embryos for genetic diseases and sex (i.e., male or female) is legally permissible in the UAE, leading to new forms of travel for sex selection, particularly to ensure the birth of sons. These paradoxes and complexities serve as a cautionary tale, challenging the oft-cited term “reproductive tourism” as the most appropriate descriptor for IVF-related travel. Increasing reproductive mobility to places like Dubai bespeaks the need for new forms of 21st-century activism, not only to ensure basic reproductive rights, but to prevent reproductive illegality and discrimination.