Current Project — Not Afraid of My Sponsor: Sounding Global Cinema and Migrant Labor in the UAE

This project examines how the United Arab Emirates has emerged as a global media hub through infrastructures sustained by racialized migrant labor. The UAE’s media economy depends on labor regimes shaped by colonial legacies and digital infrastructures that organize who can move, work, and be heard within global media production. Focusing on film and media industries in the Gulf, the project traces how studios, free zones, and transnational media partnerships link the UAE to Hollywood and to South and West Asian media industries. Using a sonic methodology, it analyzes how media infrastructures structure audibility—determining whose voices circulate and whose labor remains unheard—while also tracing how migrant workers use sound to navigate and sometimes contest these conditions.

Stills from the music video “Kafeel” (2019) by Telvaz11