Moors, Jureidini, Özbay, Sabban 169labor for the reproduction of the nation. The entertainment media have
local rather than migrant domestic workers as their main protagonists,
whether as victims of an unjust class system or as a threat to the employ-
er’s household because of their sexuality.
o sum up, migrant domestic workers have gained a public presence T
in the Middle East. It is true that this is a far cry from the Habermasian
notion of the modern public sphere in the sense of actively participat-
ing in public debate and deliberation; in media discourse in the Middle
East migrant domestic workers are still by and large the object of debate
rather than active participants. Yet when we employ a broader notion of
participating in the public which includes their physical, embodied pres-
ence, migrant domestic workers have become increasingly present in pub-
lic space. In spite of a host of state measures aimed to hinder any form of
settlement or permanent presence, the cityscapes in the Middle East have
also changed considerably, at least partly because of the presence of large
numbers of migrant domestic workers.
e meaning of such a presence in the public is not self-evident, Th
however; in order to understand and untangle what such a presence in
the public means to migrant domestic workers themselves, we need to
address the issue of agency. Their presence in public space indicates their
ability to leave the site of their employment, but it may also be a sign of
exploitation which further underlines their low status. Their presence in
subaltern public spaces—shops and restaurants, churches and NGOs—is
less ambivalent. Such spaces are often the sites where migrant workers are
able to find some privacy, free from the control of their employers and in
some sense “amongst themselves.” These sites then can be seen as a coun-
terpublic of sorts,^51 one that maintains an awareness of its subordinate
status and marks itself off against a dominant public, even if not so much
through participation in public debate as through these workers’ embod-
ied presence.