Not Afraid of My Sponsor

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the role of media infrastructures in the U.A.E. racializing the South Asian migrant workers making, maintaining and interacting with them. Employing a sonic methodology, I historicize these infrastructures and legacies of racialization by considering the fiber optic cables carrying telecommunications in the region and their positioning along colonial trade routes, telegraph networks and other pathways connecting British colonies. These cables have more recently facilitated U.S. military interests and the growing importance of the U.A.E. as a hub for logistics. After analyzing sound and sound-related metaphors concerning the U.A.E.’s increasing power as a media hub in the region, facilitated by its media infrastructures, I argue that we can ‘hear’ how media infrastructures exploit and racialize labor but also enable a space for laborers to come together and absorb the pressure of neoliberal work.