Abstract
Though transnational labour migration in the Gulf States has increasingly been of scholarly interest, that scholarship has to date relied largely on qualitative ethnographic methodologies or small non-representative sampling strategies. This chapter presents the findings of a large representative sample of low-income migrant labourers in Qatar. The data describe the basic characteristics of the low-income migrant population in Qatar, the process by which migrants obtain employment, the frequency with which this population of migrants encounters the problems and challenges described by previous ethnographic work, and the role played by nationality, ethnicity and religion in patterning that experience. While the findings generally affirm many of the claims made in earlier ethnographic studies, they provide a means by which the extent of these problems and challenges can be ascertained more directly.
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Notes
- 1.
See Martin Baldwin-Edwards for a recent estimate [Baldwin-Edwards, ‘Labour Immigration and Labour Markets in the GCC Countries: National Patterns and Trends’ (2011)]. Andrzej Kapiszewski estimated the 2004 total to be over 12.5 million [Kapiszewski, ‘Arab Versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GCC Countries’, United Nations Secretariat (2006), p. 3].
- 2.
This publication was made possible by a grant from the Qatar National Research Fund under its National Priorities Research Program (award #09–857–5-123). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Qatar National Research Fund.
- 3.
Longva, Walls Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait (1997); Longva, ‘Keeping Migrant Workers in Check: The Kafala System in the Gulf’, Middle East Report 211 (1999); Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids (2000); Kapiszewski, Nationals and Expatriates: Population and Labour Dilemmas of the Gulf Cooperation Council States (2001); Jureidini, ‘Migrant Workers and Xenophobia in the Middle East’ (2003); Gardner, City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (2010); Gardner, ‘Engulfed: Indian Guest Workers, Bahraini Citizens and the Structural Violence of the Kafala System’, in The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and Freedom of Movement, eds De Genova and Peutz (2010); Gardner, ‘Gulf Migration and the Family’; Strobl, ‘Policing Housemaids: The Criminalization of Domestic Workers in Bahrain’, British Journal of Criminology 49 (2009); Kanna, Dubai: The City as Corporation (2011).
- 4.
For example, see: Human Rights Watch, ‘Dubai: Migrant Workers at Risk’ (2003); Human Rights Watch, ‘Building Towers, Cheating Workers: Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in the United Arab Emirates’ (2006); Human Right Watch, The Island of Happiness: Exploitation of Migrant Workers on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi (2009); Human Rights Watch, ‘Building a Better World Cup: Protecting Migrant Workers in Qatar Ahead of FIFA 2022’ (2012); Human Rights Watch, ‘For a Better Life: Migrant Worker Abuse in Bahrain and the Government Reform Agenda’ (2012); Endo and Afram, ‘The Qatar-Nepal Remittance Corridor’, World Bank Study (2011); ITUC, ‘Hidden Faces of the Gulf Miracle’, Union View 21 (2011).
- 5.
The first Omnibus Survey was conducted by SESRI in Qatar in 2010, and looked at ‘Qatari citizens, resident expatriates, and migrant laborers’ [SESRI, ‘First Annual Omnibus Survey: A Survey of Life in Qatar’ (2010), p. i]. Our project utilized portions of the SESRI team’s sampling frame, particularly that for labour camps, and significantly expanded the scope of questions included in the survey, so as to reflect the substantial ethnographic findings that had explored the experiences of transnational migrants over the past decade. The list of labour camps comprising this sampling frame was assembled by SESRI, in cooperation with the government ministries that administer utilities to these camps. As discussed in the conclusion of this chapter, while this sampling frame allowed us to derive a representative sample of low-income migrants in Qatar, it does not include the smaller portion of migrants who live and work in the domestic sector, nor the small but substantial portion of migrants who do not dwell in ‘labour camps’.
- 6.
For example, see the ethnographic project A Longitudinal Analysis of Low-Income Laborers in Contemporary Qatar, funded by the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, and resulting in: Gardner, ‘Why Do They Keep Coming? Labor Migrants in the Gulf States’, in Migrant Labour in the Persian Gulf, eds Kamrava and Babar (2012).
- 7.
Initial visits by survey supervisors provided an opportunity to update information about the labour camp (or collective household) and to inform camp managers about the research project’s official relationship and its sponsorship by the Qatar government. In the context of the GCC, such visits improve cooperation and facilitate access to the camps. In the survey, 3.76% of the labour camps (19 of 504) denied our team access. Two of those 19 camps or collective households were for female labour.
- 8.
These percentages differ slightly from those previously reported in Qatar. For example, the 2010 SESRI Omnibus survey found that the Filipino migrant population made up 10% of the total migrant population. These differences are partly explained by the continually shifting sources of foreign labour throughout the GCC, but more directly by the QR2,000 screening for monthly income deployed in this survey.
- 9.
For example, this was a central premise in recent workshop convened at Oxford University, entitled Migrations to the Gulf Countries: From Exception to Normality, held on 18 June 2010.
- 10.
In our data set, we utilized a ‘total cost of migration’ estimate because we felt that the migrants themselves could provide us with a better and more reliable estimate than we could generate using any method that attempted to grapple with the diversity of costs they often face. For reliability, these costs were reported to us in the home (sending country) currency. Considering the fact that the migrants in our sample had arrived in Qatar in several different decades, we adjusted and converted these amounts to US dollars based on the appropriate exchange rates at the time the amount was paid.
- 11.
Notable exceptions include Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle (2000); Breeding, ‘India-Persian Gulf Migration: Corruption and Capacity in Regulating Recruitment Agencies’, in Migrant Labour in the Persian Gulf, eds Kamrava and Babar (2012).
- 12.
The historical emergence of the kafala is perhaps best described by Elizabeth Frantz in ‘Exporting Subservience: Sri Lanka Women’s Migration for Domestic Work in Jordan’ (2011). For an explanation of the connections between culture and the kafala as law, see Gardner, ‘Engulfed’, (2010), pp. 212–13.
- 13.
For example, ITUC, ‘Hidden Faces of the Gulf Miracle’; Human Rights Watch, ‘Building a Better World Cup’.
- 14.
For example, Longva, Walls Built on Sand; Longva, ‘Keeping Migrant Workers in Check’; Human Rights Watch, ‘Dubai: Migrant Workers at Risk’; McGeehan, ‘Trafficking in Persons or State Sanctioned Exploitation? The False Narrative of Migrant Workers in the United Arab Emirates’, Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, 26 (2012).
- 15.
Although previous surveys in Qatar have, at times, utilized different methodologies and designs, earlier reports concerning the frequency of passport confiscation in Qatar have been strikingly similar: 91% [SESRI, ‘First Annual Omnibus Survey’, p. 17] and 88% [Pessoa et al., ‘The State of Migrant Workers in Qatar’, p. 11].
- 16.
For more information and detail concerning labour camps in Qatar and the GCC, see Bruslé, ‘Who’s in a Labour Camp? A Socio-Economic Analysis of Nepalese Migrants in Qatar’, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 35–6 (2009–10); Gardner, ‘Labor Camps in the Gulf States’, Viewpoints: Migration and the Gulf (2010); Marsden, ‘Lords of a Dubai Labour Camp: Pakistani Migrants in the Gulf’, ILAS Newsletter 49 (2008).
- 17.
Note that the small numbers of Arab migrants in our sample make these data speculative at best.
- 18.
For example, ITUC, ‘Hidden Faces of the Gulf Miracle’; Human Rights Watch, ‘Building Towers, Cheating Workers’; Human Rights Watch, The Island of Happiness; Human Rights Watch, ‘Building a Better World Cup’; Human Rights Watch, ‘For a Better Life’; Gardner, City of Strangers.
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Gardner, A., Pessoa, S., Diop, A., Al-Ghanim, K., Le Trung, K., Harkness, L. (2020). A Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar. In: Rajan, S.I., Oommen, G.Z. (eds) Asianization of Migrant Workers in the Gulf Countries. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9287-1_6
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