If we want the conditions of migrant workers in Qatar to change, we will have to stop portraying the government there as evil in racist stereotypes, argues anthropologist and expert on the Gulf states Neha Vora.
Discussions about the World Cup in Qatar often start and end with the same keywords. Rich sheikhs, high skyscrapers, a desert where nothing grows, supplemented by an army of migrant workers without rights. They are ‘tiring clichés’, says Neha Vora, an expert on the Gulf States and an anthropologist affiliated with Lafayette College in the United States. She has the most difficulty with words like ‘slavery’, which often appear in opinion pieces about the precarious situation of migrant workers – including in the columns of this newspaper – and which prompted calls for a World Cup boycott in many Western countries.
As a migrant worker in Qatar you have to hand in your passport, you are tied to your employer, you cannot leave the country without permission and you often do not get paid for months. Isn’t it surprising that people see it as modern slavery?
‘I have a hard time with that. Calling someone a “slave” or “enslaved” erases his or her humanity. You act as if they don’t have any autonomous will or choice, leaving no reason to talk to them at all. While these people are really not ignorant. In addition, the word ‘slavery’ detracts from the enormous violence and inhumanity of slavery as we know it from history.
‘The migration to the Gulf countries goes back decades, and is not very different from elsewhere in the world. Look at how Mexicans are being exploited in the United States. Wherever this phenomenon pops up, it’s about getting maximum profit. Look at how other global sporting events in Brazil and South Africa came about, and how locals often had to give way to stadiums. I can only see a difference in scale. Qatar has billions to spend, the government is going big.’
The 48-year-old Vora tells her story via a video link from a hotel room in Dubai, part of that other Arab mini-state, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She is there for a short work and family visit. Her excitement about the Qatar debate has not only to do with her work, but also with her family history. Her parents, both doctors, moved in the 1970s from Mumbai, India, to New Jersey, where Vora grew up. In her youth it was all about the Gulf States. “Everyone in the Indian community had a cousin there. It was hugely present in our shared imagination. As a child I thought Dubai was a city in India.’
At the beginning of this century she went to Dubai herself, and for her PhD research she delved into the environment of the Indian middle class in the small emirate. It culminated in her book in 2013 Impossible Citizens – Dubai’s Indian Diaspora. She then shifted her gaze to the Qatari capital Doha, where she researched transnational migration and taught at a branch of the American university A&M Texas.
Vora was afraid of censorship, but says she was able to work quite freely. “And the classes I taught were much more diverse. We could easily discuss the occupation of Palestine, a theme that could cost you your job in America. In Qatar this was not a problem, although I must add that that may have changed since the Abraham agreements (the 2020 peace accords between Israel and Bahrain and the UAE, red.).’ In her most recent book, Beyond Exception – New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula from 2020, she describes how, as a member of the faculty, she was expected to wear a headscarf and loose-fitting clothes. She did it without murmuring, but was shocked by some American colleagues on campus.
She resists that ‘white’, judgmental look at Qatar. Vora immediately adds that she is absolutely not an ‘apologist’ for the government. She does not deny the abuses, and emphasizes that she has not investigated the construction sites herself. She is, however, annoyed by the narrowing of view that many media are guilty of, and she is not alone in this. Fellow scientist Crystal Ennis (Leiden University) argues in an opinion piece on the news site Middle East Eye that the exploitation of workers is wrongly portrayed as inherent in Arab culture.
Vora herself points to the history of the infamous kafala-system. Migrants who want to come to work in Qatar must have a company or private person (‘sponsor’) who will guarantee their safety, arrange housing, but often also take their passports. Contrary to popular belief, the system has little to do with Arab culture, but goes back to about a hundred years ago, when Qatar – which only gained independence in 1971 – was a British protectorate. Oil had not yet been discovered, but precious pearls were. There was massive fishing. Responsibility for the divers – also coming from South Asia – was deliberately left by the British to the captains of the fishing vessels, their ‘sponsors’. Vora: ‘Yet the Gulf countries are portrayed as the evil creators of this. There is a racist undertone to that.’
Can you explain that?
“If you look at the history of the Gulf States, you will see that they are deeply intertwined with British and later American oil interests. The laws are often drafted with the help of Western consultants. The same goes for the institutions that have been set up. You cannot hold the authoritarian sheikhs solely responsible for such a system.
Migrant workers not only work for Qatari state-owned companies, but also for Western multinationals. They put pressure on governments to water down labor and environmental legislation. They are by definition transnational. The exploitation does not just start and end at a national border. They just want to make as much profit as possible. It is fine with multinationals to portray them as parties from the Walhalla of democracy that happen to do business in unfree countries. Above all, we must ask the question: who earns from it?’
In a recent scholarly article you write that Qatari construction sites are often supervised by compatriots of the workers: Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans. Are you suggesting that they share responsibility for the system of exploitation?
‘I don’t want to blame anyone. It’s about understanding in which context the exploitation takes place. The managers on the construction sites are never Qatari, but mostly compatriots. You won’t come across white people either, because ‘whiteness’ is synonymous with expertise in the Gulf States, and it is used in the boardrooms of listed companies. On billboards you invariably see a cheerful, white shoppers, with some Qataris in long, white robes in the background. That is the ideal picture that attracts many American and European expats to the Gulf. So when you talk about the massive inequality in the Gulf States, we’re all complicit in it.
Most critics of this World Cup often have no idea of all the parties involved. So how can you try to improve human rights? The rude stereotypes of wealthy Islamic mini-states do not help. This puts the lid on the conversation, instead of keeping us curious.
“The suggestion is constantly being made that the wealth in the Gulf is undeserved, whereas a country like the US has also amassed its wealth through slavery, yet few see the US that way. It is now being said worldwide: how is it possible that we are going to play football in Qatar? Nobody said: how can you play football in Russia (at the last World Cup in 2018, red.)? Nobody says: how can you go to the Netherlands, with its racist history of colonialism? It is only the Gulf States that are addressed in that tone.’
Many critics are concerned with the lack of transparency on the Qatari side. If a worker dies as a result of heat stroke, no autopsy is performed and just ‘cardiac arrest’ is recorded, as if it were a natural death.
‘Certainly, I don’t dispute that either. I just don’t think we’re getting the full picture. The problem with many infrastructure projects in the Gulf is that large multinationals hire a subcontractor for every job, who in turn hires a subcontractor. In this way, the parties at the top of the ladder avoid their responsibility.’
In a recent academic article you called the criticism of human rights organizations ‘simplistic’.
“Many more parties are involved in the human rights violations, not just the Qatari state. If we want anything to change, we have to stop portraying Qatari government as evil in racist stereotypes. We also need to talk about the employment agencies, the FIFA World Football Association and the countries where these migrants come from. What drives people to leave so en masse? India, for example, is the largest supplier of labor to these types of countries. How does the Indian government make from all the money sent back by migrant workers to support their families? Why is nothing being done about the enormous unemployment there?’
Which aspects of the Qatari system do you have the most difficulty with?
‘My fellow researcher Zahra Babar and I talk about ‘racial capitalism’. We see capitalism as a project that was racial in nature from the very beginning. This is reflected in the profits made in colonial times from the exploitation of North and South America. Racial differences have always been the starting point: who is allowed to be a ‘human being’ and who is not? Which work do we see as skilled and which as unskilled? Who can be free and who can’t? You don’t just see that logic in the Gulf, you see it everywhere.
‘I don’t understand why people don’t talk to workers themselves anymore. If you want to know how the Qataris think, you have to ask them yourself. If you want to understand the experience of migrant workers, you have to speak to them yourself.’
Well, human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are not welcome in Qatar, and cannot do their work there. The same goes for journalists: there is no freedom of the press. From the moment foreign reporters enter the country, they are spied on. Just last year, two Norwegian journalists were expelled from the country.
‘Certainly, but you see that surveillance in so many countries. Why is Qatar so put in the spotlight?’
They did that themselves by offering to organize the World Cup.
‘Secure. And they have every right to do so.’
Surely we can’t ignore the fact that the labor laws were drawn up by the Qataris themselves?
‘Of course, but in close cooperation with the British and the Americans. That doesn’t mean I’m exonerating the Qataris, but we have to ask ourselves what our ultimate goal is. If we want to change something about the system, we are not going to achieve it by constantly berating their leaders.’