For the minority of expatriates who remain in the Gulf monarchies longer, the formula needs to be a little different. There are communities of Palestinians in Kuwait, communities of Iranians and Indians in Dubai, and other substantial foreign populations in the region that have spent decades living and working there, sometimes even having been born and brought up in its cities. A tiny minority can expect naturalisation, but this is controversial with the genuine indigenous populations and — as discussed later — has now become a major issue for some opposition movements. Instead, the governments prefer to create an atmosphere of sanctuary or unofficial asylum for these communities, even if it is illusory. Very often these expatriates are from underdeveloped or war-torn regions, many of whom either cannot return home or — in the case of Kuwait’s hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (or at least those who were not expelled following the emirate’s liberation in 1991)[262]—have no valid travel documentation. While most are aware that their livelihoods are at the whim of their hosts (many other nationalities apart from Palestinians also have been deported from Gulf monarchies due to political disputes), there is a general acceptance of the status quo. Thus, as with the more temporary migrants, most of these expatriates prefer to keep their heads down or try to save up enough to buy citizenship elsewhere.
Much international media attention focuses on the plight of the huge population of unskilled expatriates. In particular, the appalling living conditions in some of the workers’ camps — some of which have no basic facilities or even sewerage — are routinely portrayed as a manifestation of evil, immoral, slave-based economies. There is certainly much truth to this, with ‘workers’ often viewed as somehow sub-human by citizens and skilled expatriates alike, and usually discriminated against by apartheid-like regulations (for example, not being allowed to enter shopping malls, parks, or museums). But in many ways the outrage is the result of having a First World society occupying the same uncomfortably small spaces as a developing world society. Very few of the workers can be considered slaves, as most have not made a step into the unknown. In many cases these men have followed their fathers, brothers, or other male relatives who have worked there before, usually with the same conditions. Most are still separated from their passports upon arrival, driven around on cattle trucks, and work punishingly long hours. Sometimes they do not return home for two or three years at a time. But this is usually expected and known to the new arrivals, and most are there — just like the skilled expatriates — to make more money than they could at home. Indeed, an independent survey published in 2009 claimed that the majority of foreign construction workers in the Gulf monarchies considered their current conditions to be better than those in their native countries.[263]
In this light the workers are best viewed as the dark side of a tragic, remittance-based economic system where South and East Asian countries sell their labour in exchange for salary transfers and investments from the Gulf states into their impoverished communities. When riots do break out in the worker camps the roots causes are only very occasionally political,[264] and the disturbances pose little threat to the survival of the Gulf monarchies. Usually, they are the result of workers not having been paid by an unscrupulous employer or perhaps an unsafe workplace or some other labour-specific complaint. Sometimes the government will move fast to address the problem and deport a few of the ringleaders. But not always, as the workers’ embassies usually remain silent in the Gulf monarchies — unwilling to champion the interests of their countrymen lest they jeopardise the flow of remittance wealth.
The region’s most violent labour camp episodes have taken place in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in the latter’s case especially since 2009 following the collapse of many property developers and construction companies in the wake of Dubai’s real estate slowdown. In May 2010, for example, at the same time that over 500 Syrian and Egyptian labourers went on strike in Mecca due to unpaid wages,[265] over 100 Vietnamese construction workers were arrested in and deported from Dubai. Apparently owed several months’ wages — totalling less than $1,400 each — the men had marched to the UAE Ministry for Labour to demand their rights.[266] In early January 2011 it was the turn of Nepalese labourers, this time striking over the assault of one of their number by five Egyptian security guards — a confrontation which had apparently been sparked by complaints about the absence of sanitary facilities.[267] And later that month more than seventy Bangladeshi workers were deported from Dubai — part of a bigger strike of about 5,000 men. The protestors claimed they had not been paid their overtime, and were asking for an increase in their weekly wage of barely $55. When asked for a response, the Bangladeshi consul-general in Dubai was unsurprisingly cautious, agreeing that the UAE authorities had the right to break up the strike because it was ‘illegal’ and stating that the company in question ‘…had not breached the contract in paying the salaries… if the workers had problems, they should have solved it through a dialogue with the employer’.[268] Overall, Pakistani construction workers are most likely to face imprisonment, followed by deportation from the Gulf monarchies, not least because they outnumber other nationalities in most worker camps. In early 2011 the Pakistani minister of state for foreign affairs estimated that over 4,000 Pakistani nationals were being detained in Middle East states, almost all of them in the Gulf monarchies with nearly 1,800 in Saudi Arabia and over 1,600 in the UAE. He also clarified that a special government department had been set up to provide one-way tickets home for these destitute prisoners.[269]
The most unfortunate cases seem to be those workers who have simply become marooned in the Gulf monarchies. With bankrupt or nonexistent sponsors, they are often unable to leave their host countries and have remained in a state of limbo, often having to take out loans in order to survive until they can afford their return flights. As a spokesperson for Human Rights Watch described in 2010 ‘…because of the layoffs and the fact that some of these workers are stranded, we are seeing an increase in suicides, where some workers feel the only way out is to kill themselves, hoping that the people who have lent them money will avoid going after their families or their houses back in India and other locations in South Asia… unfortunately, that is not the case; the creditors still go after the families even after the death of migrant workers’. Furthermore, he claimed that the governments involved have not ‘…committed to fundamentally changing the way that migrant workers are brought in and the way that migrant workers are treated, so I think it is a problem that is going to be here for a while, especially given the economic downturn’. Similarly, the founder of a rare, Sharjah-based NGO committed to helping such labourers — Adopt-a-Camp[270]—described how her work used to be ‘…heart-warming — it used to be English classes for labourers, hygiene workshops … and care packages, and seeing wonderful stuff and doing wonderful stuff and the men’s smiles’. But then her work changed, becoming ‘…heartbreaking because rather than teaching men and enlightening them and expanding their horizons here, and trying to give them a good experience, it becomes like a man who is starving. The top priority for me becomes getting him food, getting him water, and seeing men in those conditions is heartbreaking’.[271]
262
41. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation nominally backed Iraq during the Kuwait crisis.
264
43. There has been one notable exception, when in 2008 groups of Bangladeshi leftist ‘Naxalites’ were reportedly stirring hatred against the Gulf monarchies in Kuwait worker camps. The Kuwait Ministry for the Interior claimed that the Naxalites viewed the Gulf monarchies as their ‘Number 2 enemy after India’ on the grounds of their capitalist exploitation of South Asian labour.
270
49. Adopt-a-Camp was established in summer 2010 by a Sharjah-based Pakistani activist.