To Address the Gulf’s Migrant Abuse Problem, Hold Intermediaries Accountable
Even as the World Cup induced outrage wanes, migrants workers — and, especially, female domestic workers — continue to face abuse across the Gulf region. Rather than solely relying on good will (or the need to save face) of governments in the Gulf, source country governments can ensure migrants are placed in safer jobs by holding to account the intermediaries who profit from this trade.
The Qatar World Cup has centered our attention on the abuse faced by thousands of primarily South Asian migrant construction workers. This spectacle is a rare opportunity to press the case for reform not just in Qatar, but across many Gulf-region governments whose glittering skylines conceal a staggering amount of migrant abuse. Yet, short of publicly shaming Qatar and receiving vague guarantees about reforms to labor laws, what can be done to improve the plight of migrant workers in the Gulf? In this article, I argue that policies that influence the incentives of migrant intermediaries — those tasked with finding migrants jobs abroad — may be one solution towards improving migrant welfare, event absent cooperation from governments in the Gulf.
Many South Asians migrate to the Gulf because their work opportunities at home simply do not compare. Study after study has documented the tremendous wage gains that migrant workers experience across borders. However, in countries like Sri Lanka — where I grew up — it is well understood that these riches come at a price and migrant stories of abuse are common knowledge. Wages and passports are routinely withheld by employers, migrants are forced to work long, uncompensated hours in the desert sun, and many are subjected to physical, verbal and sexual abuse with few options for legal recourse.
Many migrants, however, do not find these jobs on their own. Whether it’s coyotes on the U.S. Southern border, smugglers on the Mediterranean coast or recruitment agencies for the Gulf migration corridor, migration is often mediated. Vulnerable migrants place their trust — and considerable sums of money — in intermediaries in return for finding them safe passage and employment opportunities. As a consequence, intermediaries have enormous power and may exploit migrants by charging illegal fees and trapping them into debt bondage.
Prior investigative reporting has documented the seriousness of abuse faced by migrant workers in this region. However, detractors will often retort that this reporting is sensationalized and reflects a few ‘bad apples’ and intrinsically hazardous work, rather than widespread malaise.
To paint a more complete picture of the abuse faced by migrants, over the last seven years, I’ve worked with my co-author, Niharika Singh (a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia University), a team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame, Verité Research (a Sri Lankan think tank), and the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. We linked data on 1.4 million Sri Lankan migrants over a decade — 85% of whom sought work in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait — with reports of abuse made to Sri Lankan consulates in the region.
You may think, as did we, that a report to a consulate is a high bar that may miss out on less severe abuse. Even so, 8.5% of migrants made complaints to consulates from 2005 to 2015. As we document, the abuse is widespread — and female domestic workers are especially vulnerable.
While construction workers account for 1 in 5 of migrants during this period, they account for just 9% of the roughly 120,000 complaints made (a complaint rate of 3.8%). In contrast, female domestic workers account for 50% of all migrants to the Gulf region but 75% of all complaints. This amounts to over 1 in 10 female domestic workers making a complaint to a consulate (a complaint rate of 12.8%). While roughly 40% of these complaints relate to contractual breach and non-payment of wages, 16% are reports of harassment, sexual and physical abuse.
What can the governments of migrant-sending nations do to protect their citizens abroad? Faced with domestic political pressures some governments have sought to restrict migration to the Gulf. For example, in 2013 following the execution of 19-year old Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, the Sri Lankan government instituted a law that banned women under the age of 25 from migrating to the Gulf for domestic work. Migrants who seek work abroad are often cognizant of these risks — even if they underestimate their extent — and many will continue to migrate because the alternative is to condemn themselves and their families to poverty. Consequently, migration bans may push migrants into unsafe channels and the risk of being trafficked.
A better option may be to regulate recruitment agencies and improve the transparency of migration for all parties. Recruitment agencies assist migrants with the bureaucracy surrounding travel (passports, visas, etc.) and match migrants to employers abroad. When they operate with limited oversight, they have little reason to care about the employers with whom they place migrants. In new research, we find that creating a reputational system — much like an Uber rating — for Sri Lankan recruitment agencies can encourage them to place migrants with higher paying and less abusive employers abroad. This program also helps less abusive employers match with bona fide agencies, while driving out errant agencies. Research similarly shows that providing migrants with information on the quality of recruiters in Indonesia, can improve the quality of jobs at which they are placed.
Though removed from the spotlight of Qatar, female domestic workers across the Gulf region are often the most vulnerable migrants. They find themselves at the mercy of employers who, by virtue of sponsoring their visas through the kafala system, have immense power over their lives. Reforms to the kafala system in the UAE have shown promising results, but too often these reforms are poorly enforced or explicitly exclude domestic workers.
With the World Cup now fading in our memory, so too, I suspect, will these governments’ willingness to implement meaningful reform. Source country governments need not only rely on the goodwill of their wealthy counterparts in the Gulf. They can make migration safer for their citizens by improving the transparency of the risks and rewards to potential migrants and by committing to develop a robust base of evidence on migration policy.
A. Nilesh Fernando, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame
