Migrant Workers in the UAE

I keep promising myself I’m going to write about this topic, and then putting it off because it’s going to make me sad.

One important demographic fact about the United Arab Emirates is that only roughly 15% of its population is Emirati. One qualifies as Emirati if one was living in the emirates at the time of federation. In theory, then, it is not a ethnic or religious term— a few of the descendants of former Ottoman empire era slaves count as Emirati in terms of their rights to social services—but in effect, especially because there is no present day way to become Emirati, the term is a marriage of culture and citizenship. This 15% of the population receives various boons from the government.

Typical expats are another 15% of the population. This includes Americans working in consulting firms, Dutch real estate contractors, Saudi oil company operatives, etc.

The remaining 70% of the population—and the people that a visitor comes into contact with the most—are migrant workers engaged in low wage jobs with no political rights. (All my sources have some version of the 15/15/70 breakdown, but I can’t figure out exactly what the line is between the expats and the migrant workers. It’s not about source country—there are ‘expat’ Indian and Pakistan luxury merchants as well as low wage construction workers—and the children of migrant workers sometimes stay in the UAE and move into the expat “class.” It may just be a class distinction, in which case rigid percent breakdowns don’t make any sense.) These workers have a range of jobs, from factory work to waitressing to personal training to entertaining. They are almost invariably overqualified for their jobs but making several times what they could make at home.

Among the migrant workers, certain nationalities seem most prevalent in certain fields. There are a lot of southeast Asia waitresses, and people joke that all Middle Eastern bellydancers are Ukrainian nowadays. Major sending regions include poorer Middle Eastern countries, Northeastern Africa, the former Soviet Block, the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia.

At best, this gives Abu Dhabi a very multi-ethnic, culturally pluralist feel. When people get off work, streets that are quiet in the day come to life. One corner feels like “mini-India” and the next the Philipines. Even in New York, I’ve never seen such an international mix of restaurants and clothing stores. While this makes the city, which can feel a little stale during the day, the story underneath this “multiculturalism” is a sad one.

First of all, most migrant workers in the UAE have left their families behind to come work there. Some have their passports taken by their bosses so they can’t return home for years. The gender ratio is about 3:1, men:women, reflecting all the men who have left their families behind and send money back.

The story for many of the women, particularly the Eastern Europeans and the Southeast Asia, is also a sad one. Many are sex workers, both dancers and prostitutes. They typically collect huge fees from the Western and Saudi businessmen they work for, and then turn most of the money over to their pimp, who holds their passport.

Most of the workers here are desperate for this opportunity. Their salaries often pay for the education of children who would otherwise never be in school or the medical expenses of sick family members. Because of this desperation—and because they have no legal rights—they are constantly afraid of being sent home. This explains Noor’s need to demonstrate his usefulness.

Early on in my stay, I discussed the migrant workers with an ex-pat friend. She told me not to get too close to them. I was worried a mildly racist remark would follow. Instead, she told a very sad story that made me cautious for the rest of my visit. When she had first arrived in Abu Dhabi, she befriended a Sudanese bellhop in her hotel and had started giving him weekly English lessons. After a month, she found out that he’d been fired because of her friendship with him. This helped me better understand why it felt like people were afraid to talk to me—and made me hesitate before starting conversations.

On the Truman listserve throughout the summer, there was a flurry of emails about migrant workers in the UAE. A year ago, a Truman class made a trip to the UAE funded by the UAE government; my own class dined at the embassy during our orientation. People debated the ethics of taking a trip funded by a government that so neglected workers’ rights and was complicit in the strict maintenance of a class system. Others argued that the benefits gained from experiencing a new culture outweighed this harm, and that the UAE was being held to an unfair standard. I never publicly weighed in on this debate, but had qualms about taking a job with an organization that received limited funding from the emirati government.

During my time in the UAE, I was constantly upset by the plight of migrant workers. However, I don’t think this is a unique plight. It stands out more in the UAE because of the large number of migrant workers and because they are virtually the only people working in low wage jobs, so one is confronted by their frightened servitude every day. Illegal immigrants in the United States are in a similarly powerless situation as are immigrants within the European countries with more open borders. At the same time, I don’t love the more closed-bordered solution adopted in parts of Western Europe. To me, what complicates the migrant worker situation is that the workers seem so grateful to be treated as second class citizens. They are begging, flooding borders and pouring into countries in order to have their political rights (if they ever had any) replaced with economic opportunity. I think a long-run solution is greater global equality.

In the short/medium run, I’m not sure. When I studied con law, I was intrigued by the discussion over which constitutional provisions applied to citizens and which to people. Ideally, constitutions could limit the non-election-related rights granted to citizens and not to persons within the national borders. I also hope that one day, constitutions that tie citizenship solely to birthright will shift and allow permanent residents to become citizens through residence or marriage.