DIASPORA: NYT on Workers in Dubai - Desi & Otherwise

I spent a few hours in at the Dubai airport this summer and confirmed at least two things I had heard about the place. Very glitzy and full of South Asians.

From the moment we taxied into the gate (and the guy guiding us in was a desi), to the airline transfer desk officer to the duty-free clerks to the cleaners throughout the airport, we kept seeing desi after desi after desi. And, of course, lots of the travelers themselves were South Asian. Looked to me as if very few native Dubai-wallahs were actually doing much of the work, especially the menial work.

In today's New York Times, Jason deParle has a major story looking at the labor situation in Dubai.

Many rich countries, including the United States, rely on cheap foreign workers. But no country is as dependent as the United Arab Emirates, where foreigners make up about 85 percent of the population and 99 percent of the private work force. From bankers to barbers, there are 4.5 million foreigners here, compared with 800,000 Emirati citizens, according to the Ministry of Labor. About two-thirds of the foreigners are South Asians, including most of the 1.2 million construction workers.

He reports, in detail, about the recent labor unrest and the problems suffered by the migrant workers.

Among those buffeted by recent events is Sami Yullah, a 24-year-old pipe fitter from Pakistan, who arrived four years ago. Like many workers, he paid nearly a year’s salary in illegal recruiter’s fees, despite laws here that require employers to bear all the hiring costs. In exchange, he was promised a job building sewer systems at a monthly salary of about $225, nearly twice what he earned at home.

There's also a photo gallery, by Tyler Hicks. Among the captions:

Workers live in labor camps far from the prosperous, cosmopolitan world of Dubai. They spend years away from their families, work in extreme heat and earn only about $1 an hour.

See the rest of the photos here, read the story and post your comments below.
 

Comments

[syed]

very, very humble victories. he takes the labor minister at his word and doesn't seem to understand that much/most/all of what the gov't does for the downtrodden is PR, most recently in reaction to the Nov 2006 HRW report, and also for getting free trade pact with the US, and getting WTO membership without having to adhere to obligations under ILO pacts.

[ven parameswaran]

Farmers from India migrated to the usa. In the beginning they were at the lowest level. One of the, Pratap Singh Saund was elected to the u.s congress from california. Another Singh from Yuba City, CA became the owner of the largest Peach orchards in CA and was written up in the WSJ. Who knows, by sheer physical presence and possession the Indians in UAE could in due course participate in politics, if democracy arrives one day! Total remittances from the u.a.e. to India are substantial. They built the modern Cochin airport at Kalamasseri; now building Trivandrum airport.
I am proud of all Indian immigrants venturing abroad. I admire more the less educated or illiterate.

[Raja]

Here's a pertinent excerpt (on the "great mass of South Asian contract
laborers") from an article by Mike Davis on Dubai:

The full article, titled "Fear and Money in Dubai" (New Left Review
41, September-October 2006 - http://newleftreview.org/?view=2635 ) is
certainly worth a read. A brief description from New Left Review:

"On the rim of the war zone, a new Mecca of conspicuous consumption
and economic crime, under the iron rule of Sheikh al-Maktoum.
Skyscrapers half a mile high, artificial archipelagoes, fantasy theme
parks?and the indentured Asian labour force that sustains them."

[Jaya Kamlani]

“Jobs Abroad Support ‘Model’ State in India”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/world/asia/07migrate.html

Varkala, a coastal community in Kerala State, boasts a heavy migrant community. Keralite migrants send $5 billion home a year… Plagued by chronic unemployment, more Keralites than ever work abroad, often at sun-scorched jobs in the Persian Gulf that pay about $1 an hour and keep them from their families for years. The cash flowing home now helps support nearly one Kerala resident in three. That has some local scholars rewriting the Kerala story: far from escaping capitalism, they say, this celebrated corner of the developing world is painfully dependent on it.

“Remittances from global capitalism are carrying the whole Kerala economy,” said S. Irudaya Rajan, a demographer at the Center for Development Studies, a local research group. “There would have been starvation deaths in Kerala if there had been no migration. The Kerala model is good to read about but not practically applicable to any part of the world, including Kerala.”

Jaya Kamlani