Migrant Worker Well-Being and Its Determinants: The Case of Qatar
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Migrant Worker Well‑Being and Its Determinants: The Case of Qatar Michael C. Ewers1 · Abdoulaye Diop2 · Kien Trung Le2 · Lina Bader2 Accepted: 29 June 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Despite significant media attention and criticism, we know very little about the living and working conditions of low-income migrants in the Arab Gulf states, how migrants themselves view these conditions, or what factors most shape migrant worker well-being. Utilizing data from a unique, nationally representative survey of migrant workers living in labor camps in Qatar, this paper uses subjective and objective indicators to provide a more complete picture of migrant worker well-being and its determinants. We create a composite score of well-being based on migrant worker satisfaction with their job, human rights, salary, company treatment, and medical care. We then utilize ordinary least square to examine the degree to which migrant well-being is shaped by demographic characteristics, contract honoring, salary and debt levels, working conditions, human rights, and living conditions. Results identify contract-related issues as the strongest determinant of well-being, including whether a contract was honored, whether a copy of the contract was provided, and whether the details of employment in the contract were clear. More broadly, our results point to workers having low levels of overall awareness of their legal rights under existing Gulf labor law. Migrant worker well-being can thus be improved by raising this awareness and enforcing existing laws. Keywords Well-being · Welfare · Job satisfaction · Migration · Qatar Arab Gulf States
1 Introduction Ever since Qatar was selected to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the country has faced fierce international scrutiny over the welfare of the workers responsible for building and maintaining the nation’s infrastructure, which is being overhauled in advance of the tournament at an estimated cost of $200 billion (Fattah 2019). Headlines include: “Revealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’” (Pattison Pattisson 2013), “Qatar 2022: Migrant workers still * Michael C. Ewers [email protected] 1
Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd. Mceniry 309, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA
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Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI), Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar
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being exploited despite promises of reform (Lovett 2019), “World Cup migrant workers unpaid for months” (Amnesty International 2018) and “Undercover investigation reports range of abuses against migrant workers in Qatar” (Kumar 2019). The conditions of the labor camps have been described as so inhumane that workers are without drinking water or air conditioning in 45c heat, with “filthy sanitation” and food that is “dished out like in the Oliver Twist movie” (Fottrell 2015). Some have gone so far as to predict that the “The annual death toll among those working on building sites could rise to 600 a year”
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