Roots and Trajectories of ,Modern Slavery’ in Qatar

In the Gulf states, the widespread phenomenon of labour migration is controlled by means of the so-called kafāla system since the 1960s. This sponsorship system grants Gulf Arabs comprehensive control over their migrant ‘guest workers’. In recent years, it has been criticized as ‘modern slavery’ and has undergone rather superficial reform processes. In Qatar, a development and human rights discourse attests to how government and quasi-state actors are striving to paint a different picture.
In my dissertation project, I examine the genesis and persistence of the kafāla as a labour migration regime and concrete legal instrument: the introduction of the kafāla historically coincides with the late abolition of slavery in this region – and legal transformation of slaves into wage workers coming along with it. This period is also marked by Britain's long-lasting colonial presence and the emerging oil industry. Against this background, I understand the sponsorship system as a form of unfree labour that has its origins in the region's past and is linked to the modes of production of its society.
In the present, we can observe a normalization of violence (Gardner 2010) against migrant workers, at times accompanied by a legitimizing discourse. Increasingly, the issue of labour migration is being used to negotiate the national identity of Gulf societies in which the oil rentier economy poses an obstacle to the expansion of civic rights.
Both in terms of the introduction of the kafāla and its durability as an instrument of current migration policy, I seek to examine accompanying public and legal discourse in Qatar. What role do Western discourses around freedom, development, workers’, and human rights play? How is and was the kafāla linked to other (un)free labour regimes?