‘Everyday heroes’: How praising migrant workers exposes privilege and structural inequalities in Qatar
The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CMI.
Yesterday I came across an Instagram post from what is usually a lifestyle account catering to the high-income migrant worker population in Qatar. This time, however, the account had posted a tribute to the country’s “everyday heroes.” One image focused specifically on the drivers delivering food and other goods in the midst of Iranian bombardment in the wake of U.S/Israel’s military attack on Iran. They drive around the city all day picking up and delivering nearly anything — even between private households. Perhaps a family’s daughter left her pencil case at a classmate’s house last week, and now she needs it for her schoolwork from home, since all schools in the country have switched to online instruction for the time being.
In a timely and well‑intentioned message addressed to its multinational, English‑speaking audience, the account praised those who keep Qatar’s infrastructure — both military and civilian — operating under the ongoing missile strikes; while many among the high-income portions of the migrant and national population are following the Qatari authorities’ orders to “shelter in place”.
But not everyone can “shelter in place”. The delivery drivers certainly cannot.
Qatar’s migrant workers: The civilians of elsewhere
Qatar, like its neighbors along the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, is shaped by a dramatic demographic imbalance: about 90% of the population are migrant workers or “civilians of elsewhere”, that is they are essential to the functioning of society but politically, socially, and legally positioned outside the nation they uphold during the current state of war. Migrant workers occupy and sustain most of Qatar’s infrastructures, from sanitation to transport, from medical care to electricity and water systems. This is the case across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. This is in part because the national population simply is too small, and in part as these tend to be jobs with lower pay, uncomfortable working conditions and generally not high-status. And now, during missile-attacks and falling debris from intercepted explosives, many of these jobs are also high risk. Low-income migrant workers are the ones moving around the city, ensuring that those instructed to shelter in place actually can.
Qatar is home to migrant workers from many parts of the world, and they occupy the entirety of the class hierarchy, from street-cleaners and delivery drivers, to middle managers, software engineers and state bureaucrats. However, the lower income brackets tend to be populated by nationals of South Asian nations like Bangladesh and Nepal. And, these lowest paid, and also least able to protest are also those having to take most risk during the crisis.
“Shelter in place” as exposure of structural inequalities and risk
The issue highlighted by the ongoing war is one of deep contradiction. Low-income migrant workers are at once central to the functioning of the state, while exposed to the highest risks in any crisis often without being given a real choice. This is partially because migrant workers live under the kafala system. The kafala system effectively ensures that any migrant worker’s residency permit is tied to their employment status, and they must be sponsored by their employer. And so, because residency status depends on employment, refusing work, even in dangerous circumstances, risks loss of income, termination, and in extension, deportation. This creates a labor environment in which many migrant workers have virtually no meaningful capacity to decline dangerous assignments, such as driving deliveries across a city under attack.
Despite reforms to labor and immigration legislation meant to ease job mobility, allow departures without sponsor permission, and enforce wage protections, research show that implementation remains uneven and informal practices undermine the intent of reforms. And the uneven power-relations that underpin the system (the fact that any migrant must be sponsored by their employer to gain residency) still remain, meaning that any reforms to labor governance remain superficial impacting on working conditions rather than structures.
“Shelter in place” as a form of privilege during war
The system of “shelter in place” is however underpinned by functioning infrastructures; including the delivery drivers. They enable the shelter of others while being denied it themselves. This is precisely the dynamic at the heart of the notion of “civilians of elsewhere”.
The exclusion from shelter is in part due to their jobs forcing them to take risk, but it is also about other privileges that are unevenly distributed. One is the obvious one of having a job and an employer that permits for working from home, another is about what kind of shelter is available. Many low-income migrant workers live in shared accommodation, or live in dormitories in so-called labor camps, and do not necessarily have spaces that provide the kind of shelter that is recommended. An Instagram-video pointed this out: Qatari authorities had instructed civilians to stay away from windows, but as the young male migrant worker in the video stated, his one room accommodation didn’t really permit him to move away from the window that his bed nestled under.
Doha and Qatar is a very small place, and things are placed incredibly closely together, meaning that the American airbase that was the target of those early volleys of Iranian missiles is nestled just outside of Doha. And while much preferred to direct missile hits, the interception vectors leads to the debris falling over civilian housing. Residents (migrant workers and civilian citizens alike) are generally more concerned about the debris from the intercepted missiles than they are about the missiles themselves. While any civilian building is at risk, yet again, the housing of low-income migrant workers in dormitories and so-called labor camps means they have less opportunity to seek shelter as the very buildings they occupy are crowded, and are built in low-cost, low-quality materials, or are derelict. These do not offer significant protection should debris fall onto them.
Crises magnify inequality rather than flatten it
The narrative during crises is often one of solidarity, collective efforts and patriotism; such as during the 2017-2021 blockade of Qatar, but such narratives tend to veil the structural reality of crises, which is that inequalities are amplified. When livelihoods and residency permits depend on compliance, the capacity to opt out of danger becomes a privilege.
The low-income migrant workers are Qatar’s indispensable labor force. Praising them on Instagram matters little when their status as everyday heroes is one given without offering voice, or critical questioning of how willingly they embrace this role. Crises expose not only individual acts of heroism but the underlying systems that render some people disposable. Unless these structural inequalities are addressed, praising migrant workers as ‘heroes’ is a symbolic gesture that obscures more than it reveals.
This CMI blog post is written by Mari Norbakk, senior researcher at CMI.
