ABSTRACT
Reports of the flagrant abuse of workers’ rights, charges of modern slavery and human trafficking and the difficult working and living conditions experienced by migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent who are working in the Gulf region, and in particular in Qatar, abound in the international press.1 This chapter is an attempt to place such debates, which have often been generated by newspaper reports and small-sample ethnographic work (e.g. Gardner, 2010), on a stronger empirical footing. As opposed to the bulk of the work in this area which focuses on low-income migrants (Kamrava and Babar, 2012; Gardner et al., 2013) and provides a perhaps narrow view, we adopt a broader lens and examine the experiences of a sample of about 450 migrants from India in Qatar. The data was gathered between January and May 2011 from a pool of migrants living and working in Doha and is representative of the Indian states from which the migrants originate. The chapter provides seriatim a socio-demographic profile of the migrants, highlights the manner and the cost of obtaining employment, examines variations between pre-migration and post-migration contractual agreements – a key marker of the charge of human trafficking, analyses the wage gains from migration and assesses working terms and conditions.
