ABSTRACT
This essay addresses two main problematic issues which inform transnational migration theories and policies: first, international human rights policy on transnational migration, which privileges civil and political rights over the protection of gender, economic, social, religious, and cultural rights. Human rights discourses and international conventions/protocols have focused for the most part on assessing protracted refugee situations instigated by wars and militarized conflict. Informed by the ideological debates of post-war (World Wars I and II) European geopolitics, these United Nations instruments were designed to apply to refugees in Europe displaced by historic threats of the Holocaust and communism, and remained Eurocentric and limited. The second issue is the incomplete realization of the rights advocated by international organizations, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO). The United Nations conventions and ILO declarations both advocate for the rights of migrant workers, which include wage protection, the provision of social security, and employment benefits. However, in reality these international measures tend to be symbolic in nature and lack the power to protect migrant workers’ rights. At the global level, the majority of countries that host migrant workers such as the United States and Arabian Gulf states have not signed or implemented many of these international instruments, which render them ineffective. I will draw on my field research on Qataris’ attitudes towards migrant workers, as well as my own experience in Doha to highlight the shortcomings of the existing system of migrant sponsorship (Kafala), which enables migrant labor to enter the Gulf region legally with a work permit as temporary workers but simultaneously undermines their basic human rights.
