Migrant Stories from Qatar

Background and Scope

Recent estimates indicate that there are between 29 and 35 million migrant workers present in the Gulf. Many migrant workers in Qatar and in other Gulf states live and work in difficult conditions and have limited financial resources or social capital to improve their situations. A great deal of international criticism has focused on Qatar for shortfalls in upholding migrants’ labor rights. But conditions of precarity experienced by this group of workers are also globally relevant, as temporary labor migrants have increasingly become a visible part of workforces in many industrialized nations. In parts of the world that have long served as destinations for migration and settlement, there has been a shift toward addressing labor shortages through temporary migration programs.

The issue of migrant labor in Qatar gained renewed international attention after the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar in 2010. More recently, journalistic coverage by international media has often presented migrant labor in ways that hide its global connections or ignore the personal stories of laborers.

Scholars at Georgetown University in Qatar (including some of the collaborators on this project) have published more nuanced depictions of the situation, including focusing on the lives, motivations, and experiences of migrant laborers, and have placed this phenomenon in a broader historical and global context. While not diminishing the exploitation these workers have faced, these studies offer a more scholarly portrayal of both the micro- and macro-level aspects of migrant labor in Qatar. Migrant experiences narrated directly in their own voices are usually underrepresented or absent in the Gulf scholarship and policy work on labor migration. This project aims to address that gap.

Objectives of the Project

This current project engages with a larger population sample group, gathering oral history interviews from approximately 30–40 migrant workers in Qatar, from diverse nationalities and across various employment sectors. These interviews are recorded, collected, and edited with the goal of producing a curated digital exhibit showcased on the website of the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q). As far as we are aware, no such material currently exists in Qatar.

In addition to short podcasts made from the edited interviews, the digital exhibit includes material that reflects the broader historical, social, economic, and cultural context around migrant laborer experiences in Qatar. Alongside the publicly available digital exhibit, the project includes a digital archive of longer oral histories after the original audio recordings and written transcripts were coded, edited, and de-identified.