The kafeel sponsorship system structurally subordinates Gulf migrant workers

Evidence

The power of native Arab employers over their workers derives from a widely practiced sponsorship system, known as the kafeel system, employed across the Gulf region. Sponsors, who usually function as contractors for employers, have great leeway in controlling the welfare of foreign workers. Sponsors initiate contracts that allow workers to enter the country; they issue exit permits; and often they have the power to bar workers from obtaining further work permits. During the term of the work contract, the sponsor collects passports and other documents to restrict the movement of workers and prevent them from fleeing. This system thus keeps workers in an exploited and vulnerable position, and it creates hierarchies among workers that sponsors can manipulate based on socially constructed typologies of ethnic and national background that are then racialized. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 551

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the kafeel system and its mechanisms of control.
• XREF: Connects to contemporary Gulf labor debates and Modern Slavery in Practice scholarship.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the grafted-labor theme of infrastructure built on exploited workers, parallel to the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s concern with invisible labor systems.