Nepal is not just exporting manpower to Qatar now, but also veggies There is something inherently elitist about labels like ‘expat’ and ‘diaspora’. They refer to skilled Nepalis studying, working or living abroad and not to the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers when, in fact, both are just individuals moving out for better opportunities. […]
Category: Migrant Labor
Hanif Hasan is a 25-year-old Rohingya Muslim living in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He has been unemployed for two years and hasn’t left home for a month, fearing arrest. “It’s hard even to breathe here,” Hasan says. “Every moment feels like it might be the last.” On November 15, the Saudi Interior Ministry launched a plan to supervise […]
JAHANARA* HAD HAD enough. For a year, the Bangladeshi cook had been working 12 to 16 hours a day, eating only leftovers and sleeping on the kitchen floor of her employer’s Abu Dhabi home – all for half the salary she had been promised. She had to prepare four fresh meals a day for the eight-member […]
The road to the Global Compact on Migration in Marrakesh this week has not been smooth in a politically tense global environment as an anti-migration wave is fuelled by nationalism and xenophobia. On Monday, the United States, Australia, Hungary and some other eastern European states said they would not participate in the Compact. While the adoption […]
Agents in Malaysia have swindled a huge sum of money from thousands of Bangladeshi workers in the Southeast Asian country, who, over the last two years, had applied to regularise their immigration status, victims and researchers said. The exploitation of workers began after Malaysia declared a rehiring programme in February 2016 and appointed three private […]
Hasan had applied for a work permit nearly six months before the Malaysian authorities’ rehiring programme for undocumented foreign workers ended on June 30. He had all the documents to prove that, but those meant nothing to the immigration police. On September 3, the police detained him and dozens of others from Bukit Bintang area […]
It was around 9:00pm on September 11. After a day’s hard work, some of the 10 workers living in a makeshift house next to a large construction site in Malaysia’s Cyberjaya were preparing food while others were either having meals or chatting before going to bed. Suddenly, they heard the sound of four to five […]
In a world where populist anti-immigrant narratives dominate, the diverse composition of football teams in the World Cup in Russia did not go unnoticed. Players of foreign origin including former refugees and children or grandchildren of immigrants, especially in the winning French team, stole the show. In Doha, Nepali workers busy building the infrastructure for […]
For many Indians, the term “Gulf nation” symbolises hope, a sign of good life and prosperity. Gulf countries attract Indians in large numbers, especially from Kerala. But sadly, the ground reality that has emerged paints a different picture altogether — with reports of workplace harassment, “horrible bosses” and difference in culture, many Indians are quitting […]
Thousands of Bangladeshis are facing risks of arrest and deportation from Malaysia as its rehiring programme, launched two years ago to legalise undocumented workers, ends today. The risks have been heightened also as the new Malaysian government, which came to power last month, has recently decided to cancel work permits of the migrants employed for […]