Two Bad Places at Once: Pakistani Migrant Workers in the Persian Gulf

• In Event: Power Politics and Migration

Abstract

Widespread poverty, uneven patterns of development, and a burgeoning national population that cannot be absorbed into the domestic labor market, have led to the Pakistani Government actively encouraging the temporary migration of its citizens. The largest component of outmigration from Pakistan is to the Persian Gulf, and comprises of low-skill male labor migrants, most of whom work in the construction, agriculture, and transport sectors. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the existential dilemma of being in “two difficult places at once” that migrant workers face in the Gulf, as they struggle to navigate their periods overseas while simultaneously providing economic resources for their families back home. Migrants’ experiential narratives suggest that their ability to assert their agency in a host state is limited, particularly when it comes to seeking accountability from their employers or asserting their labor rights. In addition to the contextual vulnerabilities tied to their low status in the Gulf, it is migrants’ knowledge that their families back home depend on their incomes that attenuates their efforts at rights’ claiming. The paper offers an in-depth analysis of key interview findings with Pakistani migrants, representatives of the states, and recruitment agencies in Pakistan, highlighting issues that emerged as being critical to migrants’ experiences in both their state of origin and while in the Gulf. The paper suggests that Pakistani migrant workers’ slip into criminality and irregularity in the Gulf stems from state-level negligence via both the Pakistani government’s insufficient regulatory control recruitment processes as well as lack of engagement in the Gulf on behalf of their overseas citizens.

Author

• Zahra R Babar, Georgetown University