Migrant Laborers in the Persian Gulf Struggle Under Increasingly Brutal Heat

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CHAPTERS

02:36 Jobs exposed to extreme heat
05:53 Health risks and accountability gaps
12:13 Coping strategies and work-hour rules
17:14 Worker mobility and the kafala system
22:50 Lessons from the Gulf for other regions

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00.530] - Julian Hattem

No place in the world may be more dependent on migrant workers than the Persian Gulf, or exposed to as much extreme heat. Foreign nationals make up more than half of the combined populations of the 6 countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, which are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. And in some places, such as Qatar, migrant workers account for nearly 90% of all residents. That's a higher foreign-born share than almost every other country in the world. Many of these workers are outside for long stretches of the day as construction workers, guards, delivery drivers, or in other jobs. And that can expose them to brutal temperatures. In places such as Abu Dhabi, The temperature in the summer can get higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 50 degrees Celsius. And it's only getting hotter. Across the Middle East and North Africa, average temperatures have been rising twice as fast as the global average, and heat waves have gotten longer. According to the International Labor Organization, about 84% of the workforce in Arab states is exposed to excessive heat. compared to 71% globally. So what kinds of risks do migrant workers face?

[00:01:27.830] - Julian Hattem

How are they managing them? And what should governments be doing to protect people? This is Changing Climate, Changing Migration. This is a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that explores what climate change means for people on the move around the world. My name is Julian Hattem. I am your host and the senior editor of MPI's digital magazine, the Migration Information Source. My guest today is William Gois, who is the regional coordinator at the Migrant Forum in Asia, which is an umbrella network of NGOs focused on protecting migrant workers. William, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's great to have you. It's great to be here. So let's start by laying out the context. Millions of migrants from the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, and other countries work in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and elsewhere across the Persian Gulf. Generally speaking, what kinds of work do they do and why might they be particularly exposed to extreme heat?

[00:02:35.640] - William Gois

Well, from Asia, now when you talk about migrant workers from Asia, From the region that we are largely looking at is, of course, the whole of Asia. And I'm saying whole of Asia because you would even get Asians from Japan and South Korea going to the Gulf to work kind of thing. So to understand that the Gulf attracts everybody from domestic worker to a pilot, if that is, you know, from somebody who's very grounded to somebody who's flying the skies kind of thing. So any kind of job in between those two is what the migrant is. what the Gulf's trying to attract and they have a great need for. For a large part for the Gulf from the '70s where this kind of movement started, it has largely been worker— it has largely been for the development of the Gulf in the sense of the major constructions that have undergone since the '70s kind of thing. So when deserts were transformed into mega cities kind of thing, big tall buildings, skyscrapers and things like that, solid infrastructure, roads, MRT stations kind of. So all that, so a lot of the migrant workers have been within that kind of construction, infrastructure, agriculture kind of sector kind of thing, domestic work.

[00:03:51.320] - William Gois

That is the bulk. But then you get mid-level management and you get high-skilled jobs as well.

[00:03:57.070] - Julian Hattem

But I guess, is it fair to say that in this region, migrants might be more likely to be working in jobs that are exposed to extreme heat than the native-born? Things like construction or delivery drivers, security guards, things like that. I mean, those tend to be Foreign-born workers for the most part, right?

[00:04:15.380] - William Gois

I would say Asian and African. I would say Asian and African. Why I'm saying Asian and African again is because you do get Europeans also coming in, but not necessarily in these sectors. You get Latin Americans coming in, but not necessarily in these sectors kind of thing. So it's largely Asian and African that occupy that category of jobs, those category of jobs.

[00:04:40.250] - Julian Hattem

Is the situation getting more pronounced as the impacts of global climate change grow, becomes more extreme? I mean, are some of these foreign-born workers, Asian and African workers, becoming exposed to extreme heat in potentially dangerous ways?

[00:04:57.410] - William Gois

I think so. And reasons for that being as well because the Gulf economy is also going through a transition. In some ways, they are trying to wean off the so-called petrodollar economy kind of thing and try to be more diversified in their economies. So there is the building of stadiums, there is the services sector, there's the gig economy that has come up kind of thing, in which you have platform-based workers and things like that. So that the economy is also shifting kind of thing. And they're building towards new kind of infrastructure as well as they want to become sports hubs, entertainment hubs, and things like that kind of. So the whole new skill of workers, that will be exposed as well, kind of even in the services sector. So even if you move away from construction, you come to services sector and hospitality sector, you get workers being exposed even in those situations, kind of thing, to heat.

[00:05:53.320] - Julian Hattem

And according to the World Health Organization, something like hundreds of thousands of people around the world die every year due to heat exposure. More of them are in Asia, including the Middle East, than in any other region. I mean, let's talk about the ramifications, the consequences of being exposed to intense heat that can stretch, you know, to 100, 110 degrees plus Fahrenheit, 40, 40 plus degrees Celsius. I guess what kind of— what are the ramifications? Is there the possibility of death or other serious health challenges? Has that happened for migrant workers? And what kind of risks do they face if they're building, you know, soccer stadiums, sports stadiums, other construction projects in situations of extreme heat?

[00:06:39.590] - William Gois

I think definitely there are ramifications, but the challenge here is transparency and accountability. And I'm saying transparency and accountability because, for example, you get many young migrant workers dying and on the death certificate it says natural causes. And most of the natural causes would be heart failure kind of thing. And you're talking about categories of age brackets between 30 to, let's say, 35, 40 kind of thing. These kind of age brackets, people dying. And you begin to ask yourselves, how is that happening kind of thing? You know, why is that happening, these young people dying like this? So there's many issues to that. One is, of course, exposure to heat. The other issue might be the whole acclimatization process kind of thing, which doesn't happen kind of thing. Workers coming in, let us say, from Nepal, for example, which has much cooler climates kind of thing. People coming in from rural areas, mountain areas, and things like that, coming in and going straight into temperatures of 45, 50 degrees and starting to work. There's no acclimatization process kind of thing. There's no training kind of thing that needs to happen to say, okay, this is what you have to be careful of.

[00:07:49.920] - William Gois

There is a lot of information being given about heat stress and how to deal with it, keep hydrated, but that's kind of basic kind of information. So when migrants actually have to deal with the complications that come in the health with regard to heat stress, they don't really know what to do. Because the system does not also have, in a certain sense, health insurance. While there is health insurance kind of thing, this is only for compliance in many of the states. Some of them are moving towards social protection and within a social protection program looking at health insurance. But still, that is— it's very early kind of thing. And I think both countries of origin as well as the countries of destination don't seem to put in robust governance mechanisms to look into this or accountability mechanisms to look into this. So people, it's not easy to say how big the issue is, but I'm very sure it's big and needs investigating into.

[00:08:49.460] - Julian Hattem

I'm interested in, you talked about accessibility, transparency, and accountability. I'm interested too because heat stress is not like, It's kind of quiet. It's subtle. It's not always an obvious condition to happen, right? If you, if you have a work accident and you lose your foot in an accident, it's very clear this is the thing that made me lose my foot. If you're working in 50-degree temperatures and you have a heart condition, it's harder. The causality, I guess, is harder to trace, which I think, I guess, is a complicating factor in this dynamic. Right. Is that a fair characterization? Is that fair?

[00:09:29.670] - William Gois

That is fair to some degree. But there are also other issues that one can look at to recognize that there needs to be something done. And for example, I give an example. You take in hot summer months kind of thing, or you take weekends, or you take the evenings on a hot day kind of thing, and you look at where workers are congregating. Now, normally in these cities kind of thing around the Gulf, You will have workers congregating in certain places. Either it will be a local kind of, you know, place where there are a lot of South Asian stalls kind of thing, or it will be a big park or something like that. And then you begin to ask the workers kind of why are they congregating there kind of thing. It is because they congregate there even after work hours, basically because it's too hot to go back into the dormitory. And in the open air, they feel okay in the evening wind. It's much more relaxing to be here till I'm ready to fall asleep, and then I go back to the dormitory and sleep. So this is some of the anecdotes we get from workers, kind of thing, who congregate in these spaces, kind of thing, just to beat the heat, kind of thing.

[00:10:39.200] - William Gois

At night, this is it. And so these little things like this make you feel that there is more that needs to be dug into by way of information on how heat stress is affecting workers. Other examples, more more serious examples is how many workers are now having chronic kidney disease, not out of diabetes, not out of hypertension and things like that, just because of dehydration and how that has an impact on the kidney kind of thing. And this is very subtle. This shows up when the worker has already gone back home, you know, and then you realize you've come back home and now you have to go on the constant dialysis, daily dialysis kind of thing. And you begin to ask, where did this originate? There is no kind of history in the family for something like this. How did this happen? So between these kind of two extremes of workers congregating at night to beat the heat, you know, to chronic kidney diseases and anything in between, you see that heat stress is much— there's a lot more to investigate into, particularly in situations like in the Gulf where you have temperatures ranging from at least 45 to 50 at times.

[00:11:48.200] - Julian Hattem

I'm glad you brought up the kidney example. I think that's a great and very stirring demonstration of how the challenges of working in these kind of intense conditions can persist even long after people return to their home countries. But I guess, I mean, to your first example about how people spend time outside when they're not working, what other strategies do workers take to cope with the intense heat, either on their own, of their own volition, and what kind of protections, to the extent there are any, are built in? I mean, you Yeah, I mean, I know that some countries, I believe, have rules that limit how much outdoor work can be done during certain hours of the day, right? Is that effective? And I guess, are there other strategies that workers have to try and stay cool?

[00:12:36.210] - William Gois

So in the entire Gulf now, practically all the Gulf countries have more or less determined hours that say between this hour to this hour, you cannot work outside. And that is pretty strictly complied with kind of thing. And one can actually report if this is not being complied with. But the problem is that it relies on the standardization of hours that are there. But what we are beginning to advocate for and what we're asking for is that we are seeing that the hours of extreme heat are much more than have been standardized as non-work hours. And the period from June to September, let us say, has extended beyond that, starting somewhere in May and going on to, let's say, until November, you know. So it's like, and within what you would expect, a kind of autumn season, you get very hot days as well, kind of thing. But because it's past the standard kind of days when, as stipulated in the law, it doesn't apply. So it's not robust enough. It's not flexible enough to be able for workers to— for the system to adapt, or for the work schedule to adapt kind of thing.

[00:13:51.030] - William Gois

And so that is, I think, a bigger challenge. One, we need to move away from the standardization of from a certain month to a certain month, the date in a certain month, to actually looking at a model that is more reflective of how heat kind of reflects itself.

[00:14:10.770] - Julian Hattem

Otherwise, generally speaking, do workers have access to, you know, water, shade, places to cool off? Or I mean, how rare are those kind of amenities?

[00:14:20.940] - William Gois

In that sense, I think it's pretty good because there is also a very good culture of during heat, you get a lot of philanthropists giving out water bottles and sharing, you know, and that's one of the government agencies as well, distribute water to worksites and things like that. So that is, that is good. The question will always, of course, be for undocumented workers, for those who are not within any kind of schedule kind of thing of employment, for those who are on their own kind of thing. Now, this is where I think it becomes tricky. Of course, workers share accommodation, share their resources and things like that. But this is always under the radar because doing any kind of assistance like this is considered as illegal kind of thing. So that is one big thing. The other thing is also where workers are not undocumented, but they have— the companies have been having problems with paying wages and things like that. They have not fired the workers. The workers are not undocumented. Workers continue to live in the accommodation, and the employers hope that the workers will move out. And then to help incentivize them for moving out, or to force them to move out rather, they would turn off the electricity, turn off the lights and things like that, turn off the air conditioning.

[00:15:48.320] - William Gois

And then those situations, then you get workers who have a legitimate kind of employment contract, resident permit, and all that kind of thing, but who these dire kind of conditions are being forced upon kind of thing for them. To then move out of facilities or use the facilities less and things like this. These are some of the strategies that some employers actually use to exploit workers.

[00:16:14.380] - Julian Hattem

Are these like edge cases? Or are these relatively common situations that workers find themselves in these positions, either at physical risk or at risk of being deported or losing their jobs?

[00:16:28.090] - William Gois

This is something that is actively reported in our network. This is not one case in a month or something like that. This is at any given time, you go to any of these places, and it is easy to find a group of workers who will tell you that the employer has cut off the electricity and the water supply. This is not, this is not a one-off case.

[00:16:48.770] - Julian Hattem

I mean, I guess, what can or should governments do to prevent situations like that? But also, More generally, what can governments— should— or what can or should governments do to assist workers who are dealing with intense heat? I mean, you talk about, you know, expanding the regulated time of being outside. I mean, what are the kind of policies that authorities might want to consider here?

[00:17:16.670] - William Gois

I think one of the biggest things that we need to start looking at, particularly in the Gulf context, is the access to mobility. Workers, workers tend to remain and continue to remain out of fear in jobs, even if they are exploited, even if they have not been paid their wages, even if they have not been given their dues, end-of-service benefits, and things like that. They continue to remain, and that is because there is no mobility. They have to stay. There are some reforms made to the employer-tied system. But those kind of reforms are not fully being implemented yet. It's still a challenge kind of thing for the workers. There is still a justification that the worker needs to make, which sometimes gets lost in the bureaucracy kind of thing. And it's lost because of language. It's lost because of not having the right documents, which the worker might not have kind of thing as well. It's lost because the worker does not understand how to report it kind of thing on an online system. So there are many reasons for loss kind of thing, which means that what is on paper says you can move on to another, it's all on the contract now, it's not on the employer, doesn't work out necessarily like that in practice.

[00:18:35.380] - William Gois

And that's why workers need to be given some kind of leeway, some kind of other options of how to move, either go directly to the labor office aside from the online process, or go to make a complaint through, you know, other information channels or whatever. But the being tied to a contract or to an employer, if that fear is taken away, workers would feel a lot more empowered to be able to maneuver their lives in complex situations.

[00:19:09.550] - Julian Hattem

And just, I guess, for listeners who are unfamiliar, you're describing what is sometimes referred to as the kafala system, right? Which is where foreign workers I mean, their ability to stay in the country legally depends on their contract with a certain employer. I mean, can you just, for listeners who are unaware, can you very briefly just kind of describe the nature of that system and why it has been criticized for a very long time as being very kind of limiting?

[00:19:36.400] - William Gois

The kafala system, as it is known in the Gulf, the main tenets of it is you can't enter into the Gulf without an employer, without having an employer bringing you into the country, which is okay in some sense because it's also a practice in other parts of the world, in Europe and the West and things like that. You have to have an employer. But the kafala system became different was because you could not even leave the country without getting an exit clearance kind of thing. So in a certain sense, it tied you down kind of thing. And its worst forms of exploitation were when the employer felt that they own you because they brought you in, you know, and the whole idea of we paid for you to come into this country and we've got to recover what we paid kind of thing and extract as much labor as we can kind of thing is what became very exploitative. Now that has gone through some kind of reform saying it's not the employer anymore, so there's no need to, but it's the contract. And now you can take your contract and say that the tenets of the contract are not being kept, kind of this breach of contract.

[00:20:44.190] - William Gois

But the question of breach of contract still in the bureaucratic system requires a lot of processing, which low-wage migrant workers are not necessarily able to maneuver.

[00:20:59.470] - Julian Hattem

And

[00:20:59.740] - William Gois

so it still remains, they still remain tied in that situation kind of thing. They are unable to come out of that because if they do take resort to other measures, it is most likely they will be tagged as undocumented. Now, some improvements are being made there in saying that you should come forward and make your complaint before the employer does and makes you undocumented. Or if the employer tags you as undocumented, the employer will have to justify kind of thing. But all these things are very nebulous. They're in their beginning kind of stages kind of thing. Which means there are still a lot of workers. And I'm talking about the bulk of the workers who are in the low-wage sector. For them, this kind of maneuverability is very, very, very constrained, even if on paper it looks like there's been advances. So there is this what governments can do, and this is what governments can do: worker education, allowing— let's say, I'm not saying trade unions, but I'm saying some kind of freedom of association. Let workers educate themselves, peer groups, community organizations which come together, let that flourish kind of thing. But the problem with this is that, and in situations like this, that there is even a clampdown and there's a kind of surveillance, uh, watching out, which, which these community organizations, social groups, associations feel uncomfortable with as well kind of thing.

[00:22:29.590] - William Gois

And so this kind of worker education is very difficult at the peer level. So it's a very top-down kind of thing through information technology. Oh, do this, do this, do this kind of thing. But information technology might not be the only way to go about things.

[00:22:50.130] - Julian Hattem

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I want to return to the heat issue, and we're about out of time, so this might be my last question. But, you know, we've been talking about extreme heat in the Middle East, in part because the heat there is so extreme and because there are such, you know, a large number of migrant workers there, often, as you describe, in a precarious position. But other parts of the world are also getting hotter. Extreme heat is not just an issue for the Middle East. It is a regular feature of North America, where I live, as well as Europe and many other places. I guess, should policymakers in other countries be planning for protecting workers who are outside, migrant and native-born alike, in the context of extreme heat? And are there lessons from what's happening in the Gulf that might, that others might learn from in other places around the world?

[00:23:43.140] - William Gois

Oh, definitely, I think, because even if you look at Europe and the US and things like that, look at where the low-wage workers are. They're in the agricultural fields. They're out there in the open. They are on construction sites and things like that. They are in factories and things like that. So even whether you might— whatever it is, heat and extreme heat is going to cover the planet very soon kind of thing in all its spaces. Right. And the problem is all these low-wage works is always being filled with migrant workers. And migrant workers are the other, the invisible in most of our societies, and particularly again, this low-wage category. So as long as this will persist like this, I don't think governments will be open to doing something on heat that reaches down to the most vulnerable. This is why we need to learn kind of thing. Otherwise, we are going to have a very— we're going to have migrant workers that fill up these situations where there is extreme heat in workplaces, but nobody knows about it or does little about it. And that is why there is a lot of learning that could be done.

[00:24:48.700] - William Gois

One particular thing I like is for the gig economy, for the platform workers, and I've seen this in the Gulf, is where now they have stations. So each platform will have these kind of water hydrating stations along the route kind of thing where workers can go and rest kind of thing. Water is—

[00:25:04.940] - Julian Hattem

And these are workers who like are riding motorbikes and things delivering food and whatever. Yeah.

[00:25:09.450] - William Gois

So they can get out of the heat. Cool off, hydrate kind of thing, and then move on. And this I've not seen anywhere else really, platform workers putting this up at regular intervals. So this might be something as a good practice that the Gulf can share with other countries in which there are platform workers as well. Not maybe necessarily all migrant workers, but in the Gulf it is all migrant workers.

[00:25:33.330] - Julian Hattem

Yeah. This, I think we have to wrap things up there, but this has been an incredibly sobering conversation and a very interesting one. I really appreciate you taking the time, William. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[00:25:47.490] - William Gois

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:25:50.220] - Julian Hattem

William Gois is a longtime advocate for migrant workers and the regional coordinator of the Migrant Forum in Asia. Thank you as always for listening to this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. If you liked my conversation with William Gois, you might be interested in a previous episode we recorded on extreme heat with the physician and researcher Tord Kjellström. That episode is called Impacts of Extreme Heat: Global Warming, and Migration. You can find that episode as well as the dozens of others that we have recorded in our archives at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. While you're there, why not sign up for the free Migration Information Source newsletter for important insights and analysis about migration issues around the world? And make sure you have subscribed to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. That is the best way to stay on top of our regular episodes. And if you leave us a positive review, it will go a long way to helping others find us too. This episode was produced by Daniella Espacio. Assistance came from Lisa Dixon, and editorial oversight was provided by Michelle Mittelstadt. Touch by Patrick Patrikios is our theme music.

[00:27:20.440] - Julian Hattem

Once again, my name is Julian Hattem. I'll see you soon.