Labor Migration Control and Asymmetrical Dependency in the Arab Gulf In-Country Sponsorship (kafāla) in Qatar

• Published in: The Routledge Handbook of Global Islam and Consumer Culture pp. 171 - 183
• Main Author: Rowitz, Laura
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2025
• Edition: 1
• ISBN: 0367715856; 9780367715830; 9780367715854; 036771583X
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003152712-15

In the cause of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar 2022, the kafāla system controlling labor migration in the Gulf has become the subject of critical attention and demands for reform. In this chapter, using the example of domestic worker law in Qatar, I argue that the kafāla system's consistency is facilitated by a certain local discourse among citizen-sponsors (citizens) about labor migrants. The first part of the chapter addresses the historical origins of the kafāla, which in Islamic law originally is a contractual guarantee. The second part delineates the continuity of unfree labor in the Gulf and introduces the kafāla as a tool for labor migration control. The final section is devoted to the Qatari discourse on migrant domestic labor accompanying the ongoing legislative reform of labor under the kafāla. Based on the assumption that a closer look at the kafāla's legal past opens avenues to understanding its controversial status in the present, I find that in both its classical version and its modern guise, this legal institution exhibits a certain disposition toward relationships of asymmetrical dependency and relationships with unequal legal protection.