Kafala system

The paper critically comments on the M.S. judgment delivered on 26 March 2019 by the Court of Justice of the European Union. It is here argued that this judgment represents another piece of evidence of the influence of EU Law on the solution to the private international law
problems concerning the continuity of family status established abroad. Indeed, according to the M.S. judgment, the family status resulting from an Islamic kafala passed in Algeria (to the benefit of an Algerian child and two French spouses who had moved to the United Kingdom
for working reasons) must be recognised in the British legal system. Otherwise, the United Kingdom would violate EU Law on family reunification – which of course is highly related to the free movement of persons and thus to the European economic integration – in addition
to both the right to respect for private and family life and the best interests of the child as enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The value of the M.S. judgment is also assessed against the relevant international treaty provisions and case law of
the European Court of Human Rights concerning the Islamic kafala.

Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of female workers from African and South Asian countries have migrated to Lebanon, to primarily serve as domestic workers in private households. These workers arrive, reside and work in the country according to the Kafala (or sponsorship) System; which has been denounced by many researchers, activists, and workers themselves to be the reason for their vulnerability and susceptibility. A large portion of these migrant domestic workers are deprived of their basic workers and human rights within the Lebanese territory and have no legal security of employment under the Lebanese labor law. This thesis addresses the relationship between the Kafala System and the abuse of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon and analyzes whether there are other reasons contributing to the abuse. By going through the literature on domestic work, tracing the origin of domestic work and the Kafala System in Arab countries, examining its current regulations in Lebanon, as well as discussing Lebanese employers' behavior towards the Kafala system and migrant domestic workers; this thesis argues that Lebanese employers' perception of migrant domestic workers is another major factor that contributes to their abuse. Based on a number of interviews conducted with Lebanese employers as well as on policy reports and studies, this thesis seeks to determine how vital it is to recognize employers' perception of migrant domestic workers as an important factor when discussing the issue of abuse. The argument endorses addressing employers' acuity of their “maids” as an actual problem, as failing to do so, may hinder the impact of potential policy reform.

Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs) are among the most vulnerable labour forces around the globe. Nearly all of them are lower-class women who have been forced to migrate by their economic precariousness. Ethiopian female migrants are most of the domestic workers who work in the households in Lebanon in an adversely poor living and labour condition. Ethiopian migrant domestic workers, along with all other female migrant domestic workers in the Middle Eastern and Gulf countries have been undergone severe forms of exploitation and abuse by the employers.

This paper looks at migration management in the Gulf monarchies since the 1930s. It describes the dynamics of labour import and immigration policies highlighting the hybrid nature of migration management. Migration trends and migrants’ lives are organised by public and private actors and institutions operating transnationally, between home and host countries. The economic determinants and the exploitative dimension of migration management have often been highlighted in the literature. This paper explores the patterns and politics of migration management at the domestic, regional and international level over time to identify changes and continuity. From the colonial premises to the 1970s and the oil boom, the patterns of labour import management proved consistent, shaping immigration as temporary and denying foreign workers socio-economic rights. The politics and the economics of migration management evolved over time, accounting for instance for a shift in the geography of labour import – from Arab migration to Asian migration. Since the 1990s however States and governments have sought to increase their control in the management of migration as migrants’ settlement emerged as a security concern in Gulf societies. Reforms adopted in the wake of the Arab Spring have further illustrated this trend, bringing the State back in the illiberal transnationalism of migration management and anti-immigrant policies.

The Middle East is home to a significant number of noncitizens. These noncitizens include refugees and stateless populations, as well as the millions of migrant workers throughout the region. In fact, refugees, stateless populations, and migrant workers are often overlapping categories. In the Gulf, approximately half the population does not hold Gulf Cooperation Council citizenship, yet these noncitizens play a critical role in maintaining the social order. If a more democratic Middle East is to be constituted by an inclusive vision of citizenship, then the rights of noncitizens need to be made central to any political platform. Exclusive and restrictive notions of citizenship combined with a hierarchy between citizens and noncitizens form part of ruling classes’ political strategy to divide their populations, maintain a loyal citizenry, accumulate wealth, and restrict political decision making to elites. Therefore, projects of inclusive citizenship must also extend rights to noncitizens to create more democratic, participatory, and egalitarian societies.

This article examines the link between restrictive immigration schemes, specifically ‘tied visas’ and the selective application of labour laws, with exploitation of workers. It focuses on the situation of migrant domestic workers, who accompany their employers to the United Kingdom (UK) and are exposed to both an excessively restrictive visa regime, introduced in April 2012, and limited labour protections. The immigration status of these workers is currently tied to a named employer, a restriction that traps workers into exploitative conditions, often amounting to forced labour, servitude or slavery. Additionally, current UK labour laws are either not enforced or not applicable to domestic workers. The article concludes that unless the current immigration regime is abolished and comprehensive labour law protections are extended to migrant domestic workers, exploitation will continue.

This paper, grounded in a series of ethnographic projects concerned with transnational labor migration to the Arabian Gulf states, commences with an overview of the Indian Ocean migration system that shuttles tens of millions of temporary workers to and from the wealthy Gulf states. The remainder of the paper comprises two assertions and evidence to support them. First, the paper contends that the symbolic role of law in contemporary Arabia often eclipses its other functions in the region. Second, the paper contends that the demographic terrain of the contemporary Gulf states poses unprecedented challenges for the implementation of law and policies concerning foreign migrants and their presence in Arabia. While the ethnographic evidence presented in this paper is primarily drawn from Qatar, these points can be extrapolated to all six of the Gulf Cooperation Council states. This paper is the penultimate draft, with only slight changes made to this version prior to publication.

Female migratory fows from the Horn of Africa are mainly directed to Arab countries and tend to take the form of temporary legal migration. Like their Asian counterparts, these girls and women are subject to varying degrees of trafcking and even enslavement, working mainly as in-house maids in afuent Arab households, where they tend to be denied free and fair labour rights, under a harsh interpretation of the kafala, or "sponsorship" system, prevalent in Arabic countries. Although there are signs of better legal protection under international labour rules, the system in place and the culture that supports it impose a tense situation where maids are subject to everyday “structural violence” and employers have to bear an unwonted responsibility. The psychological, social and economic costs of this migration are well documented but there's still a lack of understanding of the trends of female agency that emerges as a direct refection of the hardships of such forms of migration. This chapter refects on the ways this situation is understood and managed in the hosting countries.

Among South Asian countries, it is for Bangladeshis that the financial cost of migration to the Gulf is the highest. The main reason may be the very large number of labour contracts obtained through ‘personal visas’ (more than 40% in Bangladesh) which are not or not properly controlled by the State institutions and are sold at a high price. The potential migrants are thus left in a particularly vulnerable situation from their departure time (high rate of indebtedness) to their arrival and stay in the country of migration. This vulnerability is all the more increased by the lack of support from the Bangladeshi authorities regarding especially low skilled migrants in the receiving countries.
Among them are fishermen which represent a paradigmatic example of this difficult situation. Based on fieldworks in Hatiya, a small island of the Bay of Bengal from where these fishermen are originating, and in several harbours of Oman, I intend to highlight the different mechanisms which make migration a very risky gamble for these men. From the recruitment process through local networks, the conditions of work and salaries, the unavoidable path to an irregular status and eventually the arrest and deportation of most of these workers, I propose to show how, structurally, their migratory experience almost always leads to failure and increased poverty for them and their family.

In a global economy where capital moves freely, border and legal restrictions are imposed on human bodies, giving rise to illegal and undocumented migration. The so called feminisation of migration looks at females as a dominant category in migration and denotes the surge in women migration which is also subject to restriction on mobility across borders. In a global economy with high tendency for securitisation and border control, migrating women, akin to other migrant groups, are also prone to be undocumented or illegal migrants in their host countries.

The highly gendered and radicalized global job market has left many migrant women working in fields that have traditionally been ought to be “female jobs”. In light of the classical invisibility of the work of women in the domestic field, the work of migrant female domestic workers, despite the benefits to the economies of their countries, is also invisiblized. However, the exploitation and abuse that many migrant domestic workers experience has put to tension their invisibility.

Intrigued by the technologies in which migrant domestic workers are rendered visible– often only within the category of being victims or battered- this paper will look at Lebanon as a case.

This research paper aims to critically engage with migrant domestic workers in Lebanon by probing the relationship between domestic work and governmentality. It examines the relationship between, on the one hand, the legal, social and spatial barriers related to the sector, and on the other the (in)visibility of migrant domestic workers. Moreover, the paper further examines the politics and power of representation and the production of objects of knowledge, as well as the impact of such a discourse on the (in)visibility these migrant domestic workers. The paper  highlights the implications of this on eliding the resistance and agency of these migrant domestic workers as well as eliding the gendered response to globalization.

Abstract Focusing on a women’s rights group in Lebanon, KAFA, this article offers a discursive reading of the NGO’s campaign strategies that transform discussions of gender-based violence from a private familial to a public societal issue. KAFA, ‘enough’ in Arabic, engages its audience on mediated platforms, providing audiences with participatory strategies through images and videos. I ground my analysis in my interview with KAFA’s communication director, interrogating KAFA’s innovative media strategies to build a wider movement. Using global media and performance theory, I examine how pedagogical media strategies expand the public sphere and facilitate audience intervention into systemic issues. These media strategies act as necessary scaffolds towards building nation-wide support against gender-based violence.

Migrating to the Middle East region in search for economic opportunities can sometimes pose a serious risk for the hundreds and thousands of women from Asia who are offered employment in private households across the Gulf as domestic workers. Although female migrant workers from any of the Asian countries can be vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, this article will primarily focus on Bangladeshi domestic workers. This is because the money earned by migrant workers, which they send back home to support their families and which are known as foreign remittances, constitutes one of the largest sectors of the Bangladesh economy, second only to the ready-made garments industry. For fiscal year 2018-2019, the Bangladesh Bank recorded $16.4 billion Dollars of inflows of such foreign remittances into the country. While some migrant workers succeed in achieving their dream of economic and social advancement, many others fall into the trap of debt, non-payment of wages, physical and sexual abuse. The questions of why this is the case and what measures can be put in place to ensure adequate protection for migrant domestic workers will be discussed in this article.

Avec cet arrêt, la Cour a fermement confirmé l’obligation des autorités nationales de faciliter leur entrée en tant qu’ «autre membre de la famille» au sens de l’article 3(2)(a) de la directive 2004/38/CE, autant que l’obligation, pour les États membres, d’exercer leur marge d’appréciation à la lumière du considérant 31 de la directive et conformément aux dispositions de la Charte, ce qui se traduira dans certaines circonstances par une obligation d’octroyer l’entrée et le séjour à l’enfant concerné. Ainsi, la décision dans l’affaire S.M. apporte une forme de sécurité juridique pour les enfants comme S.M., qui ne dépendront plus de la bonne volonté du ministre (ou de l’agent chargé d’examiner les demandes de permis d’entrée).
Finalement, cette décision est susceptible d’avoir des incidences sur d’autres affaires concernant des personnes qui font partie de la famille élargie d’un citoyen de l’Union et à qui le droit d’entrer et de séjourner sur le territoire d’un État membre a été refusé. En tout cas, la question se pose de savoir si le pouvoir d’appréciation des États est également restreint s’agissant des demandes d’entrées d’autres membres de la famille élargie. On pense notamment à la situation d’un partenaire, où le refus peut également avoir un impact sur l’exercice des droits de libre circulation du citoyen de l’Union.
(Cite as : Cools, L., « Kafala, «descendant direct» et «autre membre de la famille» : Commentaire de l’arrêt S.M. c. Entry Clearance Officer, UK, Visa Section de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne du 26 mars 2019 », J.D.J., 2020/4, n° 394, p. 3-10.)

Focusing on a women’s rights group in Lebanon, KAFA, this article offers a discursive reading of the NGO’s cam- paign strategies that transform discussions of gender-based violence from a private familial to a public societal issue. KAFA, ‘enough’ in Arabic, engages its audience on medi- ated platforms, providing audiences with participatory strat- egies through images and videos. I ground my analysis in my interview with KAFA’s communication director, interrog- ating KAFA’s innovative media strategies to build a wider movement. Using global media and performance theory, I examine how pedagogical media strategies expand the public sphere and facilitate audience intervention into systemic issues. These media strategies act as necessary scaffolds towards building nation-wide support against gender-based violence.

This paper locates the complicity of the Nepali state in the creation of a vulnerable migrant working population. Through an exploration of the experiences of Nepali migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, the paper highlights the question of state sovereignty and problems of citizenship in the context of neoliberal economic structures that create particular circuits of migration.

La kafalah e la sua circolazione nello spazio giuridico europeo: una indagine di diritto comparato Salvatore Casabona L'intento dell'indagine è provare a rileggere con un approccio comparatistico la reazione che l'alieno, ovvero la kafalah internazionale, innesca nel confronto con tradizioni e ordinamenti giuridici lontani rispetto al mondo da cui esso proviene, nello spazio giuridico europeo. Si è ritenuto di osservare dapprima le varie strategie di regolazione adottate dagli stati nazionali con riguardo all'efficacia giuridica della kafalah negli ordinamenti interni, focalizzando l'attenzione in particolar modo sugli sforzi di giurisprudenza e dottrina tesi a individuare un "equivalente" dell'istituto straniero nello strumentario di diritto di famiglia nazionale per la protezione del minore. Successivamente, il piano di indagine si è spostato dal contesto nazionale a quello europeo, e in conseguenza si sono isolate tre macrotematiche, connesse al diritto dell'Unione e interconnesse tra loro: quella del ricongiungimento familiare dello straniero; quello della cittadinanza europea; quello della tutela dei diritti fondamentali. * The purpose of the essay is to conduct a comparative analysis on the impact of the kafalah on some European legal systems in the framework of the European area of freedom, security and justice, trying to single out some essential features shared in common by the different models of regulatory strategies. In particular, in the multi-level model of European regulation, kafalah has been addressed either from a national jurisdiction point of view (focusing on the legal recognition at Member State level), either from a European point of view, stressing some relevant fields of interplay: kafalah and right to family reunification; kafalah and European citizenship; kafalah and protection of fundamental rights.

The places of sociability among female migrant domestic workers in Lebanon are highly shaped by the conditions of employment. Under the current system -called kafala or “sponsorship”-, their freedom of movement is severely limited due to a variety of factors, such as the permission to circulate allowed –or not- by the employers, their migratory status, and the cultural and social separation between nationals and foreigners in the country.
This paper, based on extensive fieldwork, will examine the ways in which female migrant domestic workers from Madagascar living in Beirut establish relationships with their own nationals and others, all within the limits of a particular system that controls their everyday lives in the country.


Key words: kafala system, migrant domestic workers, sociability, Madagascar, Lebanon.

The peculiar demographic situation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states is assumed to have arisen as a consequence of the unique economic forces prevailing in this sub-region, where large stocks of temporary migrants are active in the overall labor market, and in three states foreigners outnumber the native population. The common understanding is that the influx of migrants to the Gulf countries has been driven by the transformative effect of oil and gas revenue. Gulf demography is considered a natural result of de facto economic conditions, where a paucity of local labor has come up against a region-wide booming, oil-driven development agenda. While accepting the primacy of economic forces in shaping the regional reliance on foreign labor, this paper suggests that the GCC's peculiar demography is also reflective of particular political choices made by the states. This paper examines two particular policymaking tools used widely across the region, namely — the kafāla (worker-sponsorship) system and public sector employment of citizens and assess them within the Qatari context. In Qatar, it appears that these policy tools have been state choices not only to preserve citizens' economic satisfaction, but also political and social stability.

Jureidini, Ray & Hassan, Said (Eds.). (2020). Migration and Islamic Ethics. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. This book addresses how Islamic ethical and legal traditions can contribute to current global debates on migration and displacement; how Islamic ethics of muʾakha, ḍiyāfa, ijāra, amān, jiwār, sutra, kafāla, among others, may provide common ethical grounds for a new paradigm of social and political virtues applicable to all humanity, not only Muslims. The present volume more broadly defines the Islamic tradition to cover not only theology but also to encompass ethics, customs and social norms, as well as modern political, humanitarian and rights discourses. The first section addresses theorizations and conceptualizations using contemporary Islamic examples, mainly in the treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees; the second, contains empirical analyses of contemporary case studies; the third provides historical accounts of Muslim migratory experiences. Available at: (Open Access) https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004417342

This hour-long interview/conversation with Anna Delaney for Levant TV concerns labor migration, the kafala, and labor rights in the GCC. The conversation included insightful comments and perspectives from Hilary Stauffer (LSE), Stephen Russell (ITUC), Rothna Begum (Human Rights Watch), and professor Madhav Das Napalat (Manipal University).