The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor

361 Pages·2015·13.71 MB·English

by  Andrew Ross

The
T
On Saadiyat Island, just off the coast of Abu Dhabi, branches of iconic cultural institutions,
including the Louvre, the Guggenheim, the British Museum and New York University, are h
taking shape to the designs of starchitects such as Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid,
e
and Norman Foster. In this way, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeks to burnish its
reputation as a sophisticated destination for wealthy visitors and residents around the globe.
G
Beneath the glossy veneer of the Saadiyat real estate plan, however, lies a tawdry reality. Those
laboring on the construction sites are migrant workers who arrive from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India u
or Nepal heavily indebted from recruitment and transit fees. Once in the UAE, they discover their
“Gulf Dream” of well-paid, secure work is only a mirage. Typically, the sponsoring employer takes l
their passports, houses them in sub-standard labor camps, pays much less than they were promised, f
and enforces a punishing work regimen under the hot desert sun. If they voice complaints or protest
publicly, they risk arrest, beatings, and deportation.
F A
For five years, the Gulf Labor Coalition, a cosmopolitan group of artists and writers, has been O N
R
pressuring Saadiyat’s Western cultural brands to ensure worker protections. Gulf Labor has co- D

ordinated a boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and pioneered other tactics (including direct action G R HIGH CULTURE/HARD LABOR
U
E
that involved several spectacular museum occupations). As part of a year-long initiative, one of an L
W
F
international array of artists, writers, and activists submitted a work, a text, or an action on a weekly L R
basis. Contextualized by essays that trace the way that Gulf Labor has evolved, these contributions A
O
B
are reproduced in this book. The result is a compelling chronicle of a campaign at the forefront of a O S
new wave of world-wide cultural activism. R S

OR Books
EDITED BY ANDREW ROSS [ FOR GULF LABOR]
www.orbooks.com
COVER ART BY NEMES CSABA
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The
T
On Saadiyat Island, just off the coast of Abu Dhabi, branches of iconic cultural institutions,
including the Louvre, the Guggenheim, the British Museum, and New York University, are h
taking shape to the designs of starchitects such as Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid,
and Norman Foster. In this way, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeks to burnish its e
reputation as a sophisticated destination for wealthy visitors and residents around the globe.

G
Beneath the glossy veneer of the Saadiyat real estate plan, however, lies a tawdry reality. Those
laboring on the construction sites are migrant workers who arrive from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India,
u
or Nepal heavily indebted from recruitment and transit fees. Once in the UAE, they discover their
“Gulf Dream” of well-paid, secure work is only a mirage. Typically, the sponsoring employer takes
l
their passports, houses them in sub-standard labor camps, pays much less than they were promised,
f
and enforces a punishing work regimen under the hot desert sun. If they voice complaints or protest
publicly, they risk arrest, beatings, and deportation.
F A
For five years, the Gulf Labor Coalition, a cosmopolitan group of artists and writers, has been
O N
pressuring Saadiyat’s Western cultural brands to ensure worker protections. Gulf Labor has R
D

coordinated a boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and pioneered other tactics (including direct G R HIGH CULTURE/HARD LABOR
U
action that involved several spectacular museum occupations). As part of a year-long initiative, an E
L
W
international array of artists, writers, and activists submitted a work, a text, or an action on a weekly F
basis. Contextualized by essays that trace the way that Gulf Labor has evolved, these contributions L R
A
O
are reproduced in this book. The result is a compelling chronicle of a campaign at the forefront of a B
O S
new wave of world-wide cultural activism.
R S

OR Books
EDITED BY ANDREW ROSS [ FOR GULF LABOR]
www.orbooks.com
COVER ART BY NEMES CSABA
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The GULF
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The
G U
HIGH CULTURE/HARD LABOR
L F
Edited by Andrew Ross
(for Gulf Labor)
OR Books
New York • London
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© 2015 Andrew Ross and the Gulf Labor Coalition
Published by OR Books, New York and London
Visit our website at www.orbooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review
purposes.
First printing 2015
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-68219-004-3 paperback
ISBN 978-1-68219-005-0 e-book
This book is set in the fonts Helvetica and Pobla.
Text design by Bathcat Ltd. Typeset by AarkMany Media, Chennai, India.
Printed by BookMobile in the United States and CPI Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.
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Contents
7 Foreword Sarah Leah Whitson
11 Leveraging the Brand: A History of Gulf Labor Andrew Ross
36 Gulf Dreams for Justice: Migrant Workers and New Political Futures
Paula Chakravartty and Nitasha Dhillon
64 Art out of Joint: Artists’ Activism Before and After the Cultural Turn
Gregory Sholette
86 The Emergent Wave of Artworld Activism Guy Mannes-Abbott
100 Who Builds Your Architecture?—An Advocacy Project Mabel Wilson, Jordan Carver,
and Kadambari Baxi
114 Why Gulf Labor? Statements of Intent Walid Raad, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hans
Haacke, Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri, Doris Bittar
132 On Direct Action: An Address to Cultural Workers
Global Ultra Luxury Faction—G.U.L.F.
137 Six Occupations of a Museum (and an Alternative Plan)
Global Ultra Luxury Faction—G.U.L.F.
154 Observations and Recommendations After Visiting Saadiyat Island and Related Sites
(March 14–21, 2014) Gulf Labor
178 52 Weeks, and Engaging by Disengaging Mariam Ghani with Haig Aivazian
189 Dossier of 52 Weeks projects (October 2013–October 2014)
304 “For Security Reasons:” A Gulf Labor Report (July 2015)
328 Tea Break (Selections) Paula Chakravartty, Nitasha Dhillon, and Amin Husain
338 Gulf Labor Bibliography
345 Contributors
359 Acknowledgments
360 About the Editor
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Foreword
Sarah Leah Whitson
Today, in a region overwhelmed by war and seemingly intractable political and social
problems, the systemic abuse and exploitation of millions of migrant workers may not
seem the worst problem besetting the Middle East. But it has the advantage of being
one of the easiest to fix, by applying readily available legal remedies and appropriately
allocating costs. It is in fact one of the few areas where we have seen real progress and
reform over the past decade. The collaboration of human rights organizations, artists,
and academics to end this abuse and exploitation has become a model for globalized
human rights activism, helping to improve the lives of migrant workers thousands
of miles away from home and also upgrade some of the ethics and labor impacts of
institutions, companies, and governments. It has allowed us to find our own strength
in globalization, where the interconnectedness of economies, businesses, and institu-
tions has created opportunities for activists to press for accountability.
It remains widely unknown outside the Gulf that approximately 15 million
migrant workers, primarily from South Asia, but increasingly from Africa as well,
make up the vast majority of the labor force in most Gulf states—and in some coun-
tries, the vast majority of the population. In the UAE and Qatar, migrant workers—
white collar and blue collar—compose well over 90 percent of the work force and the
population. Yet they have no voting, representation, or association rights (like much
of the citizenry, of course), and no option of obtaining such rights, regardless of how
many decades they have lived and worked there, or even if they were born there and
never lived in their “home country.”
In 2004, Human Rights Watch set out to examine abuses that had anecdotally
appeared as news items. These were stories about tortured and sexually abused
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8 Sarah Leah Witson
migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, and also about masses of striking con-
struction workers in the UAE. At that time, our focus was on individual cases of
employer abuse, including unpaid or exceedingly low wages, poor housing condi-
tions, and unsafe work environments, and the government’s failure to protect these
workers and sanction their abusive employers. But what we found was not only a
problem of failed enforcement and protection by the state, but also a legal framework
for labor importation that effectively encourages private-sector abuses.
A triangle of abuses fosters conditions in which exploitation thrives, often akin to
forced labor or indentured servitude: the “sponsorship” system that grants all power
over a worker’s visa to their employer and bars them from changing jobs without their
employer’s consent; the nearly universal practice of passport confiscation by employ-
ers that limits the freedom of workers to return home; and the indebtedness of work-
ers who owe thousands of dollars in recruiting fees. Under these conditions, workers
find it difficult to escape from abusive employers, change jobs, or leave the country, let
alone imagine how to repay the debts they owe at home. In these circumstances, the
notion of “voluntary labor” has little meaning.
The asymmetry of the labor market—with each employer enjoying a captive labor
pool and a bottomless supply of replacements facilitated by employment agencies
operating in the workers’ home countries—means there is little incentive for employ-
ers to respect workers’ basic rights. This power imbalance makes it all too easy to
find the cases of abuse that Human Rights Watch and others have documented: out-
right labor trafficking, including deception over jobs and wages; long hours with no
days off or vacation; non- or under-payment of wages; dangerous working conditions;
deplorable living accommodations; and few if any legal recourses.
The UAE and other Gulf governments could largely afford to dismiss our reports
and our calls to end these abuses, but the international actors they courted could
not. When the UAE launched its “Island of Happiness,” the name of Saadiyat Island,
Human Rights Watch directed our efforts toward global cultural institutions that
would have a presence there, like the Louvre, Guggenheim, and New York University,
reminding them of their stated ideals and values.
This strategy also enabled us to engage with and draw on the talents, insights,
resources, and energy of the students and faculty of NYU and the artists associated
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Foreword 9
with the Guggenheim and Louvre. Using the innovative strategies they developed as
Gulf Labor they have built an important multi-dimensional model of activism to pres-
sure these institutions to live up to their commitments, as described in fascinating
detail in this book. The efforts of Gulf Labor have prevented these world-class insti-
tutions from sweeping their complicity in the exploitation of migrant workers under
Abu Dhabi’s desert sands.
Most significantly, these efforts have produced concrete results, with the private
institutions and businesses involved in Saadiyat Island agreeing to a minimum set of
commitments to protect worker rights, including the right to change jobs, an end to
passport confiscation, and the refunding of recruiting fees. With independent monitors,
to which the UAE authorities only reluctantly agreed after years of resistance, there is
now a basic model in place that provides more labor protections than anywhere else in
the Gulf. While enforcement with serious penalties against abusive contractors remains
a problem requiring far greater vigilance, the commitments these institutions have
made set an important precedent throughout the region and across business sectors.
And the campaign has even led the UAE grudgingly to adopt some legislative reforms,
including electronic payment of wages, changes to the sponsorship system that allow
workers to switch jobs under limited circumstances, and greater supervision of work
conditions by a vastly expanded pool of government inspectors.
Yet, at the same time, the UAE government has also tacked hard to the right,
deciding to punish those who exposed the embarrassing abuses and who are mon-
itoring the government’s fulfillment of the promises it and private institutions have
made. Starting in 2014, the government has banned many artists, journalists, human
rights activists, and academics from entering or remaining in the country, while it
has pursued repressive policies against the country’s domestic political opposition
and reform activists, jailing dozens. In so doing, the UAE has exposed itself and its
academic and cultural partners to a separate set of important questions about their
professed commitment to art, culture, inquiry, and learning, all of which depend on
free expression and association. How they will have art without free-thinking artists?
How will they have a leading university without critical scholars? And how will they
have news, information, and public knowledge without inquisitive journalists and
responsible human rights advocates?
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10 Sarah Leah Witson
In forcing these questions onto the agenda, Gulf Labor, Human Rights Watch,
and other organizations have gone beyond pushing for critical reforms in migrant
worker employment; we are also pushing for fulfillment of the promise that the UAE
and its partners made about enlightenment in the country. In a modest way, our
efforts as global activists can help make globalization work in the interests of those
most affected—the millions of exploited workers in the UAE—and even in the interests
of the UAE’s citizens, who stand to gain most from a country that truly respects rights
and freedoms, culture, and art.
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