The government of Bangladesh recently rejected Saudi Arabia’s attempt to specify that the 120,000 workers it would recruit this year would be “housemaids.” In the past, many Bangladeshi women have had negative experiences with domestic work in Saudi Arabia, and prematurely returned to Bangladesh with stories of physical, mental, sexual, and economic abuse.
Ethiopia and Kenya have banned their citizens from working as domestic workers in the Kingdom. Almaz: A Story of Migrant Labour is based on the experiences of a woman who travels to Saudi Arabia from Ethiopia to support her mother, but finds herself mired in a web of multiple forms of abuse, eventually thrown out of a window, and deported to her home country in a wheelchair without any remuneration for months of hard work in Saudi Arabia.
Countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, and Sri Lanka have seen their citizens beheaded after murky trials. Let’s not forget the eight Bangladeshi workers beheaded for the alleged murder of an Egyptian security guard in Saudi Arabia.
It is tempting to adopt a paternalistic approach and beseech Bangladeshi workers, especially women, not to apply for such jobs that would expose them to sexual, mental, and physical abuse, obliterate their freedom, and put them at the mercy of a legal system in which all are simply not equal before the law.
Yet, there is some element of hypocrisy when we, as privileged employers, employees, and citizens, pontificate about abuses elsewhere while binding workers in indentured servitude in our homes, perpetuating hierarchical structures in offices, or tolerating a system that subjects them to unsafe (to put it lightly) working conditions in factories in our own country. To what extent do we foster the conditions that push Bangladeshis to desperately seek employment in notorious environments, in spite of the costs and risks?
We seamlessly complain about the exploitation of Bangladeshis around the world and expect workers in our own homes to work from dawn to midnight. We treat drivers as invisible bodies, undeserving of introductions, when we invite friends into our cars.
We manage to feel magnanimous when simply responding to a security guard’s salaam (greeting). We might even throw in a smile if we’re feeling particularly kind that day. It does not take long for us to go back to focusing on protecting and expanding our privileges after condemning the inhumane negligence and greed that claimed the lives of workers in fires and collapsed buildings.
Such inconsistencies suggest that our concern for the abuse of Bangladeshis by foreigners stems from chauvinism, rather than a genuine commitment to their welfare.
We need to take a careful look at the ways in which privileged classes engage in bonding by “othering” migrant workers. Why do some see attempts by migrant workers to make conversation or navigate in-flight amenities as an affront to their sensibilities?
Why do workers’ requests for help with filling out forms elicit noblesse oblige type sighs and post-flight recitations about the trials and tribulations of being literate on a Middle East-Dhaka leg? Why do some feel compelled to wave their non-Bangladeshi passports at check-in staff and crew members in an effort to get preferential treatment on flights to and from the Gulf? Why are some so desperate to upgrade to business class just so they won’t have to sit next to a construction worker?
Criticising Saudi Arabia for abusing Bangladeshis and simultaneously sneering at migrant workers might seem contradictory, but both activities make us feel better about ourselves.
We laud the migrant workers’ massive contributions to our foreign exchange reserve to feed our sense of national pride and self-worth, but God forbid that we see them as people worthy of respect rather than a scrunched up nose when we sit amidst them on flights. We may want to be saviours, but have little interest in partnerships for justice, which would involve devolving some power and unsettle hierarchies.
Companies capitalise on our desire to set ourselves apart, to climb up the rungs of privilege. They urge us to “be privileged,” grab opportunities for the “deserving few,” and patronise “exclusive” stores and restaurants. And we fall over ourselves trying to embody and exude privilege in our words and actions.
We justify our paternalistic dehumanisation of migrant workers by citing how some use airplane washrooms improperly, ask intrusive questions, stare, and jump out of their seats when the plane hits the runway. We claim hygiene, manners, and compliance with rules as potent tools for our assertion of superiority and privilege.
The persistent othering of migrant workers is only one of the many othering processes at work in Bangladesh right now. Civil society is characterised as a “cancer” that needs to be excised. Shushil (civil) is deployed as a curse word. Intellectuals are dismissed as buddhivaishya.
Amidst all the vitriol and polarisation, it will be difficult to reconstruct a culture of empathy, but we can start with the comfortable and innocuous task of recognising our own contributions to this culture of dehumanisation, a culture that allows us to see other human beings as targets deserving of ridicule, abuse, and violence. A culture that is not all that different from what Almaz’s story depicts in abusive workplaces in Saudi Arabia.