Migrant Workers and Xenophobia in the Middle East

The general limitations of temporary foreign contract labour do not allow the freedom of choice to move from one employer to another in the local labour market of the host country—at least, not without the express permission of the government. [...] Saleh Karwa’a of the Immigration Department recognized the “lack of laws organizing the relationship between the housemaids and [her] sponsor…[and]…that recruiting agencies do not translate the employment contracts into the native language of the housemaids to enable them to understand their legal rights and respon- sibilities” (Nazzal 1999). [...] Conventions within the Arab region According to Pires (2000), the fundamental document relating to human rights in the Arab world is the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which was adopted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1990. [...] Redress Mechanisms and Public Policy The governments of Sri Lanka and the Philippines have made frequent visits and representa- tions to the receiving countries of their nationals in the Middle East in attempts to alleviate the problems faced by their migrant workers. [...] 12 MIGRANT WORKERS AND XENOPHOBIA IN THE MIDDLE EAST RAY JUREIDINI Whether one considers the phenomenon of the rise of domestic servants as one of “repoliticiz- ing the private sphere” or of “refeudalization of modern exploitation and violence”, as some debates in the European context suggest (see Lutz 2001), in the Middle East one wonders whether it is merely a remnant or a continuity of a feudal.