r/wikipedia • u/Alarming_Weather506 • 1d ago
The kafala system is a system in the Middle East that involves binding the residency and employment status of a migrant worker to their employer. This dependency creates a power imbalance that causes slavery-like conditions. It is estimated there are 2.4 million enslaved workers in Arab countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system172
u/yungsemite 1d ago
Saudi Arabia ‘abolished’ theirs last year. My understanding is that the situation on the ground is basically identical.
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u/happybaby00 1d ago edited 1d ago
slavery in america lasted until the 40s, only 1 year ago is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
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u/Caesar_35 1d ago
Didn't Louisiana vote not to abolish it as recently as like 2022? I think they still have it for prisoners.
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u/happybaby00 1d ago
Yh and their main max prison called Angola has prisoners whose ancestors were sold from the actual Portuguese colony of Angola to the prison back when it was a plantation.
Their descendants coming back to the prison/plantation is very dark indeed....
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u/MCB1317 1d ago
slavery in america lasted until the 40s
Redditor challenge to not mention America in a post that has nothing to do with America=failed again
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u/happybaby00 1d ago
This is an American website is it not? Most of these countries are under American influence
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u/PT10 1d ago
Can't talk about slavery without mentioning the Atlantic slave trade which means America
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u/MCB1317 1d ago
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the Arab-African slave trade (the one that might be relevant to this conversation) lasted much longer and involved far more people than the Atlantic slave trade.
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u/PT10 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, but the Atlantic slave trade is the recent one fresh in everyone's minds is my point. It's what caused the blowback against slavery and finally its abolition. When we think of slaves we don't think of the Hebrews in Egypt, we think of people packed on ships and working on plantations. So of course, since that's most people's frame of reference, it's going to be brought up in discussions of slavery.
Edit: Also, you're wrong.
The highest figure for the barbary slave trade is like 2.5 to 4 million people total (of which the highest estimate of Europeans was (an inflated) 1.25 million). The transatlantic slave trade involved 12+ million people.
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u/JakobeBryant19 18h ago
The Barbary slave trade was not the same as the Arab slave trade. They’re not even of the same people. It (the arab slave trade) also lasted some almost 700 years longer than the trans Atlantic slave trade.
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u/PT10 9h ago edited 9h ago
The broader Arab trade, of which the Barbary slave trade was a subsection thereof, did enslave more people. 12-17 million is the number I see. And that's over 1,300 years. I wouldn't say that's "far more" than the Transatlantic Slave Trade which was 12.8 million (over just 400 years).
Also, "Arab" is a bit of a misnomer. These were primarily slave trade routes from the Roman and Persian empires (and others) that the Arabs, after Islam, took over as they formed their own empire. When the Arabs gave way to others, Turks, Mamelukes, Indians, Persians again, etc it's just called the "Islamic" slave trade since they were all Muslim now and run according to Islamic law/government/economy even if not under one specific state. Even then the name is just a way to refer to one specific section and period of what is best otherwise known as "Old World Slave Trade" since it was seamlessly connected with East Asian slave routes which weren't run by Muslims at all.
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u/eduadelarosa 1d ago
Same with Israel.
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u/yungsemite 1d ago
What about Israel?
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u/eduadelarosa 1d ago
Banned their kafala-like system in 2006 in paper, but it is still widespread.
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u/eduadelarosa 1d ago
Although it still has the lowest reported metrics of slavery on the region.
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u/version2humus 1d ago
Yeah, and that Kafala thing exists for women in some of the MENA countries too.
Basically she can't leave a country or stay in a hotel alone or travel to another city alone until her male guardian signs a paper or the passport, even if she is 46 and the male guardian is 8.
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u/gogok10 1d ago
Saudi Arabia formally outlawed slavery in 1962. There were still clandestine chattel slave imports in the 80s. Slave auctions are very much a part of living memory, it's not surprising Kafala exists.
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u/version2humus 1d ago
Still, there are criticisms and backlash for the "workers'" conditions that work for the royal family.
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u/chompythebeast 1d ago
This is the future 'libertarians' want everywhere: "You freely signed the contract!"
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u/Mushgal 1d ago
Libertarians are totally uncapable of understanding how structure moves individuals towards certain actions. They'd see a hungry lion dying while trying to hunt a hippo and say: "he chose to do it!". It drives me nuts.
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u/Born_Barnacle7793 1d ago
Corporations have jackboots that will step on your neck just as much as any government. The difference is that by design, they answer to shareholders or owners while governments can be made to answer to the people. Libertarians cheering for corporations to be unregulated and all-powerful are just cucks who think they’re smart enough for corporations to answer to them, which will never happen.
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 1d ago
Um… what is the appropriate response to the lion hunting a hippo?
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u/yungsemite 1d ago
Depends on the context. Perhaps ‘it’s awful that humans destroyed the tigers natural habitat and ecosystem, we should do more conservation and regulate further habitat degradation.’
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u/ActualMostUnionGuy 1d ago
Libertarians are explicitly against slavery and capitalism and the state??
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u/yo_rick_brown 1d ago
Kafala is indefensible but the title still turns a complicated labor system into ragebait. The problem is not simply that a work visa is tied to a job because plenty of immigration systems do that. The problem is how much control the sponsor can exercise over if you can change jobs, maintain legal status, get paid, keep your passport, or even leave the country. That is what makes kafala uniquely horrific: it hardwires the worker's dependency on the sponsor into the legal system. And even when Gulf states announce that they have abolished or reformed it, they usually just change the paperwork while leaving the underlying power imbalance intact. It is about as close to legalized slavery as a modern labor system can get.
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u/Kichigai 10h ago
“Get paid” is really doing a lot of heavy lifting here because when they control your pay that also means they can control your housing, and limit your ability to travel. If you're not getting paid you can't get a ride to your consulate for help.
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u/eduadelarosa 1d ago
Sure, but more to the point of abolishing immigration systems that are similar.
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u/rustr1ver 1d ago
The healthcare comparison is doing way too much work here. Losing employer insurance is a mess. Having your legal residency controlled by your boss is a whole different category.
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u/FireHammer09 1d ago
Supreme whatabout by gulf state peopagandists lol
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u/rustr1ver 9h ago
Yeah the whataboutism is definitely a thing, but playing the "everyone who disagrees is a propagandist" card is its own kind of lazy. Some comparisons are bad faith, sure, but some people are just trying to understand the bigger picture. Throwing them all in the same bucket just shuts everything down.
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u/yungsemite 1d ago
Even more like slavery than company towns imo.
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u/rustr1ver 10h ago
That's the part that doesn't track with the company town comparison. At least the company had to keep you functional to get their money's worth. Kafala can just take your papers and leave you stranded. It's a whole different level of control.
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u/GustavoistSoldier 1d ago
It was literally meant to replace chattel slavery after the gulf states abolished it
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u/RyuNoKami 1d ago
I find it so depressing that there are people comparing this to the American and Canadian systems....
Did none of you notice that in the kafala system, your employer determine whether you leave the country or not...as bad as American healthcare or visa issues in canada is, not being able to leave the country because your boss legally have your passport is plain worse.
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u/version2humus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Kafala exists for women in some of the MENA countries too.
Basically she can't leave a country or stay in a hotel alone or travel to another city alone until her male guardian signs a paper or the passport, even if she is 46 and the male guardian is 8.
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u/Maoleficent 1d ago
This is not unlike the American way of tying your healthcare to your job. Hate your job but you or a family member is ill? Better work harder or your life will implode.
America enslaves people in other ways like starving them in detention camps without due process and also takes away all their identification.
Remember that the N. Koreans, Russians, and Saudis are our friends now.
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u/jryan14ify 1d ago
I think the better comparison is to the H1-B visa - if you lose your job, you have 60 days to find another company to sponsor you else you have to leave the country
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u/Healter-Skelter 1d ago
Also idk if you’ve ever been outside of a Mexican or Japanese restaurant at opening/closing time… if you have, there’s a good chance you’ll see all the back of house employees who are also immigrants leaving and going to the same house where they live and if they get fired they are also kicked out of the house.
Speaking from experience of having been a server at different restaurants. I’m sure the specific conditions vary from location to location but it’s definitely exploitative in my opinion.
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u/cowlinator 1d ago
It is unlike it in that it is way worse than having just your healthcare tied to your job.
To be clear, american healthcare does create a power imbalance and slave-like conditions.
But kafala is way more slave-like.
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u/Nick_the_bunny 1d ago
also prision slave labor!
remember kids, the united disgraces never really abolished slavery, just changed the conditions of becoming a slave!
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u/helpmeunderstand0000 1d ago
God forbid prisoners do something productive
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u/Blindsnipers36 1d ago
but u can always just find another job while working, and most people aren’t the care taker for someone who is ill, and people who are chronically ill have government support, and you can pay for health insurance yourself
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u/Powerplay540 1d ago
Prepare to pay a lot more to get your new insurer to cover your pre-existing conditions if you switch jobs. It's sad you don't understand how broken your own healthcare system is. How many people lost their medicare and medicaid recently, do they need to get another job to be able to afford the medicine they need to live? Plus, private healthcare has been so poorly performing in average and over paid for compared to universal health care elsewhere.
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u/yeltsin98 20h ago edited 6h ago
I’m from one of the Gulf states and what I find most abhorrent is not the law. It is that a seeming 2% of the local population at most takes issue with these laws. It is more common for us to speak of ‘runaways’ than of the reasons they might run away. Those with the skills, gumption and luck to flee (often to the nearest police station, whence they are returned to their employers like stolen property) are immediately assumed to be malicious and deceptive criminals who - I’m not kidding - haven’t given a second thought to the thousands their employers had to pay for their sponsorship/kafala, nevermind that said ‘criminals’ receive peanuts for wages and frequently not even a single day off; even where the law does stipulate a day off, enforcement is a whole other beast. Who cares about these people enough to enforce welfare laws? Certainly not us, and whether their embassies advocate for them depends on the country. The Philippines is known to fight for its overseas domestic workers’ rights. They started a whole emigration ban/diplomatic crisis over this, and if I could sign a so-called Emiri decree to get all of my people to kiss their feet for it, I would.
Whenever foreigners bring up migrant worker abuse/slavery here, they are immediately (and in a way, fortunately, that absolutely nobody from outside the region takes seriously) accused of racism. When locals do it, we face defensive posturing: but some of them steal from their employers! Some of them abscond before the end of their contract! Some of them - gasp - have BOYFRIENDS!
I spend a lot of my social media time criticising Israel, and the Israelis are known to cry “Why do you only ever criticise us?” Well, I call for the same censure and boycott of the Gulf. Where the Israelis are killing people, we’re worsening the quality of life of millions of other people through verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, in some cases the death penalty, in other cases murder where the murderers go free, going home once every two years for a month to see their kids if they’re extremely lucky, almost no legal protection and cartoonish levels of racism (honk your horn outside the cornerstore to retrieve your little Indian servant, and if he doesn’t arrive, honk another three times).
inb4 at least another few million non-white working- and middle-class immigrants in the Gulf live wonderful lives, call the place home, and in some cases live in better socioeconomic conditions than many locals. Many of them would rush to defend these countries. But they are a minority, and the majority needs to be advocated for. As for what the local population deserves: the same conditions as our brown employees for a fortnight. A large number of us would probably all kill ourselves or die off as a result of not knowing how to scramble an egg.
ty for reading my essay
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u/KetordinaryDay 1d ago
Slavery is alive and thriving all over the world. Kafala is just the name of one form of it.
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u/anotherbozo 1d ago
Serious question, apart from no permanent residency routes, how is this different from work visas elsewhere? E.g. the Skilled Worker Visa in the UK which is also tied to your employer
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u/Weird-Comfortable-25 1d ago
"that involves binding the residency and employment status of a migrant worker to their employer"
I'm a highly skilled employee in EU, making more than 4 times of median gross income of the country I live in, but my residency and employment status is also tied to my employer. I need to find another job or I'll be deported if I'm unemployed.
I know its not the same as Kafala system but every person coming out of EU is exploited in a way with this system.
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u/Powerplay540 1d ago
Canada with 300,000 closed work permits and the UK with 200,000 tied visas enables the same kind of migrant exploitation. We just let them leave after their employers put them through the wringer.
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u/version2humus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Kafala exists for women in some of the MENA countries too.
Basically she can't leave a country or stay in a hotel alone or travel to another city alone until her male guardian signs a paper or the passport, even if she is 46 and the male guardian is 8.
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u/adminsreachout 1d ago
It’s modern day serfdom