Migrant Laborer's Strife in Qatar
In a twist on labor extraction in the modern world economy, there are rising allegations that migrant workers employed in the construction sector of Qatar are being coerced into working long, unpaid hours in dangerously high summer temperatures. The spotlight has been placed on Qatar by Amnesty International following the country's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
The significance of this report is the parallelism between the coercion of the migrant workers and aspects of a dual economy or apartheid system. The dual economy arises from the fact that Qatar is "one of the richest countries in the world" but that the wealth is consolidated in the hands of a few individuals at the head of crude oil extracting industries; certainly not in the hands of the laborers. Secondly, the coercion of the migrant labor force, which is deprived of political rights and delegated to specific low-paying job sectors, is similar to an apartheid system in which a nation's own citizens are subjected to political and labor inequalities.
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