Bound by Contract: Mapping Technologies of Migrant Control in the Kafala System

This paper studies the methods used by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations for surveillance and control of the migrant population on their land, its main argument being—the Kafala system as practised in the GCC nations, for organising the guest workers, is more than just an arrangement handling migration but rather is a technology of migrant control in itself wherein citizens are tasked with overseeing and managing the presence and actions of foreigners within the national borders, a responsibility typically held by the state-resulting in partial privatisation of control over migration. For this, they have refurbished the age-old Kafala to craft it into a cutting-edge technology of migrant control and surveillance by linking every migrant to his citizen–sponsor, who, on behalf of the state, wields complete control on the mobility, social life and employment of the Makful (migrant). The paper, through the concepts of porous and indeterminate borders, tries to show how borders do not “exclude” but there is “differential inclusion” of the migrants, which is no less violent than exclusionary measures, wherein borders exist between the male migrant and the female, between the skilled migrant and the unskilled and between the migrant from South–East Asia and the expats from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries—by the use of tactics such as ethnic stereotyping, structural violence, racial segregation, etc.; for example-different kinds of visas provided to them based on their skills, sponsors retaining workers' passport controlling their mobility, regulating their salary, their forced confinement and restrictions on their channels of communication thus, mapping them in a system of “structural dependence”. The study seeks to question the sponsorship system within the broader context of surveillance techniques that regulate migrant populations. By juxtaposing it with conventional surveillance measures such as CCTV cameras and GPS-based controls, it contends that the sponsorship system operates as a form of control that is both coercive and extensive, effectively tethering individuals to their sponsors who wield authority over all facets of their lives.