Obstacles to health care services among migrant workers in the Gulf during COVID-19

Vani Saraswathi

Chapter 13 in Handbook of Research on Migration, COVID-19 and Cities, 2025, pp 249-263 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The chapter examines the COVID-19 government response from the frameworks of administrative burden and ordeal mechanisms. Responses that will be explored include force majeure rules and how, on the one hand, the ghettoised nature of male migrant workers’ accommodation created both a public health hazard and provided governments an easy way to control migrant populations, and how, on the other hand, female migrant workers were isolated, subjected to extreme working conditions, and had no access to health care. The precarious status of migrants under the Kafala system and the excessive power resting in the hands of employers contributed to their vulnerability to health and economic impacts. It will look at the relationship between paid domestic work and family privacy, the monopoly of live-in domestic work, and the outsourcing of migration management to individual households, and how in a crisis the negligible rights enjoyed by migrant women domestic workers almost amounted to naught.

Keywords: COVID-19; Government Response; Force Majeure; Female Migrants; GCC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301225
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