Roadwork:Expertise at work building roads in the Maldives

This article engages critically with concepts of ‘skill’, ‘expertise’, and ‘capacity’ as they operate as markers of distinction and domination and shape migratory labour relations among road construction workers from across South Asia in the Maldives archipelago. The article examines roadwork at three levels: the professional biographies leading to ‘flexible specialization’ rather than technical expertise amongst Maldivian managers; the technical expertise and social incorporation of ‘skilled’ Sri Lankan supervisors; and the key material expertise of ‘non-skilled’ Bangladeshi labourers in precarious employment. Whilst discussions of South Asian labour migration have been dominated by caste and class, this article argues that it is important to consider how the cultural production and understanding of concepts such as ‘expertise’, ‘capacity’, and ‘exposure’ at worksites can (also) become distinguishing factors in (hierarchical) migratory labour relations

Welfare Index of Migrant Workers in the Gulf: the Case of Qatar

In December 2010, Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup games. The FIFA announcement came with increasing pressure from international human rights organizations, media and other groups for Qatar to reform its labour law, which governs the lives and working conditions of foreign workers in the country. Although Qatar continues to develop and implement major reforms to its labour laws, until now there was no one unique tool based on survey data to evaluate the impact of the government’s policies on guest workers. The objective of this article is to present the Qatar Guest Workers’ Welfare Index (GWWI),1 a multi‐dimensional comprehensive tool based on survey data of migrant workers developed by the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI). In addition to assessing and tracking the welfare of this population, the objective of the index is to identify areas of improvement to guide policy formulation