The gleaming glass towers that define the skylines of Singapore, Dubai, Riyadh, and Doha represent some of the most remarkable architectural achievements of the twenty-first century, monuments to human ambition and engineering capability that attract visitors from around the world who marvel at the audacity of their design and the precision of their construction. Yet these magnificent structures, which have become symbols of national ambition and economic achievement, rest upon a foundation of invisible labor, built by men and women who arrive from distant lands with hopes of a better life but often find themselves trapped in systems of exploitation that transform the promise of opportunity into a nightmare of debt, control, and degradation. The paradox at the heart of this phenomenon is striking: the very cities that celebrate their modernity, their progress, and their sophistication have been constructed using labor practices that would have been recognizable to observers of the most exploitative episodes in human history. The workers who pour concrete, install glass facades, clean offices, and care for children in these gleaming metropolises occupy a strange position in the societies they serve, simultaneously essential and excluded, present and invisible, needed and unwanted. This report examines the chain of exploitation that ensnares Asian migrant workers from the moment they leave their home countries until they either escape, are broken by their experiences, or return home having sacrificed years of their lives in service of dreams that were often never achievable. The philosophical dimensions of this exploitation extend beyond the immediate suffering of individual workers to encompass fundamental questions about the nature of human dignity, the moral obligations that bind together the human community across the boundaries of nation and race, and the responsibility of consuming societies for the conditions under which the goods and services they enjoy are produced.
The journey of exploitation for Asian migrant workers typically begins long before they ever board an airplane or cross a border, starting in the recruitment offices and labor agencies that operate across South and Southeast Asia, where hopeful workers pay substantial fees in pursuit of opportunities that will ultimately trap them in cycles of debt and dependency. The recruitment system, which functions across multiple countries including Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Nepal, operates according to market logics that transform human beings into commodities, with placement fees that can exceed a year's wages in the workers' home countries creating immediate burdens that must be repaid through months or years of labor under conditions that would be unacceptable to workers who had not already incurred such debts. The economics of this system are残酷 but straightforward: recruitment agencies in source countries charge fees to connect workers with employers in destination countries, while agencies in the destination countries charge their own fees to the employers, who in turn recoup these costs through the wages they pay or fail to pay to the workers themselves. The result is a system in which the worker begins their employment already in debt, often to lenders who charged usurious interest rates, creating an economic bondage that constrains their ability to leave even abusive situations because the prospect of returning home empty-handed after incurring such debts represents an unacceptable outcome for workers and their families who may have invested their entire savings in the hope of migration. The emotional toll of this initial phase of exploitation is often overlooked in analyses that focus on subsequent abuses, but the psychological burden of leaving home in debt, of knowing that one's family has sacrificed for the chance to work abroad, creates pressures that compound throughout the migration experience. The recruitment phase also establishes the power dynamics that will characterize the entire migration cycle, with agents in both source and destination countries accumulating profits while workers bear all the risks, creating structural incentives for deception and exploitation that are built into the system itself.
Singapore presents one of the most striking contradictions in the global landscape of migrant worker exploitation, a nation that has achieved extraordinary economic success and presents itself as a model of modern governance while maintaining labor practices that treat hundreds of thousands of workers as temporary sojourners whose rights are fundamentally inferior to those of citizens. The city-state, which famously describes itself as a "city in a garden," has constructed its remarkable environment using the labor of migrant workers who live in conditions that starkly contradict the gleaming image presented to the world, with massive dormitory complexes that house workers in crowded quarters while the gardens and parks that give Singapore its characteristic appearance remain off-limits to those who maintain them. The legal framework governing migrant workers in Singapore creates a tiered system of citizenship that effectively subordinates the rights of foreign workers to the preferences of employers and the state, with the Employment Act providing robust protections for certain categories of workers while explicitly excluding others who fall under the category of "Work Permit" holders that encompasses the majority of manual laborers. The consequences of this legal differentiation are visible throughout Singaporean society, in the separate transportation systems that move workers in the backs of lorries, in the designated areas where workers are permitted to gather on their days off, and in the social isolation that characterizes the experience of men who live apart from the families they support. The psychological impact of this systematic exclusion extends beyond the immediate deprivations to encompass a profound sense of being valued only for one's labor while being denied the social recognition that would make that labor meaningful, a dynamic that creates particular challenges for workers whose sense of self-worth depends on being seen as fully human by the societies in which they work. Singapore's approach to migrant labor reflects a particular philosophy of national development that prioritizes economic growth and social order over the full inclusion of those who make that growth possible, creating a model that other nations have emulated while failing to acknowledge its fundamental moral costs.
The Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain have developed what is widely recognized as one of the most exploitative systems of labor migration in the contemporary world, a framework known as the kafala or sponsorship system that concentrates enormous power in the hands of employers while systematically disempowering the workers who build and maintain these wealthy nations. Under the kafala system, every migrant worker must be sponsored by a specific employer who controls their legal status, their ability to change jobs, and their capacity to leave the country, creating a relationship of total dependency that has been compared to slavery by human rights organizations and scholars who have documented its effects on the millions of workers who labor in Gulf construction sites, domestic homes, and service industries. The power imbalance inherent in the kafala system enables abuses that would be impossible in more balanced employment relationships, including the confiscation of passports that prevents workers from leaving, the withholding of wages that leaves workers unable to support their families, and the threat of deportation that keeps workers silent about conditions they might otherwise report. The physical dangers facing workers in the Gulf are particularly severe, with the extreme heat of summer months creating life-threatening conditions on construction sites while the classification of many worker deaths as "natural" has raised suspicions that industrial accidents and heat stroke are being systematically underreported to avoid compensation claims and reputational damage. The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar brought unprecedented international attention to the kafala system and its consequences, with reports of thousands of worker deaths and widespread exploitation generating pressure that produced limited reforms, though critics argue that these changes remain cosmetic and fail to address the fundamental structure of employer control that enables exploitation. The Gulf states present a particular challenge for advocacy because their wealth enables them to resist international pressure while their control over religious pilgrimage sites gives them influence in Muslim societies that might otherwise be expected to speak out about the treatment of co-religionists from Asia.
The particular vulnerability of female migrant workers who labor as domestic servants in private homes across Asia and the Middle East represents a distinctive dimension of the exploitation chain that raises particular concerns about the intersection of gender, labor, and migration that characterizes the contemporary global economy. Domestic work has always occupied an ambiguous position in the hierarchy of labor, occurring as it does in private spaces that are by definition invisible to the outside world, combining intimate access to employers' homes with complete isolation from peers and support networks that might otherwise provide protection against abuse. The women who leave their own children to raise those of other families in distant lands represent a particular kind of sacrifice that deserves recognition in any analysis of migration's costs and benefits, as the emotional labor of caring for infants and toddlers while being separated from one's own children creates psychological burdens that compound the physical demands of domestic work. The legal frameworks governing domestic work in most countries explicitly exclude this category of employment from protections that apply to other forms of labor, leaving domestic workers without the recourse to overtime pay, maximum working hours, or safety regulations that would be required in other employment contexts. The isolation of domestic work creates particular vulnerabilities to physical and sexual abuse, with the private nature of the workplace meaning that violations often occur without witnesses and the power imbalance between employer and employee making reporting unlikely even when it is possible. The deaths of domestic workers that periodically make international headlines, including the tragic case of Mary Jane Veloso in Indonesia and numerous unnamed women in Gulf states, represent only the most visible manifestations of a system that leaves hundreds of thousands of women vulnerable to exploitation with little hope of protection from legal systems that rarely recognize their claims.
The chain of exploitation that delivers comfortable lives to consumers in wealthy nations connects to the labor of exploited migrant workers through global supply chains and consumption patterns that make the final beneficiaries complicit in ways that deserve philosophical examination and ethical scrutiny. Every consumer who purchases goods produced by migrant labor, every employer who benefits from the work of underpaid domestic servants, every family that employs cleaners and nannies from abroad participates in a system that depends upon the exploitation of vulnerable workers who have few alternatives and less power. The philosophical question of moral responsibility in complex systems of causation has particular relevance to the situation of migrant workers, where the distance between the consumer and the worker makes it easy to ignore the human costs of the goods and services that make modern life comfortable. The concept of "structural violence," developed by scholars to describe the ways that social structures harm individuals by limiting their access to resources and opportunities, provides a useful framework for understanding how consumers participate in exploitation without necessarily intending to do so, simply by continuing to purchase goods and services whose production depends upon the labor of exploited workers. The challenge of ethical consumption in a globalized economy is particularly acute because the complexity of supply chains makes it difficult for even well-intentioned consumers to identify and avoid products made under exploitative conditions, creating what might be termed an "ethical paralysis" that serves the interests of those who benefit from exploitation. Yet the possibility of ethical action should not be dismissed simply because it is difficult, and the growing movement toward corporate transparency, fair trade certification, and supply chain accountability represents one dimension of the response to the moral challenges posed by global labor migration.
The nations that send migrant workers abroad and the nations that receive them share moral responsibilities for the conditions under which migration occurs, responsibilities that current international frameworks fail to adequately address because they prioritize the interests of states over the welfare of the individuals whose labor makes national prosperity possible. Source countries like Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, and Indonesia have strong incentives to facilitate labor migration because remittances from workers abroad represent significant contributions to national economies, creating political pressures that discourage governments from imposing meaningful restrictions on recruitment or from investing in the enforcement of protections for workers who go abroad. Destination countries, for their part, have little incentive to improve conditions for migrant workers because the availability of compliant labor from abroad reduces pressures that might otherwise force improvements in wages and working conditions for citizens, creating what economists term "labor market distortions" that benefit employers at the expense of workers. The international frameworks that govern labor migration, including bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries, remain weak and unenforceable, leaving individual workers to navigate systems that are designed to benefit states rather than to protect individuals. The philosophical question of what obligations wealthy nations owe to the workers who make their comfort possible has no easy answer, but the current system in which the burdens of migration fall almost entirely on workers while the benefits are captured by employers and states cannot be defended on any plausible ethical grounds. The development of more robust international protections for migrant workers represents one of the major challenges facing the global human rights community, a challenge that requires addressing not only the immediate conditions of exploitation but also the structural factors that make such exploitation possible and profitable.
Despite the formidable obstacles to reform, there are signs of change in the systems that govern migrant labor, with advocacy by NGOs, pressure from international organizations, and concerns about reputation driving modifications in laws and practices that have historically enabled exploitation. The reforms that have occurred, however, remain uneven and incomplete, with cosmetic changes that address surface manifestations while leaving the fundamental structures of exploitation intact, a pattern that suggests that meaningful reform will require pressure sustained over extended periods rather than one-time interventions. The kafala system in the Gulf has faced particular scrutiny following the World Cup controversy, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar announcing modifications that include allowing workers to change employers and exit the country without employer permission, though the implementation of these changes remains inconsistent and the underlying power imbalances persist. Singapore has implemented reforms to dormitory conditions and work permit regulations, though advocates argue that these changes fail to address the fundamental vulnerability created by the temporary status that prevents workers from becoming permanent members of society. The role of civil society organizations in pushing for reform deserves particular recognition, as groups like the Transient Workers Count Too in Singapore, Migrant-Rights.org in the Gulf, and numerous organizations in source countries have maintained pressure for change even in the face of resistance from governments and employers who benefit from the status quo. The obstacles to meaningful reform are substantial, including the economic interests that depend upon exploitation, the political power of employer groups who resist changes that would increase costs, and the difficulty of monitoring conditions in private homes and worksites that remain inaccessible to inspectors and advocates.
The exploitation of Asian migrant workers across the chain from recruitment in source countries through employment in destination nations represents one of the major moral challenges of our time, a challenge that demands not only policy reforms but a fundamental philosophical shift in how we understand the relationship between labor and human dignity. The workers who build the cities that symbolize human achievement, who clean the offices where business is conducted, who raise the children of wealthy families while being separated from their own, represent both a testimony to human aspiration and a indictment of our collective failure to build systems that honor the human dignity of all persons regardless of their national origin or immigration status. The philosophical dimensions of this challenge extend beyond the immediate concerns of labor rights to encompass questions about the nature of human community, the meaning of solidarity across difference, and the moral obligations that connect the comfortable to the suffering, the powerful to the vulnerable. The path toward a more just future requires recognizing that the current system of global labor migration is not an inevitable feature of human society but rather a political choice that can be changed through collective action and moral commitment. The inspiration for such change can be drawn from the resilience of the workers themselves, who continue to labor under difficult conditions while maintaining hopes for better futures for their children, demonstrating that the human spirit cannot be entirely crushed even by the most exploitative systems. The final reflection that this report offers is that the fate of migrant workers is ultimately bound up with the fate of all humanity, and that the degradation of any person's dignity diminishes us all, creating obligations that transcend the boundaries of nation and interest that currently divide the human community.
The kafala system is a labor sponsorship framework used in Gulf Cooperation Council countries that requires migrant workers to be sponsored by a specific employer who controls their legal status, ability to change jobs, and capacity to leave the country. This system is problematic because it creates a relationship of total employer control that enables exploitation, including passport confiscation, wage withholding, and threats of deportation, effectively trapping workers in abusive situations with no recourse to escape. Human rights organizations have compared the kafala system to modern slavery because it denies workers the fundamental freedom to change employers or leave the country that is essential to preventing exploitation. While some Gulf states have announced reforms in recent years, critics argue that these changes remain cosmetic and fail to address the fundamental power imbalance inherent in the system.
Recruitment fees trap migrant workers in debt bondage by requiring them to pay substantial upfront costs to secure employment abroad, often borrowing money at high interest rates from lenders who know that workers have few alternatives. These fees can exceed a year's wages in the workers' home countries, creating immediate debt burdens that must be repaid through months or years of labor under whatever conditions employers offer. The debt creates a form of bondage because workers who leave abusive situations risk being unable to repay their loans, making them effectively trapped in employment they might otherwise escape. This system is particularly exploitative because the workers who can least afford to pay these fees are precisely those who are most vulnerable to exploitation, creating a regressive dynamic that concentrates harm on the most disadvantaged members of society.
Domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they labor in private homes that are invisible to outside observers, isolated from peers who might provide support or witness abuses, and excluded from most labor law protections that apply to other categories of workers. The intimate nature of domestic work, which requires workers to live in the homes of their employers, creates situations of total dependency where employers have enormous power over workers' daily lives, physical safety, and emotional wellbeing. The legal exclusion of domestic work from labor regulations in most countries leaves workers without recourse to overtime pay, maximum working hours, or protection from abuse, creating legal vulnerability that compounds the practical isolation they experience. Female domestic workers face additional vulnerabilities related to gender, including heightened risk of sexual abuse and the particular emotional burdens of caring for children while being separated from their own.
Consumers play a role in migrant worker exploitation through their purchasing decisions, which create demand for goods and services produced by exploited labor, and through their failure to demand transparency about supply chains that would reveal the conditions under which products are made. The global economy makes it extremely difficult for consumers to avoid contributing to exploitation because the complexity of supply chains hides the labor conditions that produce the goods and services consumers purchase. However, consumers can contribute to change by supporting companies that commit to fair labor practices, by advocating for supply chain transparency legislation, and by demanding that the brands they purchase take responsibility for conditions throughout their supply chains. The moral responsibility of consumers is partial rather than complete, because the primary responsibility lies with governments and corporations that have the power to change systems, but consumer pressure can contribute to the political will that makes such changes possible.
Reforms implemented in Singapore regarding migrant worker conditions have included improvements to dormitory housing, modifications to work permit regulations, and initiatives to improve workplace safety, though advocates argue that fundamental vulnerabilities remain unaddressed. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which spread rapidly through migrant worker dormitories, brought unprecedented attention to the crowded living conditions that characterize worker housing and prompted emergency measures that revealed both the severity of the problem and the capacity for rapid change when political will exists. However, the temporary status that defines migrant workers in Singapore remains, preventing workers from becoming permanent members of society and maintaining the fundamental vulnerability that enables exploitation. Advocates continue to push for reforms including the right to change employers, access to permanent residence pathways, and full inclusion in the social protections available to citizens.
Remittance economies affect migration patterns by creating powerful incentives for individuals to migrate abroad in search of higher wages, with the money that workers send home often representing the primary source of income for entire communities and a significant portion of national economies. The scale of remittance flows has grown dramatically in recent decades, with workers from countries like Bangladesh, the Philippines, and India sending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to their home countries, creating economic dependencies that shape migration policies and politics in both source and destination nations. The remittance economy creates pressures that encourage migration even when the conditions of employment abroad are exploitative, because the alternative of staying in home countries with limited economic opportunities often appears worse than the risks of migration. This dynamic makes it difficult to reduce migration flows through policies that would not also address the underlying economic disparities that drive people to migrate, suggesting that meaningful reform must include development investments in source countries that reduce the economic desperation that makes exploitation tolerable.
The health impacts of working in extreme heat conditions include heat stroke, heat exhaustion, dehydration, and cardiovascular stress, with construction workers in Gulf states facing particularly severe risks due to summer temperatures that regularly exceed forty degrees Celsius. The physical demands of construction labor, including heavy lifting and work in direct sunlight, compound the physiological stress that extreme heat places on the human body, creating conditions that can become life-threatening within hours. Workers who die from heat-related illness are often classified as dying from "natural causes" or cardiovascular events, making it difficult to establish the true scale of mortality attributable to working conditions. The long-term health impacts of repeated heat exposure include chronic kidney disease, which has emerged as a significant problem among workers in hot climates, representing a hidden cost of the construction boom in Gulf states that may not become apparent for years or decades.
NGOs play crucial roles in advocating for migrant worker rights by documenting abuses, providing services to victims, lobbying for policy changes, and raising public awareness about conditions that governments and employers prefer to keep hidden. Organizations like the Transient Workers Count Too in Singapore, Migrant-Rights.org based in the Gulf region, and numerous NGOs in source countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines maintain ongoing pressure for reform even when governments and employers resist change. The work of NGOs includes investigating conditions in workplaces and dormitories, providing legal assistance to workers who have been exploited, supporting campaigns for policy reform, and engaging with international bodies that set standards for labor rights. The challenges facing NGOs include limited resources relative to the scale of the problem, restrictions on access to worksites and workers, and retaliation from governments and employers who view advocacy as threatening their interests.
The status of being a "temporary" worker contributes to vulnerability by denying workers the rights and protections that attach to permanent residence or citizenship, creating a legal category that is inherently inferior and that justifies the denial of social protections available to members of the national community. The temporary status means that workers have no pathway to becoming full members of the society in which they work, eliminating the stake in that society that might otherwise motivate employers and governments to treat workers more fairly. The temporariness also means that workers are understood as transients whose long-term welfare is not the concern of the society in which they labor, making it easier to justify conditions that would be unacceptable for permanent members of the community. This categorical exclusion represents a philosophical denial of human dignity that is built into the very structure of temporary migration programs, creating the conditions for exploitation that follow inevitably from the denial of full personhood to those who labor in service of national goals.
Meaningful reform of migrant worker protections would require addressing both the immediate conditions of exploitation and the structural factors that make such exploitation possible, including fundamental changes to the legal frameworks that create worker vulnerability. Key reforms would include eliminating the debt bondage created by recruitment fees, reforming or abolishing the kafala system that concentrates employer power, extending labor law protections to all categories of workers including domestic workers, and creating pathways to permanent residence that give workers stakes in the societies in which they labor. International cooperation would be essential to meaningful reform, including agreements between source and destination countries that establish and enforce minimum standards, and pressure from international organizations and consuming countries that creates incentives for reform. The political obstacles to such reforms are substantial because they would require wealthy nations and powerful employers to accept higher costs and reduced control, but the moral case for such changes is overwhelming and the long-term consequences of failing to act include the continued suffering of millions of workers whose labor makes contemporary prosperity possible.
The analysis presented in this report draws upon a wide range of academic research, institutional reports, and expert commentary that inform our understanding of migrant worker exploitation, labor rights, and the global systems that enable the mistreatment of vulnerable workers. The International Labour Organization provides essential research on forced labor, decent work deficits, and international labor standards that establish the framework for understanding what constitutes exploitation in the context of migration. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have produced extensive documentation of conditions in Gulf states and Southeast Asia, with reports that combine investigative journalism with legal analysis to expose abuses and advocate for reform. Academic research on the kafala system, including studies published in journals like the Journal of Contemporary Asia, the International Migration Review, and various human rights law journals, provides theoretical frameworks for understanding how this system operates and why it proves so resistant to reform. Sociological studies of transnational migration, including work on remittance economies, labor market segmentation, and the sociology of care work, illuminate the structural factors that shape migration patterns and the experiences of workers in different sectors and destinations. The research of scholars working in source countries like Bangladesh, the Philippines, and India provides essential perspectives on the conditions that drive migration and the impacts of remittances on families and communities. Reports from local NGOs including the Transient Workers Count Too in Singapore, Migrant-Rights.org in the Gulf region, and numerous organizations in South and Southeast Asia provide ground-level documentation of conditions that are often invisible to international observers. Philosophical and ethical literature on globalization, labor rights, and structural violence provides the theoretical frameworks that inform the analysis of moral responsibility presented in this report, connecting the specific case of migrant workers to broader questions about justice in the global economy. The academic study of migration and development, including work published by the World Bank, regional development banks, and university research centers, provides the economic context that explains why migration occurs and why the conditions of employment in destination countries take the forms that they do.
Asian Migrant Worker Rights: The Exploitation Chain from Singapore to the Middle East
For more information, interviews, or additional materials, please contact the PressAsia team:
Email: [email protected]
PressAsia (PressAsia Release Distribution Network) is dedicated to providing professional press release writing and distribution services to clients in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. We help you share your stories with a global audience effectively. Thank you for reading!