Do Migrant Workers Need Saving? | Mohit Mandal

Recent forays by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and newspapers into the construction sites of Saadiyat Island reveal the troubling magnitude of New York University Abu Dhabi’s non-compliance with standards of labor. With an eye to these reports, I conduct ethnographic research to study the experiences of another subgroup of workers on Saadiyat Island: NYUAD’s security guards. I examine the practical and voiced realities of their everyday lives, from where they live to stories of their hometowns, concluding my study with two main findings. First, security guards at NYUAD are educated and trained service-sector employees. Second, they show an acute sense of the transnational circuit of labor and profit in which they move. I argue, then, that generalizations surrounding the realities of migrant workers, though perhaps well-intentioned, efface the nuance of class differences within this broadly descriptive category.

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