Some Are More Equal Than Others...

Life can be very different here, depending upon which passport you hold. Ex-pats working side by side at the same job may have profoundly different experiences and lifestyles, depending upon where they are from. Salaries are pegged to nationality, as well as education and experience.

There is a reason for this. If salaries for each job were level, regardless of nationality, then compensation that would seem great to a Cuban, might be insufficient to attract someone from the EU. Qatar wants to fill it’s professional jobs with people from a wide range of backgrounds. A certain synergy is created when people from all over the world collaborate with each other. The idea is that the “best way” to do something will probably result sooner or later. Everybody brings something different to the table.

The downside of this is that two people with the same qualifications, doing the same job, will receive dramatically different compensation. It can create tension at work, and has for us to some degree. I think the best approach is to be positive and cheerful but always mindful of it, and not say or do things that bring attention to the fact. The “mix” of people in most professions is that most are from (usually Asian) countries with relatively low wages, followed by a smaller number from other Arab countries, mostly Egypt, Syria and Jordan, with a few westerners up at the top of the earnings curve. There is an effort to get Qataris in these jobs as well, and most workplaces have some, but the process is slow.

The tiered wage system assures that there will be some westerners on site, as well as people from other areas outside of the labor “bargain basement”. A conscientious effort is made to set aside a certain number of spots for non-Qatari Arabs. Part of this is probably pan-Arab loyalty, but I think mostly it’s to make sure that at least a certain percentage of staff at a certain facility speak Arabic well.

Westerners receive pretty generous compensation. Most live in spacious accommodations and have few financial worries. People from other Arab nations may do almost as well, but more commonly will earn half or less of what their western counterparts will. Arab ex-pats are more likely to live in apartments than villas. Unlike the westerners, few ex-pat Arab families have maids.

The next tier of workers are from places like the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia and similar places, even Cuba (yes, they are here, quite strange!). They receive substantially less than their Arab counterparts. Compensation and lifestyle will vary dramatically depending upon the type of job they do. A Phillipino physician will live much better than a Phillipino laborer, obviously. The professional jobs in this category still offer a pretty decent lifestyle. The blue collar workers from this category lead a different sort of life altogether, although arguably better than where they came from.

The bottom tier of the Qatari labor hierarchy is occupied by those from Nepal, Bangladesh, and the poorest districts of India. The overwhelming majority of these jobs are as unskilled or semi-skilled labor. The work is hard and often dangerous, and the lifestyle Spartan.

Workers at the bottom usually earn about 1000 rials a month, a bit less than $300. Accommodations vary widely, depending upon the job. Most workers get free housing but not all. Qataris love to house their workers in the same spot that they work; it saves on transport costs I suppose, so this means that most factories and even retail shops have housing attached, either behind or on top of the place of business.

Large companies may have barracks or dormitory style housing for workers. Others opt for apartments, but these are shared among several workers. Typically people in this category can expect to have roommates. Rural settings like farms and the camel pens offer simple, rough quarters. Many East Africans work there, and often just throw a mattress out under the stars. Rural areas often don’t have electricity and running water.
Workers in town have electricity, but many cook over portable gas stoves.

It’s rather strange. Natural gas is Qatar’s biggest export, yet Doha doesn’t have gas lines yet. Everyone who uses it has tanks. Wealthier folks have the large, permanent kind outside, and poorer people use the portable tanks. A lot of infrastructure work is still being done here.

The poorer workers in town do all of the grunt work. Qataris don’t fill these jobs. These are the groundskeepers, laborers, construction crews, factory workers, drivers, and tradesmen. The typical worker supports an extended family at home with remittances, and is often here for many years. By law all workers must be sent home at least once every two years at the expense of the employer, for a vacation.

I am surprised at how few save their money. A Nepali friend told me about his situation. He had been unemployed for two years because of the civil strife in Nepal (he had worked in the tourist industry, now largely defunct). His extended family supported him and his wife and children during that time. Now he went abroad, and his remittances go to support the rest. When he eventually goes home, he won’t have any savings to show for his time in Qatar, but trusts that other members of his family will then pick up the slack. I have heard of others in this situation too, including my maid.

The poorest workers cannot bring their families to Qatar. In order to bring family, a worker has to earn at least 3000 rials per month. This means that the bulk of the blue collar work force are here alone. This is why the male to female ratio in Qatar is two to one (and also why even non-muslim women sometimes wear niqab to the souqs!). Professionals all earn enough to bring family, and usually do.

The Arab ex-pats here work a lot of the mid-range jobs. These are your car salesmen, bank tellers, travel agents, restaurant co-owners (gotta have that Qatari partner!), and so forth, as well as university professors, engineers etc. They are the ex-pat “middle class”, and live pretty well. Most are saving their money, so they are likely to drive used cars, and not have servants.

Ex-pats are four fifths of the population of Qatar, and the mainspring of the Qatari economy. It’s a real melting pot, but because these people are here only temporarily, it’s a pot that mixes but doesn’t blend. Most ex-pats lead lives fairly similar to where they came from, even down to the products they buy. It’s as if there are many insular bubbles of communities, filled only with one’s own countrymen and customs. It’s easy enough to break out of this though, if you want to.

Workers have rights in Qatar, but enforcement is sometimes difficult, because employers hold so much leverage over their employees. Not just wages, but housing and sometimes even food is provided by one’s employer, so speaking up takes courage. The main issues I have heard about in this regard concern workplace safety. Construction sites especially can be notoriously unsafe, and scarcely a week goes by without a workplace fatality someplace in Qatar.

The reasons are numerous. A lot of it is poor training. Many laborers have no experience in their jobs before coming here, and are unaware of safety procedures. Many more have plenty of experience, but practice the same unsafe methods here that they did where they came from. Another problem is that there are so many languages spoken here, that much is lost in translation. Imagine a Qatari project manager describing a procedure to an Urdu speaking foreman, who relays it to his Phillipino crew, who palm the task off onto some Nepalis. A lot gets lost in translation, and things that are “common sense” to one culture frequently aren’t to another. The result is a high accident rate.

A worker who gets out of line may be deported. This is especially true of those who violate the law. Because most workers have many people back home depending on their remittances, most strive to stay out of trouble. Qatar has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Obtaining Qatari citizenship is very difficult. People often stay here as residents as long as they wish, but citizenship is only obtained by being born to a Qatari father, or by special invitation. This goes back to the whole Qatari tribal thing. The issue is, what makes a nation? To the Qataris, their “nation” is a specific collection of tribes, more so than a geographic boundary or one’s place of birth. To be “Qatari” implies membership in one of those tribes.

Citizenship is patrilineal, it is given only to those with Qatari fathers. This is because Qatar, being a certain collection of tribes, is also a certain collection of last names. By one’s last name alone, a Qatari can tell what tribe you are from, where they lived, what your ancestors were known for, and how they made their living. Granting citizenship to those without a Qatari father introduces new last names to the mix, and undermines the definition of Qatar as this particular collection of tribes.

The obvious problem with this, is that Qatari women can’t marry foreigners and still give their children Qatari citizenship. Some go ahead and marry them anyway, but their children are resident aliens… ie no annual stipend from the government, no free education, no free land, etc. …a major disadvantage to say the least. The upshot of it is that it’s ok to marry a foreigner, as long as he is rich!

Marriages of Qatari women with men from neighboring Gulf states are common enough. If a Qatari lady marries an Emirati, the fact that her children are not Qatari is a wash, because Emirati benefits are similar. Qatari men on the other hand, often marry further afield. This creates a problem, because if too many Qatari men marry foreigners, the pool of available Qatari husbands for Qatari women shrinks proportionately. There is social pressure to avoid marrying foreigners, especially from a man’s mother and sisters, but some do so anyhow. Polygamy is one way the gap is closed.

Islam allows men to marry up to four women. In practice, polygamy is very rare throughout most of the Arab world, but nowhere is it practiced more than the Gulf. Each wife is entitled to her own home, equal in status with the others, so it is a practice reserved for either very wealthy men, or very poor, rural men. Therefore the places that it is most common are the Gulf, and also some of the very poorest backwaters of the Islamic world.

It’s difficult to get hard data on this, but I have heard that about 5% of Qataris are involved in polygamous marriages. This seems about right. That’s probably roughly equivalent to the percentage of men who marry foreigners. It’s hard to know if someone is, or is not, multiply married because it’s rude to ask a man about his wife. You can ask about his kids, but not his wife. You usually won’t know unless he either mentions it himself, or you see him out and about with the whole crew.

In my travels here, I have met three men who have more than one wife (that I know of). All are wealthy. The first case was a situation that would otherwise have ended in divorce. The man lives with #2, but continues to support his other wife and children. They lead separate lives, but for whatever reason have chosen to stay married. The other two guys have four wives each, but I don’t know either of them well enough to get into the how’s and why’s of it. I wonder if there was resistance or protest on the part of the other wives.

The divorce rate here is about 30% and rising. The odds increase with the level of education possessed by the couple. I guess that’s about standard anywhere. The average age of marriage is on the rise too. Just a generation ago, most women married at eighteen or so, some much younger than that. The average age is in the early twenties now, and is a topic of concern for some. You can’t have both a strict morality code and late marriages in a society without creating strife.

Some are adopting creative solutions, like marrying young, but maintaining a relationship with the spouse much like “dating” in the west. Their relationship mirrors a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, and they may still live with their parents, but they are married. If the relationship ends, they divorce with no strings. Couples in this situation postpone the “big wedding” ceremony (and the big dowry) until they are more settled in their lives, but even so, a dowry is given, and their bond is legal. These couples postpone having children too of course. As Qatar changes, I suppose we can expect more of these adaptations of custom to modern necessity.