“Never surrender your passport to someone to keep!” is advice which is often given to expatriates on arriving in the Gulf. In practice this is harder than it sounds. I know one British employee who was told that if he did not hand his passport over his job contract would be terminated there and then. He reluctantly handed it over and then had the frustrating fight to get it back when he went on his holidays.
Talking through this issue with a Kuwaiti friend, he shrugged and said that it is to be expected that employers keep passports. Even though they know it is against the law! This is a fact. It is against the law for employers to confiscate and keep passports. Passports in truth belong to the governments who issue them and so anyone who needs their passports back should advise their embassy.
It is a puzzle though where this practice comes from. Why is it normative for employers to break the law in this matter so consistently? As a phenomenon it is not unique to Kuwait, it occurs all over the Gulf. One whisper of an answer was suggested to me though the reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book ‘Outliers’. He points to how attitudes and behaviours are preserved in specific cultures and passed on from generation to generation. In his provocative book he explores how this works using the institute of slavery as one example.
So what historical institution emerged in the Gulf which allowed the widespread practice of withholding passports against the employees’ will?
Authors Paul Dresch and James Piscatori in their book “Monarchies and Nations” point to the pearling industry. Pearling has a shared history in all the Gulf states and we can see in this historical institution the patterns and attitudes which shape today’s employers in the Gulf. Dresch and Piscatori wrote that the pearling industry was “built on debt bondage and indentured labour, where historically a diver in debt needed his captain’s release to work for another or face arrest for absconding. The labour market was regulated by freezing the labourer in his relationship to one employer. . . This system of private policing most probably deterred criminal behaviour among expatriates, but it also facilitated criminality among sponsors.” They then go on to explain how sponsors continue this tradition by holding passports.
History is a powerful shaper.. Today the pearling industry has virtually disappeared due to the Japanese innovation of cultured pearls. Yet the old attitudes prevail. The problem is that these attitudes now contravene the modern laws of Kuwait and international law. The boats have come home to a new world where the rules have changed. A law passed in 2007 says that passports can not be held by employers against the employees will. This law needs to be more widely known and enforced.
The scriptures advise “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. . . .For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.” (Romans 13.1-3.)
Talking through this issue with a Kuwaiti friend, he shrugged and said that it is to be expected that employers keep passports. Even though they know it is against the law! This is a fact. It is against the law for employers to confiscate and keep passports. Passports in truth belong to the governments who issue them and so anyone who needs their passports back should advise their embassy.
It is a puzzle though where this practice comes from. Why is it normative for employers to break the law in this matter so consistently? As a phenomenon it is not unique to Kuwait, it occurs all over the Gulf. One whisper of an answer was suggested to me though the reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book ‘Outliers’. He points to how attitudes and behaviours are preserved in specific cultures and passed on from generation to generation. In his provocative book he explores how this works using the institute of slavery as one example.
So what historical institution emerged in the Gulf which allowed the widespread practice of withholding passports against the employees’ will?
Authors Paul Dresch and James Piscatori in their book “Monarchies and Nations” point to the pearling industry. Pearling has a shared history in all the Gulf states and we can see in this historical institution the patterns and attitudes which shape today’s employers in the Gulf. Dresch and Piscatori wrote that the pearling industry was “built on debt bondage and indentured labour, where historically a diver in debt needed his captain’s release to work for another or face arrest for absconding. The labour market was regulated by freezing the labourer in his relationship to one employer. . . This system of private policing most probably deterred criminal behaviour among expatriates, but it also facilitated criminality among sponsors.” They then go on to explain how sponsors continue this tradition by holding passports.
History is a powerful shaper.. Today the pearling industry has virtually disappeared due to the Japanese innovation of cultured pearls. Yet the old attitudes prevail. The problem is that these attitudes now contravene the modern laws of Kuwait and international law. The boats have come home to a new world where the rules have changed. A law passed in 2007 says that passports can not be held by employers against the employees will. This law needs to be more widely known and enforced.
The scriptures advise “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. . . .For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.” (Romans 13.1-3.)
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