The Arabic word for guardianship became the legal basis for binding millions of workers to their employers.
The kafala system is a set of laws that ties a migrant worker's residency and employment status to a specific employer, called a kafeel, or sponsor.1 Under the system, a worker cannot change jobs, leave the country, or in some cases open a bank account without the sponsor's permission. It is used in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Lebanon.
The word kafala comes from Arabic and originally meant guardianship or custodianship, with deep roots in Islamic jurisprudence where it refers to the care of orphaned children.2 The modern labor application bears little resemblance to its protective origins. Scholars trace the first use of kafala as a labor-sponsorship mechanism to the pearl-diving industry in the British Colonial Protectorate of Bahrain in the 1920s.3
Omar al-Shehabi has argued that British colonial administrators adopted and expanded the system as a cheap strategy for controlling migrant labor across the Indian Ocean, introducing sponsorship requirements to manage the growing numbers of workers drawn by the expanding oil industry.4
After Gulf states achieved independence in the mid-twentieth century, the sponsoring of foreign workers was delegated to citizens or citizen-owned companies.5 The system produced massive demographic changes. Foreigners now outnumber citizens in every Gulf Cooperation Council state except Saudi Arabia. In the UAE, migrant workers make up approximately 80 percent of the population.1
In 2009, Bahrain became the first GCC country to repeal the kafala system. The Labour Minister compared it to slavery.1 Qatar reformed elements of the system ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, including a non-discriminatory minimum wage and the removal of employer consent for job changes. Human rights organizations have noted that enforcement of these reforms remains uneven.5