The Migrant Abuse Behind Qatar’s World Cup Stadiums

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

According to reports published by the Guardian, workers were paid as little as €0.56 an hour for their arduous jobs in the extreme heat. Most of them were made to live in labour camps - isolated and overcrowded structures built in the desert outside Qatar’s cities with awful sanitary conditions.

Employed through the kafala system - which the International Labour Organisation has compared to modern slavery - workers often have their passports confiscated on arrival. This prevents them from changing jobs easily or leaving the country. They also reported wage theft, poor working conditions, harassment and sexual abuse. Qatar reformed its laws on foreign employment in 2017, but critics say little has changed.

In 2021, Amnesty International also reported that up to 15,000 migrants working on World Cup facilities died between 2010 and 2020 - mostly due to heat stroke and untreated illness, though reports later debunked the figure. Since Qatar has no publicly available data specific to World Cup sites, the figure actually refers to migrant workers’ deaths in the country in general. As most of the country’s recent construction boom happened because of the World Cup, however, people argue that the deaths can be indirectly attributed to the tournament.

In short, Qatar may have spent over €220 billion on its stadiums, but countries halfway across the world are paying the true price. Foreign, mostly low-income workers amount to 88 percent of the country’s population, while Qatari nationals number around 380,000. The two largest communities are Indian and Nepalese workers who come to the Gulf to send money to their families back home. Their personal stories are often lost behind the statistics reported in the media.

Belgian-French photographer Frédéric Lecloux met with many of their families during a trip to Nepal - a country he’s been regularly visiting for work since 1994. At the peak of Qatar’s construction boom, between 2015 and 2016, Lecloux set out to create portraits of these workers and the people closest to them; from the outskirts of Doha to southeastern Nepal. These intimate photos and testimonies show that Qatar’s story of success is as much a Nepalese story of poverty and migration. 

His work has now been published in the book Au Désert. Migrations Népal - Qatar (In the Desert. The Nepal - Qatar Migration, only available in French). We spoke to him about his discoveries.

VICE: How did you first find out about the migration of Nepalese workers to the Gulf?
Frédéric Lecloux: I’ve been travelling to Nepal since the mid-90s, usually flying with a layover in Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Doha [the capital of Qatar]. From the early 2000s, I gradually noticed that the passengers on the second leg of the trip were almost exclusively young Nepalese men. That's how I became aware of the extent of this migratory phenomenon.

A pivotal moment came with the publication of Pete Pattisson's 2013 article in the Guardian, which condemned the first officially recognised deaths of Nepalese construction workers in stadiums in Qatar. Then, another article published by Florence Beaugé in Le Monde told the story of the Nepalese villages around Kathmandu where men had totally disappeared.

You chose to focus on three districts in southeastern Nepal. Are these the most affected regions?
Yes, the whole Terai area is extremely affected. There are many villages where the only “men” you see are children or elderly people. But economic migration is not new to this region – Nepalese people have been leaving their country to support their families for decades.

In the beginning, the main destination was India [which borders these districts, with people moving freely from one country to the other], where men go for a few months as seasonal workers. As time went by, those same workers travelled further and further to look for jobs, first to Malaysia and then to the Gulf.

How did you get in touch with the migrant workers’ families?
It was not easy – these districts are extremely conservative. In Nepal, when young women get married, they go live with their in-laws and are often under the crushing control of their mothers-in-law and brothers-in-law. So, as a Westerner, directly reaching out to the wives of migrant workers was not possible, I needed an “in”. I eventually found a social worker who helped me with my interviews and photography.

How do the women see the departure of their husbands?
The phrase that keeps coming back is: “We have no choice.” I tried to understand what was behind it and, after dozens of interviews, I would say it’s mostly about social pressure. Because their neighbour bought a house, a motorbike or a small grocery shop this way, they want to do the same.

To get out of poverty, these families send their men to work far away, hoping they’ll come back and stay in Nepal. The Nepalese state is not able to ensure them a decent living, so they keep leaving.

After visiting these families, you set out to find their men who work in Qatar.
Yes, I went there reluctantly and anxiously. I had the feeling I would be watched at every moment. I had read the testimonies of journalists who had had their photos confiscated while they were investigating the same subject.

I was helped by a Nepalese man who had a car, let’s call him Rajendra [not his real name]. I contacted the workers by phone and agreed on a meeting point. Then, we went to the camps on the outskirts of Doha.

Were you able to access the camps without difficulty?
Surprisingly, yes. Rajendra and I would park in front of the camp, the men would wait for us. If a guard asked what we were doing, we’d simply tell them that we were visiting so-and-so and we were friends of his family. Which was more or less true – I was the only person they could get in touch with to see their family, so I brought them photographs and news.

We wouldn’t stay long in the camps, an hour or two at most, so as not to encroach on the few moments of free time they enjoyed after work. They’d often bring up the same feeling of having no choice but to go abroad for work, coupled with a powerful sense of weariness and boredom that this life carries.

Does their choice pay off?
People talk a lot about the loans they had to take out to go halfway around the world. In Nepal, it’s common for middlemen to visit the villages promising a passport, a plane ticket and a contract for a few thousand rupees. Since the families don’t have this money, loans are a key part of their migration. Generally, everything the men make in the first year goes to repaying them and interests are extremely high. However, it’s important to put their earnings into perspective - their basic salary as an agricultural worker back home would be about €1.25 a day [less than what they’re making in Qatar].

Do you think this flow of departures will dry up one day?
Although migration has declined in recent years, it has become a structural part of the way Nepal functions. Depending on the source and the year, between 25 and 30 percent of Nepal's GDP comes from migrant workers. So, the government is trying to make these migration processes as smooth as possible. NGOs [not-for-profit organisations] don’t focus on curbing migration, but rather making it safer.

What’s striking is that, in Nepal, the topic of whether migration is good or bad for the country isn’t even a question anymore. For young men, it’s sort of an obligatory passage. Today, 10 percent of those leaving are women [some reports put the figure between 5 and 8.9 percent]. They mostly go to Gulf countries to become domestic workers. I fear they experience even more harrowing situations, since these young women live an isolated existence in their employers' houses.

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