WORLD CUP! THE KAFALA SYSTEM AND MODERN DAY SLAVERY! | Thinking Out Loud

In this episode of his "Thinking Out Loud" series, Double D discusses the Qatar World Cup and the Kafala System of migrant slave labor that made the event possible.

Jumping in to the video, Double D discusses the controversies surrounding the 2022 Qatar World Cup, including its being hosted in a gulf state, the looming accusations of corruption, and a mass showing of support for Palestine from fans. He then reads excerpts from an article examining Qatar's massive migrant labor scheme known as The Kafala System.

Double D reads testimonies from Kafala laborers who are now stuck in Qatar with no passport and no access to healthcare. He explains how recruitment agencies will lie about the nature of the job vacancies their seeking to fill, and how migrant workers will have their passports seized upon arrival, preventing them from leaving the country.

Double D outlines a whole host of abuses associated with the Kafala system, including 12- 15 hour work days, terrible and/or dangerous working conditions, no sick days, no days off, no access to the outside world, and systemic cases of domestic kafala workers being confined to the home where they are perpetually raped and beaten.

Double D explains how the Kafala System, which means "Guardianship" in Arabic, turns private individuals and corporations into "sponsors" for migrant workers. This sponsorship puts complete power in the hands of the private entity while allowing the government to brush off any and all calls for reform.

He shows how these private entities control their workers movements, access to communications, access to healthcare, and are permitted to arbitrarily dismiss kafala employees, thereby blacklisting them from different work. He points out how the system also works on indebted servitude, where employers will garnish wages for transportation or healthcare costs.

Going on with the video, Double D zooms out, and examines how this Kafala System is an example of how slavery has persisted into the 21st century. He points out instances of Kafala employers engaging in "visa-trading" where they will lease workers out to another employee, often into worse conditions and pay. Double D compares this "visa-trading" to the system of slave leasing that was common in the American plantation system throughout the first half of the 19th century. He points out how in Kafala countries, often times migrants outnumber actual citizens, and how these migrants have none of the legal rights guaranteed by national citizenship. He draws parallels with this migrant to citizen disparity with the slave societies of the American south or French controlled Haiti.

Rounding off the video, Double D points out that while Western countries point the finger at Qatar and other Kafala nations, they seem content to ignore their own their own systems of migrant exploitation. Double D points out how the United States economy is built on the backs of millions upon millions of Latin American migrant workers, who are not protected by citizenship, and who are subjected to poverty wages and inhumane working conditions; all while the specter of deportation looms over their head. He shows how much of the American agricultural system, as well as the hospitality and food service industry is built off this exploitation.

Ending the video, Double D attempts to tie these systems of migrant exploitation to the greater capitalist system. He explains how the seed capital for capitalism was built off the backs of slaves and the stolen natural resources of indigenous peoples. He points to the Kafala system, the US Migration system, and the system of Mass Incarceration in the US, as examples of how capitalism cannot exist without an army of slaves. He reminds viewers that profit is just the unpaid wages of working people, and that no working person is paid so little as a slave.

He examines also, how the modern day neo-colonial system perpetuates these human rights abuses. He shows how all of the highly developed global north was developed trough the hyperexploitation of the global south, and that this exploitation has necessarily lead to under-development, which then leads to a process known as brain drain, where even the human resources of the global south are expropriated, as skilled workers and technicians are forced to migrate out of their over-exploited countries into the imperial core, where the imperialist countries benefit from their labor at the expense of the colonized world.

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