Does Social Mobility Matter? The Kafala System and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221130901 |
| Author | Amir Abdul Reda,Nicholas AR Fraser,Ahmed Khattab |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221130901
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(4) 801 –824
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299221130901
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Does Social Mobility Matter?
The Kafala System and
Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
Amir Abdul Reda1, Nicholas AR Fraser2
and Ahmed Khattab3
Abstract
Existing studies argue that anti-immigrant sentiment stems from threat perception. Yet,
conventional theoretical approaches cannot fully explain hostility toward immigrants in the Middle
East and North Africa, where low-skilled foreign workers occupy an inferior social and legal status
vis-a-vis natives under the kafala system. Building on existing studies of immigration politics, we
theorize how immigration policies can either facilitate or prevent the social mobility of foreign
workers. Exploring immigration attitudes in 14 Middle East and North Africa countries using an
original dataset that matches survey responses with host country-specific factors, we find that
extreme rights-restricting immigration policies (such as the kafala system) encourage wealthier
natives to be more hostile than their lower-class counterparts. Our study suggests that anti-
immigrant sentiment is context-specific and influenced by local institutions.
Keywords
anti-immigrant sentiment, kafala, migration policy, MENA, labor migrants
Accepted: 6 September 2022
Introduction
According to data compiled by multiple human rights organizations, poor working condi-
tions are responsible for thousands of deaths of low-skilled migrant workers in the Middle
East North Africa (MENA) region every year (The Deaths of Migrants in the Gulf, 2022).
This is particularly true in the Gulf Cooperation Council1 (GCC) states, where the local
economies have heavily depended on labor migrants for decades (Al-Ghanim, 2015).
On an aggregate level, some of the most commonly reported abuses have included
1Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences (AIRESS), Mohammed VI Polytechnic
University, Rabat, Morocco
2Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
3Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
Corresponding author:
Amir Abdul Reda, African Institute for Research in Economics & Social Sciences (AIRESS), Mohammed
VI Polytechnic University,Rabat Campus, Rocade Rabat-Salé, Rabat 11103, Morocco.
Email: amir.abdulreda@mail.utoronto.ca
1130901PSW0010.1177/14789299221130901Political Studies ReviewAbdul Reda et al.
research-article2023
Article
802 Political Studies Review 21(4)
withholding of wages and passports, poor living conditions, physical and psychological
abuse, denial of proper healthcare, and intimidation against voicing concerns (Kane-
Hartnett, 2018). Individual stories are also telling; in May 2019, Lovely, who worked at
the time as a housemaid in Saudi Arabia, found herself tied up to a tree outside her
employers’ lush mansion because she had left expensive furniture outside the house.
Displeased, Lovely’s Saudi employers believed it was acceptable to tie their Filipino
maid to a tree to understand the “effects of staying outside in the sun” (Simon and Craggs,
2013). Lovely’s story is but one of many that have surfaced and exposed the abuse that
foreign workers tend to be subjected to in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
region because the kafala system effectively locks low-skilled migrants into precarious
situations.
As a rights-restrictive immigration policy that enables human rights abuses within
MENA countries (Motaparthy, 2015), the kafala system may be seen as an effective way
for policymakers in illiberal and authoritarian polities to capture the benefits of admitting
foreign workers without triggering public opposition. Existing studies show that per-
ceived threats to natives’ social and/or economic status drive anti-immigrant sentiment
(Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014; Hierro and Rico, 2019; Kunovich, 2017; Norris and
Inglehart, 2019). Though not wrong, few studies have examined the degree to which
threat perception explains public attitudes toward immigration in the MENA region
where the kafala system prevents low-skilled migrants from competing with locals for
jobs and locks them into an inferior socio-legal status. Addressing this gap, our study
explores anti-immigrant sentiment where foreign workers are unlikely to threaten natives’
socio-economic status.
With an eye toward theorizing what shapes public attitudes in illiberal and non-demo-
cratic contexts, our study examines how key differences in local immigration policies can
influence immigration attitudes. We argue that when immigration systems prevent the
social mobility of migrants, as the kafala system does, negative attitudes do not arise from
fears that immigrants will threaten natives’ pre-existing ethno-cultural or socio-economic
dominance. Instead, we highlight the impact of a previously unconsidered source of hos-
tility: the reinforcement of natives’ dominant social status via a rights-restrictive immi-
gration policy. Specifically, we conceptualize and identify the effect of status
enhancement—the belief held by wealthier natives that low-skilled foreign workers are
socially inferior. As such we predict that wealthier natives in kafala countries will express
negative views of immigrants based on feelings of contempt, not fear. Moreover, we also
predict that lower-class natives in kafala countries are far less likely to express hostility
toward immigrants because they do not compete with low-skilled foreign workers for
jobs.
We present quantitative evidence to support our argument using a dataset that includes
over 30,000 responses to the Arab Barometer and World Values Survey conducted in 14
MENA countries between 2000 and 2011. Our study produces two main findings. First, it
shows that in MENA countries without a kafala system, lower-class natives are more
likely to express anti-immigrant sentiment, while wealthier natives are more tolerant.
Second, it demonstrates that the reverse of this pattern is found in kafala countries as
predicted by our status enhancement theory. To our knowledge, this is the only quantita-
tive study that explores how the kafala system influences public attitudes toward immi-
grants in the MENA region. Moreover, our study suggests that the formation of
anti-immigrant sentiment is context-specific, and in some jurisdictions influenced by
structural conditions such as local policies that structure immigrants’ social status and
legal rights.
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