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 | Dubaziation of the world tourism labor |
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Sheik Rashid Al Maktoum must have been thinking: "what to make out of this Arabian Desert?" He might have considered, as many men have before him, to leave a legacy that people of this world would be talking about him even thousand of years later. I am afraid will not get that much credit but he certainly can get the credit for instantiating a type of dream and the partial realization of it with all the necessary human and environmental costs.
What am I actually talking about? The topic is whether the rest of the underdeveloped world could also achieve the "level" of luxury as the United Arab Emirates has under their flagship city called Dubai. When I visited this city for the first time a couple of years ago, I thought for a moment that I had stepped into the future of humanity. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a pleasant one. Dubai has made it all, skyscrapers everywhere, open skies, good connected roads from the air and land, were becoming the center of the Middle East on the crossroads between Europe and Asia that is what one would say on the first impression.
You would believe that as they had realized their dream that it was maybe feasible for others as well, although initiated by oil-dollars. A gateway to the paradise of the future: the biggest shopping center of the world. Tourism can indeed be a resource for the development of a society when they have enough to offer, keeping in mind that the offering should be sustained for a long period and not for 10 or 20 years. Nevertheless, it could be the first trigger for development of a country assuming that it was led by a wise management team.
UAE, has now a population of 3 million people, 80 % of the population are migrant, who don’t have any other status than as a temporary settled worker. Since we don’t have true statistics, as this is valid for the whole Middle East, it even might be that half of the migrants are not in possession of their passports. Their passports are being kept by the companies who brought them initially to the UAE, with the cliché promise that they will be able to return home with a “lot of money”. I define this new working class as the new “Serfdom”, as the privileged landowners had until the beginning of 20th century. This serfdom almost connects the migrants with the construction that they are building, going to maintain or work on.
It is a fact that a significant section of the tourism industry and service sector which is connected to tourism is globally involved with illegal labor either with illegal or unregistered workers. In Dubai, however, a big fraction of the work force consists of illegal immigrants or foreigners with temporary visas or hijacked passports of temporary workers. We don’t even have to talk about their democratic rights. A society of which 80% of the population consists of non-citizens who don’t have a single right to the decision making of the place that they are living in. I am afraid that this is becoming more and more a tendence in world politics.
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Is there any chance that these immigrant workers might turn to Spartacuses. I don’t believe so, since they are solely over there with the aim of getting rich and the Emirates keep everything as tight as they can and decrease the civil liberties of these stateless people.
People in the west are complaining about the cheap labor from Asia, nevertheless, when it comes to buying they are also in the front lines in front of the counters of shops which sell products with dumped prices and produced in cheap-labor paradises like China. A similar behavior is noticed when it comes to shopping in the so-called tax paradise as Dubai. Why would you pay VAT when you can avoid it? There is no better place than Dubai to observe all the consequences of the New World Economy, cheap labor with cheap products. According to the official statements of the state the tourism industry has taken about 12% of the total employment in 2005. Of course, one has to make it’s own imagination of these figures considering the number of unregistered workers.
Dubai is just an example of what we are going to expect to see in the very near future. Globally, tourism or tourism related industries use more non-skilled labor then any other industries. If we are only going to lead by profit margins, focusing on the well being of the tourist and closing our eyes to the welfare of the pillars of the industry, we might one day see the collapse of this house. That day might be closer than we think because of the large portions of people involved in this branch. You cannot exploit all and expect to continue to consume as well. The Tourism Industry should come up with standardizations checking whether the delivered products & services do fit the required social, economical & environmental requirements. We don’t have to wait for a Green-peace like organization for the regulation of the branch. I am afraid we will then be contributing the Dubai model of “paradise” on earth and see how the future is catching up with us!
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