Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil

by Andrea Wright

More than one million Indians travel annually to work in oil projects in the Gulf, one of the few international destinations where men without formal education can find lucrative employment. Between Dreams and Ghosts follows their migration, taking readers to sites in India, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, from villages to oilfields and back again. Engaging all parties involved—the migrants themselves, the recruiting agencies that place them, the government bureaucrats that regulate their emigration, and the corporations that hire them—Andrea Wright examines labor migration as a social process as it reshapes global capitalism. With this book, Wright demonstrates how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colonial capitalism. As workers navigate bureaucratic hurdles to migration and working conditions in the Gulf, they in turn influence and inform state policies and corporate practices. Placing migrants at the center of global capital rather than its periphery, Wright shows how migrants are not passive bodies at the mercy of abstract forces—and reveals through their experiences a new understanding of contemporary resource extraction, governance, and global labor.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published November 9, 2021

Reviews

[KT · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent study of Indian migration to the Gulf states covering the migrant workers, their employers, employment agencies and government officials to get a fuller picture of labour migration within contemporary global capitalism and the enduring legacies of colonialism

Highly recommended for anyone interesting in labour migration

Particular highlights include:
Discussing the commonly held assumption held by recruiters and government bureaucrats that certain types of workers come from certain states of India - plumbers coming from Orissa, carpenters from Rajasthan, labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and engineers and doctors from Kerala. Such that a notion of state specialisation was reinforced by recruiting agent practices, thereby reinforcing the stereotype.
These stereotypes also had harmful effects to minority community members, such as stereotypes about Muslim migrants as uneducated and irrationally religious compared to the perception of Hindu migrants as hard-working and industrious. This perceived religious difference led to recruiting agents believing that most Muslims want to migrate to the Gulf due to religious factors (e.g. hajj is free), whereas Hindus migrate to work abroad as a result of a entrepreneurial and rational financial calculation. Through such descriptions, social inequalities become naturalised.