From Slavery to Sponsorship: Tracing Eritrean Migrants and Labour in Saudi Arabia

This study will explore the intersection between migration and the enslavement through the case study of the Eritrean diaspora in Saudi Arabia (1970-2010). Drawing on archival data and qualitative interviews, this study will situate contemporary Eritrean migration to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia within the longer histories of (forced) labour migration across Red Sea. I will compare how generations of Eritrean migrants fleeing conflict, war and political instability navigate Saudi Arabia’s restrictive and shifting labour sponsorship system known locally as the Kafala.

I will assess how the legacies of race and enslavement reproduce or even reinforce inequalities within and across these two countries. This will contribute to providing a nuanced account of how perceptions of space, race and labour shaped the everyday experiences of Eritrean migrants. This research project highlights the precarity of forced migrants in the Gulf states, the wider gaps in international responsibility-sharing and protection for forced migrants caught in the limbo of being displaced due to changes in labour laws and restrictions within the labour sponsorship Kafala system. This has broader relevance to all forced migrants in the Gulf who are ostensibly there as ‘labour migrants’ but have compelling reasons not to, or are unable to, return to their countries of origin.