R ESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Fraser’s and Sassen’s concepts combined help to identify the current developments regarding the rights of labor migrants in Qatar. Evidently, the global stage that comes along the staging of the football world championship in 2022 produces a platform for actors aiming at making this previously national issue a global issue. In today's world, when state and non-state actors from different scales increasingly interact and circumvent social structures that previously regulated the social landscape exclusively, new challenges for regulative systems arise. One challenge that emerged from such abnormal times is the provision of a fair and equal system of justice. The nation state and its citizens are no longer the only participants of a discourse in which justice is discussed. The globalized world of today, with its intertwined relationships between regional, national, and global organizations/institutions, creates multiple domains in which justice is being debated. Qatar is a clear example of the effect of global dynamics on justice discourse in the lead up to the 2022 World Cup. Increasing global economic interrelations pushed Qatar to aim for the 2022 World Cup, therefore forming its foundation for collaboration with FIFA. Concurrently, economic forces in labor-sending countries encouraged respective governments to establish policies and agreements with labor-receiving countries, in order to facilitate outmigration of labor force, exemplified by countries like India and the Philippines in their relations with Qatar.

As a result of Qatar's lack of labor force and FIFA's requirement of new infrastructure, more labor migrants are needed, who, to a great extent, will come from countries that already have agreements with Qatar (India, the Philippines and other Asian countries).

By 2010, approximately 85 percent of the Qatari population consisted of non-Qatari citizens (De Bel-Air, 2014, p. 6). An even-larger percentage of non-Qatari nationals can be found when solely examining the labor market: more than 94 percent of the working population consists of immigrants (De Bel-Air, 2014, p. 7). Of these immigrants, the

29 majority come from India, Nepal and the Philippines (De Bel-Air, 2014, p. 9). However, some of these labor migrants face harsh working and living conditions in Qatar that are against national and international standards. Simultaneously, immigrants have limited rights compared to Qatari citizens under Qatari law, even though they reside within Qatar's borders. One example is the restrictive migration system in Qatar: kafala is a sponsorship system which manages the act of migration between a sponsor (located in an institution or company) and the migrant worker. The worker normally pays a certain fee to the sponsor who, in return, provides the migrant with important legal documents and work. The immigrant, however, cannot stop the contract without facing consequences, such as being sent back to country of origin without any financial compensation (Baldwin-Edwards, 2011, p 37).

Aside from Qatari jurisdiction, labor migrants are excluded from their home countries' protective frameworks. The range of the labor sending countries' judicial framework does not include its migrating citizens, as they do not live in their home country anymore. Consequentially, labor migrants in Qatar face a scenario of abnormal justice, in which the nation state framework is incapable of discussing their justice claims. This gap, however, is filled by various organizations that act beyond the nation state framework. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Trade Union Confederation, and other organizations act according to international normative systems that frame their jurisdictions more generously, and thus also include labor migrants in Qatar. In doing so, these organizations engage and interact with Qatari institutions to discuss justice claims and framework regarding labor migrant rights. The outcome of such justice disputes is unclear, as there are no adequate governance structures with sufficient dialogical and institutional power to redress abnormal injustices beyond the nation state framework. Instead, the power of certain organizations that support labor migrant rights seems to be subtler, utilizing international media coverage as leverage. As labor migration, a result of globalization, is an increasingly popular phenomenon, and many policies still only apply within national borders and solely include citizens, justice disputes akin to the present one are expected to grow. To understand how these challenges in justice are being fought, and how certain parties act and react to the growing involvement of actors with different normative systems, it is thus important to analyze the issue at hand. Keeping the above outlined theoretical framework in mind, I therefore raise the following research questions.

30 1. How is the discourse about labor migrant constituted?

1.1. Who takes part in the discourse about labor migrant rights in the course of the preparations of the World Cup 2022?

1.2. What are the central claims of the discourse and how do they represent new global challenges of injustices for labor migrants?

2. How are labor migrant rights organized?

2.1. During the process of institutionalization and consolidation of the discourse, what kind of institutional or discursive mandates do the discourse participants refer to?

The herein posed research questions slightly differ in scope and depth. The first set of questions intends to reveal whose discursive actions need to be considered and how these actors are characterized. Building on these results, the second set of questions deepens the research focus by addressing in particular the characteristics of these actions. The aim is not only to disclose the actual situation of labor migrants in Qatar.

The interest of this study is rather to explore how certain justice disputes, which in the present case are labor migrants’ rights, are being negotiated between different parties and what this discourse means to the general discussion of labor migrant rights.

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