Contesting migrant precarity in the Global South? Informal labor markets,high-risk coping strategies and low-income Filipino migrants in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Despite extensive host state labor reforms, scholars contend that temporary labor migrants are systematically subject to economic precarity under the Gulf states’ kafala sponsorship system. Using the case of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this article posits that, despite legal and financial sanctions, low-income migrants navigate their transnational economic precarity status by strategically engaging with host country informal labor markets through three high-risk coping strategies: Accumulating debt, subleasing and enterprising. Ultimately, the study highlights low-income migrants navigate and co-produce precarity while simultaneously weaponizing informal labor markets as a (marginal yet) central “site” of everyday contestation within restrictive migration system in the Global South.