Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Deciding to Hire Expat Workers (part 1 of 4)

Overview

By chance in the past few weeks I have read several articles about labor and migration on the Arabian Peninsula such as

• Gardner, Andrew and Sharon Nagy. (2008). “Introduction: New Ethnographic Fieldwork Among Migrants, Residents and Citizens in the Arab States of the Gulf.” City and Society 20.1: 1-4.
• Nagy, Sharon. (1998). “‘This Time I Think I’ll Try a Filipina’: Global and Local Influences on Relations Between Foreign Household Workers and Their Employers in Doha, Qatar.” City and Society 10: 83-103.
• Sarmadi, Behzad. (2013). “‘Bachelor’ in the City: Urban Transformation and Matter Out of Place in Dubai.” Journal of Arabian Studies 3: 196-214.

There are lots of numbers, data sets, opinions and ideas in these texts – but no sense of what it’s like to interact with expat workers. There is ethnographic work with and about them, but nothing about the writer’s personal economic exchanges: how to hire, discuss and pay wages, decide work load, etc. This isn’t a fault of the articles which have different objectives, but reading these texts made me reflect on my connections to other expat workers, how I manage them and how they manage me.

This essay will talk about my decision to hire help. The previous essay talked about my decision to hire help and later essays will talk in more detail about some of the people who have worked for me and the types of adjustments that we both make. [The information about wages and dates are from monthly lists of expenses that I have kept since I moved to Dhofar. 1 Omani Riyal is about $2.40; there are 1000 baisa in one Riyal so the 500 baisa bill is worth about $1.20.]

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(photo by S. B.)

First, I want to highlight that my experiences are with other individual expat women and men who have come to Oman on their own, meaning they are sponsored by one Omani or a small company, not as part of teams hundreds of men strong. I can’t speak about the life of workers at large construction businesses beyond memories from 1997 of trying to walk between the buildings of the American University of Sharjah (AUS) as the men who were building the campus napped in the shaded walkways. As I stepped over their sleeping forms, I thought that I was probably being grossly culturally inappropriate, but they took up every inch of the shade so it was either don’t walk during nap-time, walk in the full sun or make one’s way amid the resting men. It was a great lesson in the practicalities of construction. I, with my Ray-bans and air-conditioned office, needed to understand that making the buildings required a lot of labor and that labor had the right to relax out of the noon-day sun.

I had a second lesson while living in campus housing at AUS. The man who was in charge of the apartments rang the doorbell one afternoon. When I opened the door, he was standing with 4 other men, one of whom was carrying a large TV set. “I am having coffee with women,” I said, “can you please come back in 2 hours?” He said, “Yes.” And I didn’t get my TV for a month. He had been ready to install it and I should have asked my female guests to leave so he could do his job. By saying “no,” I had insulted him and he installed every other TV on campus, waited another two weeks for good measure, then came back and did mine. Lesson learned.

Since I moved to Oman, I give up whatever I am doing when a repair person comes – no matter how inconvenient the time. I say “yes” to AC repairmen who want to tear open vents as I am trying to write midterm exams and telephone repair people who want to come in the middle of a birthday party.

Sometimes Omani friends and the research guys mention encounters with expat laborers; usually there is a clear divide between stories from men and women. Men work with expats laborers usually in connection to construction and the stories are usually negative. It’s hard to parse what is genuine confusion, what is incompetence and what is deliberate malice. The men don’t want to tell me details (as it is not common to dwell on negative people/ events) but here is one example from my life this year.

I wanted to have three rooms painted. Another expat I know brought an expat painter and his assistant to my house to give an estimate. The painter had been working in Oman for five years so he had a lot of experience.

He was very careful to ask if I was using “regular paint” or “machine paint” (paint in which the color is added when you buy it, available at only one store). I said, “machine.” He told me I would need 20 liters for each room and that the machine paint came in cans of 20 liters so I only need one can for each room. He also said he would need 3 rolls of tape to over the woodwork around the doors and light switches. That seemed like too much paint and not enough tape to me, but I haven’t painted a room in over 10 years so I deferred to his expertise.

When I got to the one store that mixes paint on request, I learned that “machine paint” comes in 4 or 18 liter cans and I was surprised that the painter had gotten the size of the can wrong. Since he had said 20 liters was needed, I bought an 18 liter can and a 4 liter can in each of the three colors for a cost of 64 Omani Riyal, thinking it was better to have too much than too little. I would keep the extra on-hand for touch-ups.

I got help to move the furniture into the middle of the rooms and cover everything with tarps. The painter arrived on time, looked at the 3 rolls of tape and announced that this was not nearly enough, so the person who was helping drove off to the store and bought more.

The painter and assistance worked from 8 to 5pm with a few breaks and did a great job. When they finished I paid the agreed price – 60 Riyal, plus I gave a 4 Riyal tip to each and they could take the tarps and the rest of the packet of water I had brought for them.

Then I went to take the paint cans to the trash and realized that they had only used about 12 liters per room; the large cans were 1/3 full and the 4 liter cans were untouched. As the paint was custom mixed, I could not return it and was stuck with a large amount of paint. I wondered how a person who has spent the last five years painting rooms would not know how much paint I should buy.

Stories from Dhofari women about female expat workers in their homes are usually about very positive interactions. For example, when I asked a female, Dhfoari friend if she wanted to have coffee, I was told that their maid was going back to her country, so my friend and her sisters were taking her shopping to get presents for the maid’s family. Once I was sitting in a female friend’s salle to have coffee and saw a new maid bring in a tray. My friend explained, “she’s new and very young, we didn’t think she would be so young, she misses her family so we are buying her many phone cards.”

Most of my female friends have workers who stay with the family for 10 years or more and they make adjustments to help the workers. One, for example, told me, “my father’s driver, his mother is sick so he is at home for a month so we rented a bus to bring the kids to school.”

Their stories made me realize that my basic assumption (I hire someone and they do the work) was not accurate. When someone works for you for a while, you create a relationship that must be respected. My obligation to the people who work for me is not simply that I pay the salary, a topic I will discuss in my next short essay.

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Expat Workers and Reciprocity (part 3 of 4)

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Getting it Wrong

Teaching: Reflective Teaching and Motivation

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Claiming Knowledge and Shifting Perceptions