Migrant Workers’ Living Conditions in Dubai’s Labor Camps

But we mustn't forget that the cost of living in Dubai is very high.

To give you an idea, the rent for a small studio apartment, as one-piece apartments are called, varies between fifteen hundred and four thousand dirhams. Can you imagine trying to live on such a tight salary in a place where everything costs so much?

The solution is to share. On average, each worker shares a room with five other people in order to save as much as possible and guarantee the basics: food, clothing, and transportation.

These workers' days are long and exhausting.

Often, the men who work in Sonapur don't even have the minimum conditions to maintain their hygiene. The accommodation for migrant workers in Dubai, known as work camps or labor camps, often has precarious conditions. In these places, it is common for several workers to share small rooms with capacity for up to ten or fifteen

people in spaces of around ten square meters.

The sanitary facilities are usually communal, with toilets and showers shared by a large number of residents, often in an inadequate state of repair. There is almost no shower.

The solution for many is to use a bucket.

The kitchen is communal, visibly dirty, and totally out of line with the quality standards of other countries, with several workers crowded into spaces that are normally built by themselves.

The most frightening thing is that even the pipes and ventilation spaces were built by the workers without supervision by the responsible bodies.

Although many of these accommodations offer air conditioning due to the high temperatures in the region, maintenance is not always adequate, affecting the workers' quality of life. In other words, it's almost inhumane. And so the salaries, which at first seemed like a promise for the future, turn out to be insufficient to cover

expenses and send money home. The expectation of prosperity turns into a struggle to simply survive. Many of these immigrants end up getting into debt and living in a cycle of poverty and exhaustion, where the hope of a fresh start becomes more and more distant.

Can you understand now why they won't leave?

How can you leave with no passport, no money, and tied up in debt?

Not to mention the fact that many of these workers don't get paid.

It's not hard to find workers with signs begging their employer to pay them what they owe so they can go home.

And it is in this scenario, bleak in itself, that even more disturbing events arise.

Imagine spending years away from your family in a place where the distance is not just physical, but emotional.

These workers arrive with dreams and energy, but as time goes by, the promise of a better life in Dubai turns into a crushing routine that consumes body and spirit. They work without rest, without seeing the end of a journey that drags on and on, while the opulence of the city shines in the distance, untouched.

And it's not just the physical exhaustion. The mental battle is brutal.

The loneliness is constant, the emptiness immense.

Many end up falling into