Foundations of a mirage

The UAE has been attempting to tackle important and current issues such as sustainability (accessibility and resilience of environmental resources, energy and water), in practice it relies on a system that has very little that is sustainable and modern about it, i.e. the exploitation of low-cost migrant labour (89% of the population are foreigners, mostly immigrants) to create works that aim to be the most impressive to the world, whose goal is to support a purely Western type of consumerism.

2021 is an important year for the United Arab Emirates, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation and hosting EXPO in Dubai, the country’s most important city.

The fate of the UAE took a drastic turn with the discovery of oil in 1958. Even today, over 85% of the country’s economy is based on exports of natural resources. In recent years, the construction boom has driven the country’s government to invest in very expensive infrastructure. The population of the UAE is around 10 million, of which 89% are foreigners (mostly immigrants from India and Pakistan).

Although for some time now the country, also through the EXPO, has been attempting to tackle important and current issues such as sustainability (accessibility and resilience of environmental resources, energy and water), in practice it relies on a system that has very little that is sustainable and modern about it, i.e. the exploitation of low-cost migrant labour to create works that aim to be the largest/tallest/most impressive etc. to the world, whose goal is to support a purely Western type of consumerism.

Dubai’s show of modernity can dazzle and distract from the actual situation, where capitalism reigns supreme. Even so, however, it is not difficult to notice the army of workers ready to clean and disinfect anywhere suitable for hosting visitors or in charge of directing tourists and satisfying their every need.

The dark side of Dubai has many facets, but it is on a human level that the cruellest face of this reality can be found, where workers are treated like commodities, also through what is known as the kafala, a system of exploitation that shares some characteristics with human trafficking. The result is therefore a form of contemporary slavery that goes unnoticed because to visitors, Dubai appears to be a wonderland, whose hardly “sustainable” foundations, however, they fail to see.