Kafala sponsorship systems
Kafala names a family of labor-migration arrangements, not one regional code. Their common institutional move is to connect a migrant worker's legal presence or labor mobility to a private sponsor, usually the employer. That delegation can make an employment dispute carry immigration consequences. Evidence from Lebanon shows how recruitment costs, status dependency, domestic-work exclusions, passport retention, and isolation can reinforce one another; Qatar shows that formal mobility reform can produce large numbers of job-change applications while employer resistance, uneven enforcement, and weak worker voice persist.
What happens when a state delegates control over a migrant worker's legal presence to the employer whose conduct the worker may need to escape?