--Kuwait and Saudi Arabia border Iraq where a civil war has continued for over 5 years now.
--Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar also have a surprising degree of underdevelopment economically—due to crony capitalism and resistance to reform in several parts of the society and political economies, including the areas of women’s rights and harassment at the work place.
--There is also the fact that many who come to this region witness various forms of racism in terms of salaries and in terms of recognition of academic degrees, based on arbitrary decisions made by the ministries of the Interior (MOI) and the Ministry of Education.
--Power shortages and water shortages are expected again this summer 2008 in Kuwait—likely the hottest country on the planet and a place where labor has relatively no right to organize when one is forced to illegally work overtime or in the heat, etc.
In order to create more balance than Sarah Abdullah’s article appears to do, I suggest that Westerners know a fuller story before becoming fully enticed into giving up their homeland for a “higher standard of living”. I will share the following about my colleagues and my own black-listing or black-balling experiences within the city state capitalism of Kuwait (and neighboring lands)—i.e. as currently practiced in the wealthiest parts of the Persian Gulf in 2008.
BLACKBALLING & BLACKLISTING in Job Market Kuwait & Gulf
Due to crony capitalism (or fraternal wasta capitalism) as practiced in small-closed communities around the Arab world, rumors and unspoken agreements are taken more seriously and are more problematic for the foreign workforce in the Gulf than in many other parts of the world.
For example, I used to teach very successfully at Gulf University of Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait as a Foreign Language instructor of English. I was laid off in the summer of 2006 after serving in that capacity over 2 ½ years. I was laid off from the university without being given a reason orally or in writing why this non-renewal had occurred. According to the guidelines for university professionals in both Kuwait and in the USA, this was an illegal act of dismissal.
There were a few possibilities for my lay off:
(1) My lack of strong connection to the right people in human resources and in other campus departments. Connections are called “wasta” in Kuwait and are more than the lifeblood of society here—wasta is in the air and greases all the wheels of life here in the Gulf each and every day—in and outside academia.
I had taught as a progressive staff member at GUST who wanted very much to help Kuwaitis succeed well in the market places of work and academics. I set high standards and helped students achieve them. Despite my high standards and demands on students’ achievement, I was fairly popular with the students at GUST—the youth of Kuwait who are demanding more from their modern life than what their parents and elders provide.
(2) My having upset one Dean of Liberal Arts, who didn’t respect anyone who didn’t have a doctorate, is possibly another rationale for my non-renewal.
Let me explain. I had simply asked the Dean of Liberal Arts to meet with me to consider my various proposals to introduce English for special purposes courses into a variety of academic subject areas where hundreds of Kuwaiti students were struggling to do well. The Head of the English Department didn’t think my suggestions were bad. As well, the acting Business Dean at GUST liked the ideas and my course and seminar and training suggestions for staff across the curriculum, but the Egyptian-born Dean of Liberal Arts still refused to meet with me face-to-face for over 18 months. Only then did I suddenly receive a non-renewal of my contract. Interestingly, that same Egyptian dean was eased out of her job at the same month—I have wondered if there had been a qui-pro-quo, i.e. my non-renewal for her resignation.
(3) The crony capitalism involved in financing Gulf University (GUST), the wealthiest private university in the country, also might have led to my non-renewal.
For example, the university leaders in 2006 had found an outsourcing firm, owned surprisingly--by one of the board of directors at GUST. This firm had agreed to take over the whole EFL program at GUST. Another outsourced firm also began to operate immediately after I left GUST in my old department. [This particular out-source educational firm also belongs to a family firm of a relative of one of the university’s many secret investors. This firm then paid new EFL teachers in Autumn 2006 starting salaries of 20% to 40% lower than the university had. This was then followed by other dismissals and forced resignations at GUST.]
In short, despite the fact that GUST is the partner university of the University of Missouri at St. Louis (MSL) in the USA, i.e. a stated educational system where it is absolutely against the law to not-renew any employee’s contract after 2 years, i.e. without giving a single reason or performance review, I was laid off.
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