The Kafala system in Kuwait binds migrant workers’ legal status to their employers, creating conditions of dependency and exploitation. Reform efforts focused on integration often fail to address its deep structural inequalities. Integration is no longer the solution, or the desire. Perhaps the answer lies in the differentiation of migrant communities through the creation of a political fiction – a political metaphor of a “state within a state” , or “building within a building. ” This alternative vision proposes the formation of autonomous migrant enclaves where workers create their own bureaucratic, social, and urban systems. This model not only critiques the failures of existing reforms but also reimagines the possibilities for liberation and self-determination.
“Avenues” of Exception: Challenging Kuwait’s Kafala System
