Doha's migrant workers offered rare show of empathy in new Humans of New York-style blog

A new blog showcasing the street style of Doha’s migrant workers is making waves in Qatar.

While there are hundreds of thousands of labourers - mostly from India, Pakistan and Nepal - busy building stadiums and infrastructure for the Fifa 2018 World Cup, since they live in ghettoised areas of the city, they often remain invisible to Qatari nationals.

“We got used to seeing thousands of these workers in their blue jumpsuits. We just don’t see them anymore. We see them walking to their buses or taking naps. They look more like prisoners than anything else,” Doha Fashion Fridays creator Khalid Albaih said.

Yet every Friday - the only day off for the country's 1.6million migrant workers - he noticed that labourers hanging out in their free time seemed like different people.

“One day I saw this guy, he was a 20-year-old from Nepal, and he had a t-shirt on with a picture of Biggie [Smalls] on it. So I asked him, ‘Do you know who that is?’ and he said he didn’t, but he liked the cloth and the cut anyway.

“Some of these guys are are so dressed up, they look like models. For me, that’s the ultimate revolt against that blue jumpsuit, thinking, ‘I have one day off, I’m probably not going to meet a girl, so here’s me, dressing for me.’"

With the help of photographer friend Aparna Jay, Mr Albaih decided to start making portraits of workers during their down time, asking them who they are and where their fashion sense comes from in a ‘Humans of New York’-cum-street style type Tumblr blog and Instagram page.

“I know how it feels to not be seen. I’ve been that person, I’m black and I’m the minority in my own country sometimes,” he said. “It’s taken me ages to think of a way to do this project without exploiting the people featured or turning them into an exhibition.”

Mr Albaih, a Sudanese artist and political cartoonist, has lived in Doha since he was 10 years old. Like the other foreign nationals in the country, as a non-citizen he too works under the notorious ‘kafala’ work visa sponsorship system.

Amnesty International and other rights groups say migrant workers face “appalling exploitation and abuse” through the kafala system, under which employees must be granted permission to leave the country or change jobs by their employer.

Many have their passports confiscated and are forced to work for low wages in substandard and overcrowded housing, and female domestic workers are at particular risk of forced labour and trafficking.

Qatar’s Emir approved changes to the visa sponsorship system to give migrant labourers more rights in October 2015, which are yet to be brought into force.

While Mr Albaih says the system is slowly changing for the better, he said that part of the idea for Doha Fashion Fridays was to counteract the negativity and stereotyping that surrounds Qatar’s migrant population.

“I find the whole ‘us and them’ narrative very polarising. I guess we just want to show that there is more to migrant workers here than victimhood,” he said.

He hopes to involve more artists, photographers and designers as word spreads about the project, adding that the feedback he’s received so far has been very positive.

It’s possible the blog could expand to feature sidelined migrant communities all over the world.

“Just introducing yourself and who you are as a person not defined by work is part of the way to take that power back,” Mr Albaih said.

“Having style isn't about money. It's how you say, ‘This is me, and there’s more to me than you think there is.'”