Shadows of Home: Cultural Values and the Ethics of Exploitation Among Co-Nationals Abroad

Abstract

This study pursues the question of how cultural norms, beliefs systems and national identity are deployed and manipulated to support, or mask, exploitative labor practices among migrant and co-national community members. It attempts to uncover the ethically rationalized mechanisms from which labor abuse are permitted in culturally bound groups of overseas. The study uses ethnographic fieldwork with participant observation and in-depth interviews with migrant workers of South Asian background in the old Sharjah City-center of the United Arab Emirates to explore how traditional hierarchy and moral norms are reproduced in host countries. It allows for a qualitatively detailed knowledge of the ways the migrant labor organizes in diasporic situations. The study uncovers five key themes: (1) Cultural Rationalizations rooted in heritage and tradition normalize exploitation as customary; (2) Imported Hierarchies such as caste or class divisions travel with the diaspora; (3) National Identity as Control manipulates solidarity to suppress dissent; (4) Fear of Ostracization inhibits whistleblowing due to threats of community exclusion; and (5) Moral Double Standards arise where ethical behavior is inconsistently applied within in-groups versus out-groups. The implications of these findings are very critical in the enforcement of multicultural labor laws, which often fail to recognize the presence of intra community dynamics and culturally embedded silence. These traditions are kept a secret as they are mentally embedded in the blue-colored migrant culture. This study provides original insights by combining cultural anthropology and labor ethics to demonstrate the originality of exploitation between co-nationals as not just economic, but as deeply moral and social to raise urgent ethical relativist and justice questions in multicultural societies.