To wonder what happens to the maids and nannies etc when people flee Dubai/the Middle East

Why did they all have maids at all? If they didn't work, why weren't they SAHMs and doing it themselves, if the maids were such a threat? If you aren't working or raising kids or keeping house, what are you doing all day?

Let me be very clear. The stories of sexually predatory foreign housemaids are stuff I used to hear at expat gatherings when a certain type of woman was three sheets to the wind, or on Dubai chat forums. For obvious reasons, these people were not my friends. I didn't go to their houses. I didn't know their maids personally. I have no idea what really went on in their houses. What I'm recounting here is a general attitude towards domestic help that was fairly widespread when I lived in Dubai, and which often included racist stereotypes about which nationalities were 'least trouble'.

I imagine sexual coercion and rape was widespread among domestic staff. Certainly keeping a maid's passport was quite usual.

Plus I think some of the stories I heard circulating (like the ones about 'headache money') were probably in part displaced ways of dealing with the guilt at employing an imported, comparatively powerless underclass, by switching roles and making the maid the predator who was determined to bag herself a rich chap by doing all the things her 'ma'am' did, but better, and eventually replacing her.

Maids got projected onto a lot, it seemed to me, and their very tiny ways of exercising such little power as they had (passing on household gossip to maids of other households while walking the dogs, dressing the children in the clothes they preferred, making the dish the DH once said was better than his wife's version etc etc) were ways of staying sane.

Then don’t expect rescue from the rest of us, nor service from the NHS and other services we fund. Somehow I don’t think you will like that will you?

Why would they be paying tax, if they don’t live in the UK? The UK is not the US - tax status isn’t dictated by citizenship. If this bothers you, take it up with the government.

This is exactly the right thing to do :)

Don't be silly. No one ever believes they're the ones going to fall foul of these laws. The place wouldn't be stuffed full of westerners if they did.

Most Brits living in Dubai won’t be leaving permanently, just while the conflict is live.

I despise the weaponising of the concept of agency to justify our rapacious commodifying of economically disempowered women - whether that's nannies who have to leave their own children behind or women who are forced to choose (or just plain old forced) to suck men's dicks or live in poverty.

It's about the most neoliberal thing I can think of.

This has a brief mention of taxi drivers and lower status servants from Dubai https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/the-shine-has-been-taken-off-dubai-faces-existential-threat-as-foreigners-flee-conflict

So of course our government is going to welcome these servant owners ‘home’ to the country they refused to pay taxes to, at our expense. Fucking hell. And of course Britain has exploitative practices here, it’s called ‘working’ especially in the public sectors. This world is fucked up now thanks to would be serf owners.

@Sprawling people i knew spoke of maids being raped, passports being kept from them. You seem to have a very different view.

Oh my god, that sounds so messed up. Imagine being so jealous!

I can’t remember the details.. From memory, some employers thought their maids were doing sort of folk magic rituals from their home countries to make the children and pets prefer them over the mother/wife/employer. It often seemed to centre around food and food prep. A lot of ‘AIBU to be annoyed DH prefers the maid’s cooking’ or annoyance that the dog seemed fonder of the maid and a suspicion she was buying its affection via feeding it type stuff.

Honestly, the whole thing to me seemed to stem from an unvoiced discomfort at having a live-in servant from a different culture in the house when there was also a SAHM feeling usurped by someone doing ‘her job’, especially when that woman often had children of her own in her home country being raised by grandparents. So they found themselves either a sort of live-in ‘double’. It probably explains the DH paranoia too.

Oh read it again slowly

The husband considered her fucking him, the husband, as part of her job. It's pretty clear.

@Mosman2020
I have a relative who works for the modern slavery unit attached to the Metropolitan police. It is sadly very common. Remember Sir Mo Farah was trafficked to the UK as a child and kept by a woman as a household slave. She has never been charged.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62123886

No sense here . Your sister is presumably a “ she” but husband fucked “ him “. So who did he fuck ?

Can I ask what country? (And as another note how you deal with July, August in the ME)

I live in the Middle East currently with my family and have a nanny. She is truly part of our family. If we need to leave us to the conflict here we will pay fo a flight for her to return to her home country and will also continue pay her salary in the meantime. Most Nannys have a visa tied to their employer or with a nanny agency like maids cc. It is possible for Nannys to travel to the UK with their family but there are specific visa requirements

They aren't Victorian at all. Very well advanced. The gulf is westernising and modernising and become the hub of the future.

Theres one that you know of

How progressive of them, sounds like they're almost in the Victorian era!

Can you tell us more about casting spells on the dog?

When we left we honoured the severance period in terms of pay and our maid always wanted to see Europe in the snow - as our relocation period fell over Christmas we took her with us but had to pay for her flights, visa and put an extra of about £13000 as collateral into a state bank account to ensure she would leave the country after her visa expired or we would have forfeited that money. She then flew home to the Philippines and subsequently moved to Singapore for work.

I mean I've been reading a lot about how Dubai are trying to improve conditions for migrant workers and reduce exploitation .The Wages Protection System for example. New laws coming into place as well.