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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

181 replies

morningmists · 12/03/2026 07:42

I saw news stories of lots of pets being left behind, but I can't see any mention of the maids and nannies etc ? I am guessing it wouldn't always be simple to get them to England due to visas etc -so do they get booked on flights back to their homes?

My mum had a nanny growing up and she loved her as much as she loved her mum so I imagine this is a hard separation for some

OP posts:
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8
mumofoneAloneandwell · 12/03/2026 10:58

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 10:48

They changed the laws on this and decriminalised sex outside of marriage. Now the law is both parties have to be 18 and consenting. What happened before was completely horrific and wrong but they changed things up.

That's good for them and the small number of influencers who will benefit

But it's naive to think that this law changes anything for working women on visas from poor countries

Put a foot wrong there and suffer the harsh consequences - these maids aren't having affairs for the fun of it

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 11:05

mumofoneAloneandwell · 12/03/2026 10:14

Dubai punish poor people harshly for stepping out of line

Respectfully, I used to live there. Have you? If not, don’t you think I might be slightly more qualified to comment?

When I lived there, I wasn’t married to my now-husband (it was actually illegal to cohabit, though the law has now changed, I gather) so he couldn’t sponsor my visa, so I needed to leave the country every month to renew my tourist visa. Sometimes we’d time it to coincide with going away for a weekend, but the rest of the time, I would get together with people I knew in the same position, and we would carshare to the Omani border, drive over into Oman, do a U-turn and re-enter the UAE. Lots of the other cars doing the same thing were minibuses of foreign prostitutes.

Prostitution is illegal, too, and the penalties are huge, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. There’s huge demand. About 2/3 of the Dubai population is male.

As regards maids sleeping with their employers, of course it happens. I can’t give you statistics, because, while you could certainly report to the police in the past (when extramarital sex was illegal), you’d be letting your husband in for arrest and potential imprisonment too, so most of the stuff that made the headlines was maids being reported by employers for sleeping with their boyfriends on the premises. If the DH was involved, mostly the wife just took the maid straight to the airport. The usual advice was to supervise her packing and check her bags for stolen items.

There was an entire set of racist Dubai urban myths positioning foreign maids as superficially submissive but in fact desperate for rich expat husbands and prepared to have sex to bag one, about employers specifying ‘plain and over 35’ to recruiters, about ‘headache money’ (new maid arrives and asks employer if her pay will be topped up by ‘headache money’, ie, when the wife doesn’t want to have sex, the DH goes to the maid’s room instead) etc etc.

It was a fascinating place for all the wrong reasons.

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 11:07

Jk987 · 12/03/2026 10:48

That may be true for a minority but you sound bitter. Hope you wouldn’t just piss off back to England and forget about the person who left their own family to clean up after you for little pay.

I'm neither English, the employer of a maid, nor currently living in Dubai.

AgentPidge · 12/03/2026 11:11

MidnightPatrol · 12/03/2026 08:08

You can get a temporary visa to bring a domestic worker to the UK with you for up to six months, if they work in your household.

Most of the Brits who have a maid over there aren't going to have one in the UK, just as the rest of us don't.

Forthesteps · 12/03/2026 11:12

Seedlingsparrow · 12/03/2026 11:09

There are plenty of abusive women in this country too. This is a current news story on the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/clyve7vn7m7t

So? We know modern slavery exists in the UK.

It's institutionalised in the ME. Not the same.

The Dubai defenders need to take a long, cold, hard look at themselves. But they probably won't.

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 11:13

mumofoneAloneandwell · 12/03/2026 10:58

That's good for them and the small number of influencers who will benefit

But it's naive to think that this law changes anything for working women on visas from poor countries

Put a foot wrong there and suffer the harsh consequences - these maids aren't having affairs for the fun of it

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.

KimuraTan · 12/03/2026 11:30

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.

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 11:38

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 07:54

I wouldn’t sentimentalise it too much. When I lived there, employers were continually discovering their maid wearing their clothes or in the hot tub or in bed with their husbands or casting spells on the family dog and proudly recounting how they frogmarched her to the airport and watched, arms folded, as she cleared passport control.

Imagine exactly the kind of Mner who comes on here to recount how they ‘stood up for themselves’ when someone challenged them for the buggy space and then the whole bus burst into applause. Only they probably did actually fire the maid.

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

ApplebyArrows · 12/03/2026 11:38

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 11:13

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.

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

Mosman2020 · 12/03/2026 11:39

Seedlingsparrow · 12/03/2026 11:09

There are plenty of abusive women in this country too. This is a current news story on the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/clyve7vn7m7t

Theres one that you know of

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 11:41

ApplebyArrows · 12/03/2026 11:38

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

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

Foodie68 · 12/03/2026 11:45

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

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 11:47

Foodie68 · 12/03/2026 11:45

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

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

Sooverwork · 12/03/2026 11:53

Mosman2020 · 12/03/2026 10:31

My sister was a nanny in America. The husband very much considered fucking him as being part of her duties.
Luckily, the wife never found out and not a good place to be homeless.
And they weren’t even rich
The audacity

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

Seedlingsparrow · 12/03/2026 11:55

@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

Mo Farah

Sir Mo Farah reveals he was trafficked to the UK as a child

The Olympic star says the name Mohamed Farah was given to him by a stranger who flew him to the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62123886

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 11:57

Sooverwork · 12/03/2026 11:53

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

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

Mosman2020 · 12/03/2026 11:59

Sooverwork · 12/03/2026 11:53

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

Oh read it again slowly

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 12:02

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 11:38

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

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.

OlympicWomen · 12/03/2026 12:06

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 12:02

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.

Edited

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

HellybellyMelly · 12/03/2026 12:09

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 11:38

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

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

WaryCrow · 12/03/2026 12:10

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.

‘The shine has been taken off’: Dubai faces existential threat as foreigners flee conflict

Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/the-shine-has-been-taken-off-dubai-faces-existential-threat-as-foreigners-flee-conflict

thestudio · 12/03/2026 12:11

Jrisix · 12/03/2026 08:37

Some work for agencies and will be reassigned, some may go back home, some may move to another country. Some are trafficked and treated appallingly but not all of them. Women from poor countries also have agency and make their own decisions including to live and work abroad.

My nephew has a nanny, she's built multiple properties in the Philippines with her overseas nanny salary and will retire before age 50 as a wealthy woman in her home village.

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.

MidnightPatrol · 12/03/2026 12:16

AgentPidge · 12/03/2026 11:11

Most of the Brits who have a maid over there aren't going to have one in the UK, just as the rest of us don't.

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

GladHedgehog · 12/03/2026 12:25

mumofoneAloneandwell · 12/03/2026 10:40

???

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38013351

No-one working in dubai is sleeping with their bosses husband, the punishments are insane.

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.

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