Page 4 | To wonder what happens to the maids and nannies etc when people flee Dubai/the Middle East

morningmists · 2026-03-12T07:42:16+00:00

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

Zimunya · 12/03/2026 12:26

morningmists · 12/03/2026 07:51

I guess if I were their employer I would fund their flight home .

This is exactly the right thing to do :)

GnusSitOnCanoes · 12/03/2026 12:28

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.

Edited

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.

WaryCrow · 12/03/2026 12:31

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?

Original poster

morningmists · 12/03/2026 12:31

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 11:41

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

Show quote history

It sounds more dystopian than Victorian I agree.

OP posts:

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 12:35

HellybellyMelly · 12/03/2026 12:09

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

Show quote history

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.

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 12:42

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?

BlimeyOReillyO · 12/03/2026 12:43

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.

Poor husband, he must’ve been traumatised.

Was he sent packing and watched going through passport control?

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 12:45

morningmists · 12/03/2026 12:31

It sounds more dystopian than Victorian I agree.

Show quote history

What's so dystopian?

trumpisvomitous · 12/03/2026 12:46

HoskinsChoice · 12/03/2026 08:16

The sort of people who are attracted to living in Dubai are generally not the sort of people who will give a shit about anyone or anything they're leaving behind. I'd hazard a guess that most haven't given it a second thought.

Show quote history

I agree, airheads are gonna airhead!

Original poster

morningmists · 12/03/2026 12:49

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 12:45

What's so dystopian?

Show quote history

People not having control of their own passports

The heavy policing of what people are allowed to say on social media

The vast gulf between the "servant /slave" class and others

OP posts:

Namechangefordaughterevasion · 12/03/2026 12:51

Domestic staff in Dubai are paid an absolute pittance and send most of it back their home country to support their children and families. They go for years without seeing those children or families because they don't have spare cash for a ticket home at the best of times. They certainly won't have enough for the premium ticket prices on the limited flight choices available atm.

It would be nice to think that their employers would fund the flight home for them but I doubt many will bother. Ex-pats in Dubai aren't generally known for having a social conscience. The likelihood is most of these women will end up on the streets.

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 12:52

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.

Interesting...

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 12:53

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 12:42

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?

Exactly my question!

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 12:55

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 12:35

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.

Show quote history

That sounds plausible. It's obviously a different situation, but it's a bit like how men who buy sex from poor women in places like Thailand often rationalise by saying they're the manipulative ones really in control etc

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 12:55

BlimeyOReillyO · 12/03/2026 12:43

Poor husband, he must’ve been traumatised.

Was he sent packing and watched going through passport control?

Show quote history

Alas, no. Because the wife is usually on his residency visa as a dependent, along with the children, and his visa will be tied to his job -- so if he's frogmarched through passport control onto a flight for whatever reason, she and the kids will be following shortly afterwards ...

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 12:57

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.

Show quote history

That's good. Deep down they surely don't want to be known as the Kingdom of Kafala and Porta Potties

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 12:59

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

Show quote history

Thanks for the detail! Certainly an interesting place, for the wrong reasons...

Plinketyplonks · 12/03/2026 12:59

I was a child in a Middle East war a long time ago. When we returned to the UK for the duration of the conflict (ordered to by the British government) we of course carried on paying our helper’s salary, he looked after the house, garden and pets. We didn’t have a nanny or maid. I imagine a lot of families will carry on paying salaries and if the maid has accom in the house will just stay on until the family can return. For what it’s worth I had a lot of Arab friends who had Nannies and they were much loved by the family, their children supported through colleague etc back home. Of course there were dreadful instances of abuse too.

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 13:01

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 09:06

Are you confusing Dubai with Saudi Arabia or somewhere? The same amount of extramarital sex goes on there as anywhere else. ‘Ladies’ nights’ at the hotels used to be full of Russian and Chinese prostitutes, and the stereotype was that when SAHMs and children often went ‘home’ for the very hot summer holidays, husbands stayed on to work and shagged all round them as ‘summer bachelors’.

Show quote history

And of course the porta potty parties for elite men...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct854r

BBC - World of Secrets, Death in Dubai, 5. The reality of ‘Porta Potty’

The story behind the viral “Dubai Porta Potty” rumours. We follow the trail

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct854r

Carla786 · 12/03/2026 13:02

Plinketyplonks · 12/03/2026 12:59

I was a child in a Middle East war a long time ago. When we returned to the UK for the duration of the conflict (ordered to by the British government) we of course carried on paying our helper’s salary, he looked after the house, garden and pets. We didn’t have a nanny or maid. I imagine a lot of families will carry on paying salaries and if the maid has accom in the house will just stay on until the family can return. For what it’s worth I had a lot of Arab friends who had Nannies and they were much loved by the family, their children supported through colleague etc back home. Of course there were dreadful instances of abuse too.

That's good to hear. Were you in Dubai - or somewhere else?

moto748e · 12/03/2026 13:04

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.

You just can't get the staff! 😁

mumofoneAloneandwell · 12/03/2026 13:06

Sprawling · 12/03/2026 11:05

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.

Show quote history

Thats great that you lived there as an expat

Sorry but I don't think that you would've had the same experience as someone there to work as a server/nanny

mumofoneAloneandwell · 12/03/2026 13:07

GladHedgehog · 12/03/2026 12:25

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.

Show quote history

I'm not being silly. That country treats poor people awfully. End of

Jdnd · 12/03/2026 13:08

morningmists · 12/03/2026 12:49

People not having control of their own passports

The heavy policing of what people are allowed to say on social media

The vast gulf between the "servant /slave" class and others

Show quote history

Something the UAE government is actively trying to combat and improve upon regarding migrant exploitation. It is wrong and people are being prosecuted for trafficking.

Not being allowed to say whatever you want on SM isn't all that bad. I'd be careful. There's a lot of good things in Dubai as well.

The trafficking is wrong and the UAE is taking steps to combat it.

There are maids in the UAE who are treated fairly.

jeaux90 · 12/03/2026 13:10

ThatCyanCat · 12/03/2026 12:42

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?

Sigh. Ok. I worked/lived out in Qatar.
It’s very dusty/regular sandstorms and you literally have to clean every day because of it. So even if you don’t work, but have kids, it’s really helpful to have a maid.
I had a live in, she was also a single parent so it was kind of symbiotic with her taking care of my home/DD and her sending money back for her son and family. She came back with me to the UK and is a Brit Citizen now….

However, many of her friends were not treated very well at all, there are some real asshole expats for sure who made them work all hours, never paid for flights home and I doubt care about what happens to them. My neighbour used to message me if my live in was out or would question her….i had to tell her to sod off…..but please stop with the “why do they need the help” I get why and honestly there is very little opportunity to earn decent money back home for many of them.

On a different topic,
wild horses or a million pounds could not drag me back to that shithole region.