Aisha Almarzogi ENGL 104 Indonesian Workers in Qatar Discourse Analysis Introduction I chose the community of Indonesian workers in Qatar, more specifically house maids. | chose this community because of the huge number of Indonesian house maids here in Qatar. | am interested to know more about the ways that they communicate with other Indonesian house maids here and how do they communicate with their families in Indonesia. Also, | want to know more about the difficulties that they face that prevents them from communicating with their families. In addition to that | want to know about what do Indonesians think about coming here for work, and what do they think about the ban that have happened few years ago that prevented Indonesians house maids from coming to work in GCC countries. How did the ban affect them as Indonesian workers? And what do they think made the Indonesian government to back away from the decision? Methods At the beginning, I listed some of the ways that | think this community would communicate with each other, either here in Qatar or with their families in Indonesia. Some of the ways that I think they are using to communicate with each other here in Qatar and also with their families are phone calls, texts, WhatsApp, and video calls. Then | interviewed an indonesian worker, her name is Faiza, she is our house maid. The interview was held on the 15" of February 2017. | asked her several questions concerning the ways that she communicates with her family and with other house maids here in Qatar, also | asked her about the difficulties that she faces that prevents her from communicating with her family. | also asked her about the ban that have happened that prevented Indonesian workers from ‘coming to work here in GCC countries. The questions that | have asked her in the interview are: -How do you communicate with your family in Indonesia? - What are the difficulties that you face when you are here in Qatar that prevents you from ‘communicating with your family? - What do Indonesians think about coming to work here in Qatar? - What do Indonesians think about the ban that have happened few years ago that prevented Indonesian workers from coming to work here? = Do they agree or not? Why? -How did the ban affect Indonesians themselves? -What do you think made the Indonesian government to back away from the decision? Findings ‘The audience first needs to know more about the interviewee, how long have she been ‘working in Qatar? Does she know other Indonesians here? What is the ban? And when did it happen? First of all, Faiza has been working in Qatar for 3 years, she does know other Indonesians here and she sees them almost every day. The ban happened in 2015 were the Indonesian government banned Indonesians from working as house maids in some Middle Eastern countries including Qatar. The Indonesian government was worried about the safety of its citizens because of the bad treatment that they get and because of disrespecting their rights.When | asked Faiza about the ways that she communicates with her family in Indonesia, she said that she talk to them on phone and sometimes she uses video call to talk to her family. | asked her about the difficulties that she faces when trying to communicate with her family, she said that there weren't any. But in my opinion, | think that she might sometimes faces difficulties with the internet connections that prevents her from video calling her family, but she might not see it as a difficulty since she can phone call them instead. Her answer made me think about what other difficulties that she faces every day without telling anyone about it? But | suspected that because she didn’t say anything about the internet connection, she might as well say nothing about anything else. Then | asked her about what do Indonesians think about coming to work here in Qatar? She said that not all of them agree on one opinion. Some says that the treatment here in the Middle East countries are bad and does not encourage them to come and work here. While in the other hand some people say that it depends on the house that you are working in. These days with internet connection almost all the time, and the ability to video call their families as much as they want to may have helped to change the idea that Indonesians have about working in the Middle East. ‘They can talk everyday about every small detail and they could tell their families more about ‘the environment that they are in. | think having this kind of communication more easily these days have helped change indonesian’s perspective about working here in the Middle East. Continuing with my questions to Faiza, | asked about what do Indonesians think about the ban that have happened few years ago? Do they agree or not? First of all, Faiza was working here in Qatar when the ban happened, the ban only prevented Indonesians from coming here to work as house maids but it didn’t require Indonesian house maids that are already in those countries to go back to Indonesia. Faiza said that most Indonesians agree with the ban, because they think that itis unfair for them to have low salaries compared to house maids from other nationalities. But she didn’t mention anything about the treatment and whether the ban made it better or not. | think that possibly she didn’t know anyone that was treated badly while working in the Middle East, or maybe she preferred not to talk about this part. | also think that when she said that many Indonesians agree with the ban, she didn’t actually mean that they agree with the ban, | think she meant that they agree with the demands of the government to have better treatment and better salaries. | asked her if the ban affected Indonesians themselves, she said that it didn’t affect them very much, because many of them switched to go and work in other countries such as Taiwan, Honk gong and South Korea. | asked her what does she think made the Indonesian government to back away from the decision, she said that after the ban Indonesian house maid's salaries was raised. Also, the ban made some of the countries to change their treatment toward house maids, especially Indonesians because many prefer Indonesian house maids rather than other nationalities, possibly because almost all Indonesian house maids that come to work in GCC countries are Muslims. All employers in GCC are Muslims so this helps both the indonesian house maids and the employers because of having the same religious culture and same perspective regarding religion. | think, as a member of GCC countries, | saw the change happen in reality. | have read on Twitter that many people started changing their treatment toward workers in the country. And many of them have realized that this treatment and giving low salaries is unfair for them. So, | believe that the ban was a good thing that have happened for Indonesian house maids.Conclusion In this research, I've learned a lot about how Indonesians think about coming to work here, and what are the assumptions that they have about us. Also, I've learned more about their ‘ways of communicating with each other, and how those ways help creating an image of what working in Qatar looks like to other Indonesians. | was trying to highlight how people ‘we encounter every day thinks about us, in ways that we don’t usually think about. And how the treatment that they get was bad enough to make the government ban them from ‘working in those countries. And how this step has made many people to change their way of, behavior toward house maids. Usually house maids don’t complain or speak up and say what they are feeling or thinking of, in this research I wanted to know more about their thoughts and see those problems from their perspective.