Abstract

Saudi Arabia's ambitious Neom project idealizes a $500 billion futuristic city-state to diversify the nation’s economy and drive technological advancement. However, the human cost, particularly for the marginalized—migrant laborers from South Asia & the indigenous Huwaitat tribe—is far greater than the potential progress of this megacity. Neom represents a “new future” built on exploitation, marginalizing vulnerable communities for economic gain and global image-building.

In 2017, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) announced his plan to construct a $500 billion 10,000-square-mile futuristic city-state in the Tabuk province bordering Jordan and Egypt (Avery, 2021). Neom, a portmanteau translating to “new future” in Greek and Arabic, is part of an ambitious urban megaproject aiming to break Saudi Arabia’s decades-long oil dependence by incorporating unprecedented technology such as a giant artificial moon, cloud seeding that could produce artificial rain, and state-of-the-art medical facilities that use genetic modification to “make people stronger” (Scheck et al., 2019). In short, Neom will encompass towns, cities, research, schools, and tourism, aiming to rival the world’s most prominent cities in each category while being completely carbon-free. It is not only an attempt by Saudi Arabia to wean off oil dependency but also to rehabilitate its image as a pervasive human rights violator and position itself as an accelerator for human and urban progress (Wachman & Rasooldeen, 2017). 

Imaginably, the construction of Neom in practice is far more complicated than its extravagant ideas, aims, and promise of technological advancement. A project of this magnitude requires an extraordinary amount of investment, land, and labor in particular. Saudi Arabia has long relied on migrant labor to meet such demands, with approximately 80% of the nation’s private labor force consisting of migrant workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa (Human Rights Watch, 2024). These laborers work under the heavily criticized kafala system, the recently abolished yet widely practiced system of private sponsorship under which employees hold huge amounts of power over workers, including control over their ability to change jobs, leave the country, and their immigration status. Scholars hold that the kafala system enables exploitation, subjugation, and abuse under the guise of providing opportunities to young people disenfranchised in their home nations (Boodrookas, 2021). Their marginality and precarity as migrants and low-wage workers devoid of the ability to demand their social rights are preyed upon by state employers (AlSayyad & Roy, 2003). 

As such, megaprojects in Saudi Arabia cannot and have not come to fruition without mass exploitation and displacement enabled by the kafala. In the case of Neom, both indigenous people and migrant laborers have already begun to pay the human price. A recent documentary, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, has revealed that more than 21,000 Indian, Bangladeshi, and Nepali workers have died in Saudi Arabia since 2017 working on various aspects of Saudi Vision 2030, of which Neom is a major part. One hundred thousand migrant workers have also reportedly “disappeared” (HT News Desk, 2024). When migrant workers die in Saudi Arabia, their deaths are often not investigated properly, and grieving families are not compensated as the state classifies a majority of deaths as “non-work related” (Human Rights Watch, 2024). In the documentary, migrant laborers working to build Neom describe inhumane working conditions: 16-hour working days, very few hours of sleep a night, and pay withheld for 10 months at a time. Workers describe themselves as “beggars” and “trapped slaves” (O’Connell, 2024). Dehumanized, stripped of their dignity, and worked to death in pursuit of an urban “utopia” they will likely never be within miles of, migrant workers are seen by the Saudi state and its investors, many of whom are international, simply as interchangeable, faceless machines of labor.

Senior executives behind Neom have also come under fire for corruption, racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny in a damning report by the Wall Street Journal (Jones, 2024). Senior media executive of the project, Wayne Borg, was quoted saying that the project’s workers from South Asia were “f—ing morons” and “that is why white people are at the top of the pecking order” (Jones, 2024). Ironically, Neom, a project designed in part to rebrand Saudi Arabia’s far below-average reputation in terms of equality and human rights protection, has become a hotspot for formerly disgraced executives with murky pasts in the workplace (Jones, 2024). 

The indigenous people of the Tabuk region are also paying the price. Despite official advertising materials repeatedly claiming that the megacity will be built on “virgin land”, part of the site is home to the indigenous Huwaitat tribe who have lived there since before the Saudi state was founded (Michaelson, 2020). At least 20,000 members of the Huwaitat are set to be evicted and displaced, with little assurance about where they will now live (Michaelson, 2020). Even more pertinent is that according to an ex-intelligence officer, the Saudi state authorized the use of lethal force against anyone who resisted eviction and stayed in their homes (Thomas & El Gibaly, 2024). As such, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, a prominent voice against the construction of Neom, refused to allow a land registry committee to value his property and was shot dead by Saudi authorities a day later (Thomas & El Gibaly, 2024). While the Saudi state claims the use of force was in retaliation to Abdul Rahim firing at officers, supporters of Al-Huwaiti and fellow members of the Huwaitat believe his killing was an example to anyone who dares dissent (Michaelson, 2020). Saudi rights group ALQST for Human Rights says that at least 47 other villagers have been detained after resisting evictions, many of whom were prosecuted on terror-related charges (Thomas & El Gibaly, 2024). 

The state’s compensation policy to the Huwaitat tribe is discriminatory and arbitrary, with tribal sheiks being offered financial incentives on the condition that they publicly condemn and disown Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti (ALQST, 2023). Forced displacement of the Huwaitat without due process and discrimination against a particular group is in clear violation of international and treaty law ratified by Saudi Arabia, particularly the right to be protected against arbitrary expropriations (ALQST, 2023). Land seizures and forced displacement are longstanding practices of the Saudi government, including the unlawful acquisition of land and properties without compensation, often for state development projects. 

The Saudi government and MBS have long relentlessly used the abuse and exploitation of migrants and indigenous people as a means of development. Drawing on Al-Sayyad and Roy’s theory of marginality, both groups are deliberately constructed by the government as marginal in economic and sociopolitical terms alike. They are integrated into society not as full citizens worthy of citizenship rights, but for the benefits of their labor, on terms that cause them to be “economically exploited, politically repressed, socially stigmatized, and culturally excluded” (AlSayyad & Roy, 2003). A vanity project of proportions never seen before, underpinned by underlying violence, tyranny, and colonial ambition and upheld by Western powers lining up for a piece of profit, Neom is a “new future” more frightening than any version that has come before.