The tiny Arab country of Qatar has the world’s highest percentage of immigrants—around 90% of the roughly 2.5 million people there come from somewhere else, many of them there to build new infrastructure in time for the 2022 World Cup. This wasn’t always true, though. Thanks to rich oil reserves, in the last few decades Qatar’s only city of Doha has grown from a small desert community to a booming, luxury-soaked metropolis in constant demand for immigrant labor. Eileen B. Byrne spent some time in Doha, a temporary migrant herself working as a journalist, and she asked a number of people of different nationalities how they understood the dynamics of a country where citizens are vastly outnumbered by migrants.

Featured Image: Eileen B. Byrne