Saleh Seid Adem is a doctoral researcher and Lecturer at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Ethnology, where his research centres on the experiences of Ethiopian migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) within the framework of intersectionality and institutional dynamics. He has been teaching and conducting research at the Department of Social Anthropology and Sociology at Arba Minch University in southern Ethiopia since 2010, where he also served as department chair from 2020 to 2022. His academic journey includes earning a Bachelor's degree in sociology from Meda Welabu University in Ethiopia, a Master's degree in Culture and Environment in Africa from the University of Cologne in Germany, and an advanced Master of Science (MSc) in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies from KU Leuven in Belgium. His research endeavours have focused on consecutive fieldwork related to transnational labour migration from Ethiopia to the Arabian Peninsula and its implications for those who stay behind. He also has expertise in identity, heritage tourism, and ethnographic methods. Currently, in addition to his research commitments, he is teaching graduate students at the University of Cologne's Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Specifically, he is instructing a course that explores contemporary migration patterns to, within, and from Africa. He is also offering a seminar on research methods in migration studies, focusing on both classical and critical approaches.

• Transnational Labor Migration
• Migration Governance and Institutional Dynamics
• Intersectionality and Migrant Subjectivities
• Ethnographic and Qualitative Methodologies
• Migration and Digital Technologies
• Migration Diplomacy and Return
• Decolonial and Critical Migration Studies

I have been connected to GSSC since its founding, which I witnessed while completing my master’s thesis. Returning as a doctoral researcher, I greatly appreciate the intellectually rich and socially supportive environment GSSC offers. As someone with limited social networks in Cologne, GSSC has become an important space of both academic engagement and personal connection. I particularly value its open, non-hierarchical structure and the balance it provides between productivity and community. For my research on migration, institutions, and transnational mobility, GSSC is an ideal place to grow.
 

Bending Institutions, Making Lives: An Ethnography of Ethiopian Domestic Workers in the UAE Kafala System

This dissertation examines the lived experiences and institutional shaping of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) under the Kafala system. It explores how migration governance, institutional training, informal infrastructures, and everyday acts of negotiation converge to produce, constrain, and reshape transnational labor mobility. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, institutional ethnography, and intersectionality, the research provides a grounded and multi-sited analysis of transborder labor regimes between Ethiopia and the Gulf.

The study follows a multi-sited ethnographic approach, combining fieldwork in Ethiopia and the UAE. It draws on interviews, participant observation, institutional document analysis, and digital netnography to trace the journey of Ethiopian women from state-regulated training centers in Ethiopia to private households, ijaza housing, and informal labor markets in the UAE. The dissertation critically investigates how institutions—from state agencies and private recruiters to migrant self-organizations and informal brokers—interact and sometimes contradict each other in shaping migrant subjectivities and labor pathways.

Central to the study is the concept of kafala bending, a term coined to describe the tactical strategies through which migrant women navigate, subvert, and adapt to the constraints of the Kafala system without exiting it entirely. These include escaping from employers, living without legal residency, relying on ethnicized informal infrastructures, and creating autonomous networks of care and mobility. Rather than portraying migrants solely as victims or rebels, the dissertation captures their ambiguous and fragile agency as they oscillate between legal visibility and strategic invisibility.

The project contributes to debates on labor migration, border regimes, migration governance and migrant agency by foregrounding the temporal, institutional, and embodied dynamics of migration. It argues that reform efforts must not only address legal frameworks but also recognize the informal systems and knowledge migrants themselves construct to survive and assert presence. By bringing together institutional analysis, intersectionality, and ethnography, the dissertation offers a nuanced account of how mobility is governed, lived, and contested in the transnational corridors linking the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Gulf.

• Adem, S. (2025). Der Golf bietet Arbeit, Europa bietet Warten. afrika süd dossier: migration aus und in afrika. https://www.afrika-sued.org/files/afrika-sued_dossier_migration_2024_web.pdf
• Adem, S., Ketema, B., Pelican, M., & Ngeh, J. (2025). Ethiopia’s overseas labor recruitment: Challenges, opportunities, and the way forward [Policy brief]. Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne; transMID Subproject 3; Arba Minch University.  https://for5183.uni-siegen.de/files/2025/04/TP3-Policy-brief.pdf
• Adem, S. (2025). The ruins of Kafala bending: Tales of  Courage and Exploitation. AMMODI Blog. https://ammodi.com/2025/01/31/the-ruins-of-kafala-bending/
• Adem, S. (2024). Funding the journey: How Western aid became a ticket to the Gulf. Public Anthropologist Blog Journal. https://publicanthropologist.cmi.no/2024/12/11/funding-the-journey-how-western-aid-became-a-ticket-to-the-gulf/