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miteyfax

Transcript:

Did you know?

1.4 million people, or 58% of Qatar's population live in 'labour camps'.

58% just sounds absurd.

Yet, mighty facts does not simply give the wrong information.

So is it true?

Community
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bleh
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    It's completely unsurprisingly. (1) Qatar is simply a very small city. (2) Most of the people there are temporary workers, whether nuclear engineers from Japan, game programmers from San Francisco or dishwashers from developing countries. These folks ("laborers") typically live in temporary (beautiful, air-conditioned) portable housing, of the type you might see in say oil fields or US military installations. (To call these "labour camps" is a bizarre choice of words.) – Fattie Jul 10 '16 at 12:32
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    @JoeBlow: Indian construction worker would be more typical than the examples you listed. Qatar has come under strong criticism for the condition of foreign laborers, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/modern-day-slavery-in-focus+world/qatar –  Jul 10 '16 at 17:10
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    @JoeBlow You'd have to take that up with their official census (see answer). – Insane Jul 10 '16 at 23:43
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    hi Stef, this is a Skeptical site, so politics is irrelevant. The image is (A) an attempt to use the term "labour camps" (which is extremely well defined) to describe ordinary air-conditioned oil field buildings (possibly [this brand](http://www.titanfactorydirect.com/OurHomes/oil-field-housing.aspx) for example) and (B) a trivial play on the fact that the majority of readers are so totally uneducated they don't realise Qatar is just a small city, rather than "a country" like you learn about in primary school. (Much as if you said, oh, "40% of the surface of Monaco is roads!", you know.) – Fattie Jul 11 '16 at 12:08
  • As an aside, that looks just like the housing US Military personnel stay in at Al Udied Air Base in Qatar. – JasonR Jul 11 '16 at 12:39

1 Answers1

37

Yes, this is correct.

The official results of the 2015 Qatari census clearly show that out of a total population of 2,404,776, 1,442,882 live in "labour camps". The numbers solve to a labour camp percentage of 60%.

A screenshot of the relevant page in the PDF:

enter image description here

The original claim may be misleading, as the term "labour camp" is ambiguous. Here it is not being used to refer to a "slave labour camp"/"forced labour camp", but instead to temporary accommodations for workers.

Oddthinking
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March Ho
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    I suspect that the Qatari census is using the term "[labour camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_camp)" incorrectly; if so, then the claim in the image is technically correct only because it puts "labour camp" in quotation marks, apparently in reference to the terminology used by the census. Without those quotation marks, the answer would probably be, "No, but 58% of Qatari residents live in _____, which the Qatari census incorrectly refers to as 'labour camps'." (But, I'd be interested if anyone can contribute information about these people's actual situation.) – ruakh Jul 10 '16 at 02:43
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    @ruakh Sometimes [labour camp](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/labor-camp) can be used for actual camps set up near work. – Andrew Grimm Jul 10 '16 at 02:58
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    @AndrewGrimm: Ah, thanks! So, yeah, the claim in the image is highly misleading. – ruakh Jul 10 '16 at 03:01
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    I suppose this is not unrelated to the apparently fact that [around 90% of people in Qatar are temporary foreign workers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar). I suppose that also explains the male:female ratio of over 3:1. – reirab Jul 10 '16 at 03:16
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    @ruakh From the image in the question it was immediately clear to me that the term was referring to temporary facilities for employees and not for prisoners. I believe you are just nitpicking the terms. – Bakuriu Jul 10 '16 at 08:44
  • @AndrewGrimm ah, cool, we do have some of these in the heart of Europe, too, at construction sites. They look like - and probably are - modified cargo containers. The guys building [Blanka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka_tunnel_complex) even had their own canteen at the northern end of the tunnel. – John Dvorak Jul 10 '16 at 08:47
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    @Bakuriu, how is linking a Wikipedia article with exact the same wording in the title can be considered nitpicking? To me it sounds as a very good question / clarification because this word pair has an established meaning (that wikipedia explains). When there is a very obvious way to understand it wrong, it's entirely reasonable to want that clarified. – Andrew Savinykh Jul 10 '16 at 09:35
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    I agree that the wording of the image in the question may be misleading because, as Dictionary.com points out, the first definition of “labour camp” refers to a particular kind of labour camps that would be more accurately described as “forced labour camp”. [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/labour_camp) even lists it that as the only definition. Pair that with many people using quotation marks to change the connotation of the term and not just for actual quotations – both of which would work in this case. – David Foerster Jul 10 '16 at 12:30
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    I, for one, initially assumed the term "labour camp" in the question referred to forced labour camps, which turned out to be wrong. I have edited this answer to address the ambiguity directly. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '16 at 07:59