Political Football
Unit Time Plan
Background
Since it's winning bid in the December of 2010, the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar has been marred in controversy. From numerous reports which appear to suggest high levels of corruption during the bidding and host nation selection process, the fact that the country was the smallest by a considerable distance to ever be selected to host the world cup (Qatar is roughly the same size as Yorkshire!), and the fact that zero infrastructure in terms of Stadia or fan facilities were already in place, and then, in what appears to be the result of this, a continuous stream of stories emerging regarding the mistreatment of workers, often immigrants, tasked to build the tournaments needed infrastructure.
Why is it important?
The 2022 Qatar World Cup is one of, if not the biggest, example of Middle Eastern 'SportsWashing' in action. This project is informed by my previous exploration of 'SportsWashing' generally in the middle east I carried out in element 1 of this unit (Link), however this project will solely focus on the World cup and the controversies that surround it.
SportsWashing is a soft power political play used by nations and states to present an idealistic image of themselves into the global public eye via the medium of sport.
Sport has been used throughout history for soft power political gain, e.g. the 1936 Berlin Olympics, however as of 2018, SportsWashing was officially registered as an oxford dictionary phrase. This appears to coincide with the term, and the idea, of SportsWashing becoming more common place in public discourse. With the relatively recent state takeovers of football clubs such as Manchester City (UAE owned) and Paris-Saint German(Qatari owned), and Qatars successful bid to host the football world cup, there is a clear continuous plan to channel financial investment into sport.
As the idea of Sportswashing becomes more common place in public discourse and culture generally, it is slowly becoming less concerning, more common place and more accepted. Essentially it is working! States and nations are being allowed to use sport in order to mask their often atrocious human rights practices and records, with minimal to no challenge or opposition. My project will attempt to do this.
What form will this project take?
As mentioned, I will use the research and topic exploration I carried out in element 1 of this unit, supplemented by more focused research into the 2022 world cup, to create a protest artefact in the form a football shirt. This could potentially expand into other Sporting items often used for the support of teams, e.g scarfs, caps, banners, but my main focus will be on a football shirt.
This form was inspired by a story of the arrest of a footballer supporter visiting the UAE and being arrested and allegedly severally beaten by police for wearing a Qatari football shirt. Although this story is the direct inspiration for the shirt, the main message and subject of the shirt will focus on the stories of the mistreated of the migrant workers tasked with building the tournaments infrastructure.
What do I hope to achieve with this project?
I ideally want this project to act a statement piece, drawing attention and starting conversation on/to the issue of SportsWashing. The Qatar World Cup 2022 will soon begin it's no doubt highly funded marketing campaign for the tournament, and I would ideally like my piece to be something people watching or following the World Cup to consider and question ethically.
Research and Reference
Some of these references have been taken from my previous project on Sportswashing generally. For that project they were used generally to give a me a more rounded perspective on the different ways Sportswashing is happening, and it's results. However for this project they will be analysed more indepthly. These references will be the source of the data used to inform my shirt and it's design.
25 SEPTEMBER 2013
Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars-world-cup-slaves
24 MARCH 2016
UN gives Qatar a year to end forced labour of migrant workers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/24/un-gives-qatar-year-end-forced-labour-migrant-workers
workers’ accommodation that did “not satisfy by far the minimum standards, with most accommodation housing 10 to 12 workers per small room [and with] unhygienic and poor kitchen and sanitary facilities”.
31 MARCH 2016
Migrant workers suffer 'appalling treatment' in Qatar World Cup stadiums, says Amnesty
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/31/migrant-workers-suffer-appalling-treatment-in-qatar-world-cup-stadiums-says-amnesty
In 2012, the Qatari government revealed 520 people from Bangladesh, India and Nepal – whose citizens travel in their hundreds of thousands to do construction work in the Gulf – had died. Of these, 385, or almost three-quarters, had died “from causes that the authorities neither explained nor investigated”, HRW said. Last year the Qatari government told HRW that 35 workers died, “mostly from falls, presumably at construction sites”, but this did not take into account hundreds more people who died from heart attacks and other “natural causes”, patchily reported by their countries’ embassies and unexplained by the authorities.
“Supreme Committee” organising the 2022 World Cup
disclosed that 10 workers on World Cup projects died between October 2015 and July this year, classifying eight of these, three of them men in their 20s, as “non-work related” because they resulted from cardiac arrest or respiratory failure.
Approximately 800,000 men from the poorer south Asian countries work on the country’s huge construction projects, including 12,000, expected to rise to 35,000, building the World Cup stadiums.
8 FEBRUARY 2017
Qatar spending $500m a week on World Cup projects
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/feb/08/qatar-spending-500m-a-week-on-world-cup-projects-2022
27 SEPTEMBER 2017
Thousands of Qatar World Cup workers ‘subjected to life-threatening heat’
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/sep/27/thousands-qatar-world-cup-workers-life-threatening-heat
26 SEPTEMBER 2018
Qatar: Migrant workers unpaid for months of work by company linked to World Cup host city
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/09/qatar-migrant-workers-unpaid-for-months-of-work-by-company-linked-to-world-cup/
26 SEPTEMBER 2018
Unpaid and abandoned: the abuse of Mercury MENA workers
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2018/09/mercury-mena-abuses-qatar/
Will [people at the World Cup] ever think ‘what are the stories behind those structures?’ I guess not…
Ernesto, Mercury MENA employee
20 NOVEMBER 2018
World Cup 2022: Why Qatar's human rights record is still cause for concern
https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/qatar-world-cup-2022-human-rights-record-stadium-deaths-amnesty-international-cause-concern-208436
over 1,200 migrant workers have died while working on projects connected with the 2022 World Cup.
9 FEBRUARY 2019
UAE officials suggest detained UK football fan beat himself up
The FCO website in its section containing information for travellers to the UAE warns: “The UAE authorities announced on 7 June 2017 that showing sympathy for Qatar on social media or by any other means of communication is an offence. Offenders could be imprisoned and subject to a substantial fine.”
15 FEBRUARY 2019
'I was sure I'd die': UK football fan detained in UAE feared for his life
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/15/i-was-sure-i-would-die-ali-issa-ahmad-uk-football-fan-detained-in-uae-feared-for-his-life
Wore a Qatar shirt to the match, not knowing that doing so is an offence in the UAE punishable with a large fine and an extended jail sentence.
7 OCTOBER 2019
Sudden deaths of hundreds of migrant workers in Qatar not investigated
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/07/sudden-deaths-of-hundreds-of-migrant-workers-in-qatar-not-investigated
- Many are young men who die in their sleep – a phenomenon locally dubbed “sudden death syndrome”.
!! At least 1,025 Nepalis died in Qatar between 2012 and 2017, 676 of them from causes deemed to be natural. The causes included cardiac arrest, heart attack, respiratory failure and “sickness” !!
!! Data from the Indian government reveals that 1,678 Indians died in Qatar between 2012 and August 2018. Of these deaths, 1,345 were classified as “natural” – a rate of four each week. !!
- Qatari law prohibits postmortem examinations except in cases where a crime may have been committed or the deceased may have suffered from an illness prior to death.
- Kausik Ray, a professor of public health at Imperial College London, said: “People aged 20 to 50 in general don’t die in their sleep suddenly … You could not say they died from heart failure or respiratory failure without a postmortem, unless you had information about their prior [medical] history.”
2 OCTOBER 2019
Revealed: hundreds of migrant workers dying of heat stress in Qatar each year
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/02/revealed-hundreds-of-migrant-workers-dying-of-heat-stress-in-qatar-each-year
Notes and key points:
- hundreds of thousands of migrant workers toiled in temperatures of up to 45C for up to 10 hours a day
- A work ban that prohibits manual labour in unshaded outdoor areas between 11.30 and 3pm from mid-June to August.
Answer: Guardian analysis of official weather data over a nine-year period showed that the working ban does not keep workers safe. In the hours outside the ban, anyone working outdoors is still being exposed to potentially fatal levels of heat stress between June and September, which cardiologists say is leading to high numbers of fatalities every year.
- Every year hundreds of workers – many young men between 25 and 35 years old – die while working in Qatar. The majority of these deaths are attributed to cardiovascular causes or “natural death” by the Qatari authorities.
- workers are being recruited in their home countries partly on the basis of their healthworkers are being recruited in their home countries partly on the basis of their health
- Study of the deaths of 1300 works from 2009 to 2017 - 22% of deaths were attributed heart attacks, cardiac arrest or other cardio-related causes
Rising to 58% in summer months
according to the research, as many as 200 of the 571 young men who died of cardiovascular causes between 2009 and 2017 could have been saved if effective heat protection measures had been implemented as part of occupational health and safety programmes
-11 worker fatalities of workers linked to Fifa World Cup stadiums recorded by Qatar’s Supreme Committee, the body responsible for workers’ health and safety last year, nine were attributed to sudden heart attacks or respiratory failure.
- range of heat-related conditions, including skin allergies, headaches, altered vision, light-headedness and difficulty breathing.
- 28C and above is internationally accepted as the point at which the human body is dangerously affected by heat stress.
- it is only safe to work for a maximum of 15 minutes an hour between 9am and 3pm.
- In Doha this August, as temperatures reached 42C by 11am, migrant workers told the Guardian they were being forced to work in the searing heat for up to 10 hours a day.
2 OCTOBER 2019
Dead at 24: did heat kill Doha World Cup worker Rupchandra Rumba?
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/02/dead-at-24-heat-doha-world-cup-worker-rupchandra-rumba
- Like hundreds of other young migrant workers who die in Qatar every year, his sudden and unexplained death was attributed to “acute cardio respiratory failure due to natural cause[s]”
21 NOVEMBER 2019
Qatar say they’ve improved workers’ rights but can we take them seriously when people are still dying?
12 DECEMBER 2019
The Qatar Controversy | TAW Special
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oj69z1WAFY
24 DECEMBER 2019
Gary Neville In Qatar | Full Documentary about Qatar's World Cup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOInEf0yCEc
What needs to happen to make this project work.
I feel this project has the potential to be very effective, but only if executed to a high standard. Below is list of what I feel needs to happen in order for this project to work:
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Thoughtful considerations made to shirt styling and detail elements
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effective PSD mock ups to a real feel of how the shirt will look
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A mock site for the potential sale of this shirt and any other accompanying merchandise
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production of the shirt to a high standard (trickiest park)
World Cup 2020 critique project:
A Sky-High Memorial to Qatar's Rising World-Cup Death Toll
This project is an interesting take on the same issue that I am using as the basis for my project. The subtlety of the project is what I wish to replicate in my own work. Initial impressions of the Sky High Memorial, are that of complete shock, but of intrigue, which then leads in query and curiosity.
Football shirt visual research
The first stage of my visual research was collecting imagery of a wide variety of football kits. I was really looking for kits that were visually different, both in design, style, brand and material. I wanted to gather as much detail variation as possible to give me .
I have also separated my visual research up into general images of kits and close up, finer detail images.
Kit Styles
Details
Badges
Thoughts from visual research:
Taking into consideration the various styles I compared in my visual research, I am going to pursue a retro styled shirt, I feel this will allow for more scope in relation to detailing area's for detail. I also do not want my shirt to feel too modern or polished, as I feel this too closely mirrors the image the nations using sport to wash their reputation aim for. By going for a retro style shirt, I am also trying to reference back to an era of football before nation funded financial take overs, and the practice of Sportswashing had crept into English football.
Initial Sketches
I thought it best to create some initial sketches to plan out what style and level of detailing I wanted to include on my shirt.
Colour Pallet Selection
As shown below my colour pallet is taken from a collation of images of migrant workers. I feel the colouring of the shirt should represent the typical uniform and clothing of a migrant worker. My piece/project is an artefact designed to raise awareness and start conversations about the struggles and mistreatment of migrant workers in the build up to the 2022 world cup, as a result the colours should reflect that.
I did consider using a colour pallet create from the branding of the Qatari 2022 world cup, but as I put that together it started to feel more like a promotional piece of work as opposed to a somewhat protest piece.
Colour Pallet selection
The colour pallet was created from a collation of imagery of migrant workers based in qatar. These were mainly images taken from the article and reports I read whilst researching the topic.
The blue is taken from the overalls the migrant workers wear, the yellow from their hard hats, the greens from their reflective high visibility vests.
Mock Up Testing and Colour Trials
I created some initial Photoshop mock ups in order to test potential colour parings and variations for my shirt. These mock ups did not contain much flexibility in terms of detailing, which is why they were only used briefly for colour testing. They also did not provided the adequate retro football shirt feel I required.
Main Shirt Design process
I began the process of creating my artefact with a Photoshop mock up, with my sketches and chosen colour pallet as a guide. Unfortunately I am unable to incorporate the collar into my mock up, which ideally would of been a key design feature to my shirt. Nevertheless I feel that my mock up does give the desired 'retro' feel that I am looking for, and has enough design elements which could containing detailing from the research and reports I have examined.
Firstly I began with the colour variations of the shirt, I always new that blue would be the primary shirt colour, so to replicate that of the migrant workers uniform, but I employed an additional shade of blue to add a little more variation to the design, and also highlight key parts of the shirt (the collar and the shoulders). Shown in the slideshow below is the process of building the shirts design, I gradually added features to the shirt, after feeling that the base colours were correct and effective.
Shirt Front View
Shirt Back View
Detailing
Shirt Detailing Explained
Sleeving
The reflective sleeving on the KAFALA Workers shirt is representative of the high visibility clothing workers are required to wear on construction sites. It also reflects the need for the issues migrant workers are reported to be facing to be more visible in the global public’s eye.
Shoulder Trim
178 is the reported average wage (converted into British Pounds) of a migrant worker tasked with building the infrastructure for the World Cup, reported to be working in up to 42 degree heat, up to 12 hours a day. Shoulder trim also uses the same reflective material used for the sleeve cuffs.
Inside sizing label
The sizing details visible on the inside of the KAFALA workers shirt reveals the average age of a migrant worker in Qatar. Underneath are the flags of Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, three prominent regions that migrant workers in Qatar are sourced from.
The 4000 embroidered into the inside trim of the shirt represents, according to some reports, the estimated death toll of migrant workers by the time the first ball is kicked at the 2022 World Cup.
Badge
The badge of the Workers Shirt is designed to be subtle and minimal. It simply states: Qatar World Cup 2022. There is also a embroidered sun, to represent the hot climate of the country and again to reiterate the dangerous temperatures migrant workers are often required to work in.
Back lettering and Number
The lettering and numbering on the back of the workers shirts displays the average day time temperature during the summer months of Qatar. This was chosen to encompasses the broader issues of the Qatar World Cup, as opposed to selective an individual name or company
Why KAFALA?
the KAFALA system is the the law used in Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries that has been at the core at a number of the reports examined in the research of this project.
It is a system much criticised and with good reason. The Law prevents a worker from leaving or changing their job without permission from their employer. It is reported to have been widely abused, and has been compared on numerous times to a way of enforcing a form of modern day slavery.
I choose to take the name KAFALA and use it as the brand sponsor for the shirt, like Adidas or Nike would sponsor a shirt. This is an attempt to subtly raise awareness and introduce the viewer into the KAFALA System.
The KAFALA Wear and Care Label
As additional detail for the Workers shirt I designed a label that would be displayed on the outside of the shirt. It mimics a regular wear and care label, however it displays details which are in relation to the general process of Sportswashing (explored in project 1 of this unit), and then details displaying the numerous health conditions a migrant worker is reported to face whilst working in Qatar. This was created from scratch using Adobe illustrator.
The World Cup Workers Site
In order to host my artefact, I wanted to create a mock promotional site, which on first glance would appear to be inline with regular football shirt launches, however on closer inspection would reveal the true intention of the project and shirt.
I decided to use Figma, as I felt I could create the most effective, polished version of the site with this software, having previous experience working with it.
My site is a single continuous page, with the world cup workers shirt displayed in the centre on the landing screen. this was by design, and to immediately centre the shirt as being the main point of focus and interest. I then added subtle details and some description onto that landing page, before progressing into a more in depth breakdown of the finer details further down the page, eventually leading to a timeline displaying a number of the most shocking stories and reports I examined whilst carrying out my research, allowing the user to explore them themselves.
A full page screen grab is down below, followed be responsive prototypes which give a feel of the UI/UX experience of the site.
Landing Page Responsive Prototype:
Reports Page Responsive Prototype:
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Evaluation and Retrospective thoughts:
On reflection, this project has been one of the most enjoyable to date. I feel very pleased with the quality of my mock shirt and prototype site to host it, particular the landing page. After a final presentation, feedback raised a few issues with the site, specifically the Reports timeline page, which was seen as too text heavy, it was suggested that rather than pull highlights from articles simply pull singular quotes, or really refined key points, and this is something which I can definitely see being beneficial, and would be Incorporated when taking the project further.
I initially started this project with the idea of physically producing the shirt and felt that, combined with some real life photography of the shirt being worn would increase engagement and effectiveness. It would also allowed me to create some mock packaging in which, could of contained a breakdown of information similar to that which is displayed on the mock site.
However, getting the shirt produced, especially to a high standard, simply became impractical. With the time frame of the projects, and the estimated cost, it was simply not feasible. This frustration was then channelled into the mock site, and trying to create the highest fidelity mock up I could. I realise that beyond the landing page, the site possibly loses a little of the real 'kit launch' promotional feel, however, I feel that the initial landing page does make up for this with this with it's more authentic feel.
I feel there is so much scope for this project to be taken further, the issue of the mistreatment of migrant workers in Qatar is only going to become more prominent as the 2022 draws closer, increasing the relevance of a project like this one. Going forward, the range of clothing could be expanding to other forms of sporting mechanise, i.e scarfs, hats, tracksuits and balls. Obviously with a longer time scale, larger budget, and potential collaboration from an individual or group used to working with fabrics and clothes design, this project could be brought to life in the form of psychical mock shirts and items, i really feel this would take this project to the next level.
I am proud of the idea at the core of this project, I wanted to undertake a project related to something I held a personal interest in (football) but also try and tackle an issue or problem. This project felt like a perfect, somewhat unfortunate storm of the two.