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Comment by cshenoy | Hacker News Reader

Indentured servitude is debt bondage made explicitly so (contractually). When a worker says, "we were compelled to come just to make a living, but we've had no luck", that seems like they've been tricked into working as indentured servants without prior knowledge.

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I think pretty much all of them are well aware that the cost of flying them to the Gulf far exceeds their savings and they won't have the funds to fly back of their own accord before their contract is up. It's not one of these trafficking situations where they've been told they've been found a nice domestic service job in the capital and they subsequently end up in an underground brothel in another country.

They have good reason to expect to have access to food and their post-deduction wages though.

> It's not one of these trafficking situations where they've been told they've been found a nice domestic service job in the capital and they subsequently end up in an underground brothel in another country.

Exactly. Honestly, it's very telling that the vast majority of migrant workers in the gulf are men. They're doing hard manual labor, in admittedly poor conditions, but that is by and large what they signed up for.

> They have good reason to expect to have access to food and their post-deduction wages though.

Agreed. And that's why the instances where they don't even receive that are so alarming and do trigger government investigations.

Not at all. Almost none of them have enough to pay their recruitment or travel fees, so they fully understand that for a time all their wages will go towards that.

I fail to see how retaining pay until a hiring debt is paid off isn't the very definition of indentured servitude.

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