"There are three different Dubais, the expats, the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed, and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden from plain view. Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks. Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means “City of Gold”. As soon as the workers arrive at Dubai airport, their passport are taken from him by the construction companies. They work 14-hour days in the desert heat for 500 dirhams a month (100US$)."
These pictures - and many more - capture another side to glitzy Dubai, a side many of us don't see, and alas, don't really care about.
Credit: Matilde Gattoni