Name: The refugees of boom-and-bust
Uploaded: 2009-11-09T01:00:00Z
Duration: 2 min 48 s
Description: At TEDGlobal U, Cameron Sinclair shows the unreported cost of real estate megaprojects gone bust: thousands of migrant construction laborers left stranded and penniless. To his fellow architects, he says there is only one ethical response.

At TEDGlobal U, Cameron Sinclair shows the unreported cost of real estate megaprojects gone bust: thousands of migrant construction laborers left stranded and penniless. To his fellow architects, he says there is only one ethical response.

Cameron Sinclair: The refugees of boom-and-bust

The refugees of boom-and-bust

In a world of towering ambitions, the plight of over 1 million migrant workers in labor camps reveals the dark side of construction.

With 40% of UAE's labor camps failing health and safety standards, the quest for skyscrapers leaves ethical footprints in the sand.

In the UAE, over 1.1 million laborers, mostly from South Asia, risk all for work, facing severe rights abuses and now abandonment.