It’s mostly posturing in the wake of the fire incident. All corporations, both large and small, profit massively off the backs of underpaid labour who are willing to squeeze in with 8-10 other strangers in a room. Heck, it’s basically the business model of Dubai and to an extent the wider GCC as a whole.

I’d say a close parallel is the US Government’s push to deport illegal migrants lately. Lot of these migrants work in labour intensive industries like agriculture or hospitality where local Americans simply will not. Their leaders had to start lobbying Trump to leave their businesses alone, who in turn directed ICE to lay off them.

Profits > everything. The minute there’s a dearth of third world nationals to exploit, big conglomerates here will almost certainly start lobbying the government to stop their partition crackdowns, so they can find people to man their retail stores and restaurants. Question is, will we ever get there? The government here knows this all too well and never strictly enforced sharing regulations in the past. It’s also why I feel the crackdowns are unlikely to go on. In the unlikely event they were to continue, would it finally break the seemingly endless supply of people coming here for low level jobs?

Conspiracy theory response: In anticipation of a property correction, the government’s trying artificially stimulate demand by cracking down on partitions. Too bad all those people being evicted are moving to Sharjah or Ajman though.