Creating Meaningful Engagement with Mega-construction Project Workers and Spectators in Complex Environments

Mega-events, like major global or regional sports events, often require the construction of new facilities, such as stadiums. As ambitions around these events grow among states that offer to host them, the need for construction follows suit. The hosting of mega-events in sports are generally undertaken between a host state (or sometimes, several host states) in collaboration with a multinational organization of a private or hybrid-like form, such as the International Olympics Committee (IOC) or the Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA). The sheer size of the sporting facilities as well as associated infrastructure, such as accommodation for participants and spectators and roads for transport, are well-known for being associated with different types of activities that can be harmful to stakeholders who are not directly involved in the sporting events, but are affected by the construction of facilities. For example, the construction of facilities for the Olympics in Beijing, China (2008) and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2016) caused the resettlements of people living in areas that were converted from (sometimes informal) residential areas to sport facilities (e.g., Vartak 2008; Tapley 2012). The construction of stadiums and infrastructure also requires large numbers of workers, many of whom are migrant workers from within the host state or, in some cases, from other countries. The latter is particularly the case in countries that do not have a large workforce for manual work. Several countries in the Middle East region, for example, rely mainly in foreign migrant workers for construction and other forms of unskilled labour. The construction of facilities for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar was accompanied by large-scale migration of mainly unskilled workers, especially from South Asia (e.g., New York Times 2022). The construction of facilities for the 2034 FIFA World Cup is expected to also lead to an influx of migrant workers from several countries.