Of the 32 employees working at a garment factory in Italy, nine of them didn’t have the required documentation to work legally. Of those nine, two of them were illegal immigrants from China. The workers slept in the factory, where there would be shifts of people who continued to work overnight, to ensure 24-hour production.

When I think about Dubai, I don’t imagine much greenery or sustainability. I think of modernization and urban life: factories piling pollution into the air and trees torn down to make space for man made skyscrapers. However, these assumptions were challenged when I recently visited Dubai in December 2024.