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This article analyses the ambivalent positions of French citizens residing in Dubai who employ live-in domestic workers. These structurally advantaged people live in a social order they judge to be unfair, and they work on moral justifications to set themselves apart from “local” employers, seen as slave-owners. They identify with a “West” that they consider to be egalitarian, and have several arguments rationalizing their position, chief among them that they have no influence on societies at an earlier stage their own, and that they make it possible for domestic workers to escape abusive employers. Their egalitarian speech places particular demands on their domestic workers, who are expected to hide the asymmetry of their relationship as much as possible.