Construction workers from India and Nepal are believed to make up the largest contingent of migrants in Qatar, building an estimated $150 billion worth of buildings and infrastructure in the ambitious Gulf nation over the next decade.

But even as global media and organizations speculate on poor—some say slavery-like—working conditions and other risk factors that they say have spiked fatalities over the past several years, home-country governments are mixed in their responses to the plight of their expatriates.