Research & Commentary Results

This Op/Ed was published first on February 3, 2010 by McClatchy Tribune.

The bipartisan Kerry Lugar Bill provides a multi-year, super-sized economic aid program to the people of Pakistan. This is the right approach to improved US-Pakistan relations. The majority of Pakistanis distrust the US because they believe we favor military dictators over civilian democrats and are quick to abandon promised economic aid programs once we have achieved our security goals.

The Middle East Institute is proud to host Iranian scholars Ali Alfoneh and Alex Vatanka for a discussion about the ongoing unrest in Iran and the implications for the stability and future of the Islamic Republic. With the Green Movement having proved its staying power, some scholars and analysts are starting to predict the beginning of the end for the regime of Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, while others dismiss the idea as wishful thinking and argue that the Islamic Republic is here for the long-term.

The convergence of multiple crises in an already vulnerable environment has left Yemen and aid agencies at a crossroads. The context has become an extremely complex and challenging one within which to reduce hunger, malnutrition, and fragility. Yet it is precisely because of these challenges that humanitarian intervention is vital to keep struggling populations from tipping into utter disaster.

“In some areas of the Gulf, you can’t tell whether you are in an Arab Muslim country or in an Asian district.”

— Majeed al-Alawi, Bahrain Minister of Labor (October 2007)

Several waves of Sri Lankan migration have taken place since the country gained independence in 1948. Beginning in the mid-1950s, wealthy, educated, English-speaking elites have migrated to Commonwealth countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. In addition, since the upsurge in ethnic hostilities in the early 1980s, Tamil-speaking Hindu migrants have left the country, with many settling in Canada. In contrast with these permanent migrants, since 1976 a growing number of Sri Lankans have become migrant workers.

Millions of people around the world have left their home countries in search of employment. In 2005, there were 191 million migrants, or about 3% of the world’s population, living in other countries.^[1]Today, that number has grown to about 200 million. An estimated one person in 35 is an international migrant. Almost all countries are affected by international migration. The Gulf countries are no exception.

How many Indians work abroad? We have no answer to this question even today. However, available evidence indicates that the state of Kerala in India has the highest number of emigrants in the Gulf countries.¹

The millions of foreign nationals working in the Gulf are often lumped together as “migrant workers,” but this is misleading. The population of foreign workers in the UAE, for example, is complex and heterogeneous. One layer of that complexity is manifested by the lexicon used by migrants to identify other migrants.

The treatment of migrant domestic workers is one of the defining stories told about the Arab Gulf states. Every year hundreds of news media and human rights reports detailing migrant domestic workers’ experiences of exploitation and abuse circulate globally. The narratives of these accounts are remarkably consistent. They often begin with the story of an impoverished woman from the global South, who, in order to improve the situation of her family, migrates to the oil-rich Gulf states in search of work and a more prosperous future.

Studies of Gulf women migrants focus on the most noticeable or “problematic” categories — domestic workers and the sex trade — and are generally policy-driven short surveys, using data collected in the Gulf itself.

Over the past three decades there has been much discussion about the impact of labor migration to the Gulf on the countries of origin. However, much less understood is the impact of this labor migration on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their citizens. There has been documentation that the patterns of migration have changed from Arab migrants to Southeast Asians.

Over the past decade, most of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) experienced robust economic growth. The main force behind this growth is a strong labor force, composed mainly of expatriates. Largely due to its geographical proximity, the Gulf has been a preferred destination for workers from South Asia for years. More recently, however, the GCC has attracted foreign labor from all over the world.

The money that migrants send home is important not only to their families but also to their country’s balance of payments. In many developing countries, remittances represent a significant proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as well as foreign exchange earning.

Several scholars of citizenship and migration in the oil-rich Gulf Arab states have noted the divisions between citizens and non-citizens in terms of mobility, access, geographic location, job prospects, and rights (or lack thereof) in these countries.^[1]These “rentier” states, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which rely on oil for the majority of their income, highly police the boundaries of citizenshi

It is not hyperbole to say that Emirati nationals (al-muwatinin) are vastly outnumbered by foreigners in their country at a ratio higher than almost anywhere else on earth. And, while a growing ethnographic literature documents late 20th century trends among South Asian migrant workers in the Gulf states, few have examined the less populous though highly visible and influential Westerners who work and live there. They deserve our attention.