Higher Education and the Middle East: Serving the Knowledge-based Economy
This is the first of three volumes examining the internationalization of higher education and the Middle East. The 12 essays included in this volume explore some of the changes that are taking place and the challenges that lie ahead as Middle Eastern countries seek to build sustainable higher education systems and strengthen their economies. Within the dynamic global higher education landscape, is the Middle East a stagnant backwater or a center of creative initiative? What are, and should be the roles of foreign partners and providers?
Introduction to The State of the Arts in the Middle East: Volume VI: Creative Arab Women
Creative Arab Women is the sixth edition of the MEI Viewpoints series on the State of the Arts in the Middle East. The 14 essays in this collection offer a glimpse into the rich and varied cultural output of Arab women in the region and the diaspora. Partly reminiscences and partly calls to action, they are essays of survival and empowerment that add a deeply personal dimension to the subject of the role of Arab women as cultural producers. MEI is grateful to Dr.
The Middle East Institute is proud to host Justin Dargin, research fellow at the Dubai Initiative, for a discussion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Gulf and the pursuit of an effective carbon trading plan. Dargin will also examine the effect which this hot-button issue has upon the region's geopolitical relations, energy efficiency, natural gas utilization, renewable energy, and conservation of natural resources.
The Republic of Yemen occupies the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Unlike its oil-rich neighbors, Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. Like other countries football (soccer) is Yemen’s most popular sport. Football has been played in parts of Yemen since before the turn of the 20th century, and since the 1970s, the game’s popularity has increased significantly.
The Middle East Institute is proud to host Sean Foley, author of The Arab States: Beyond Oil and Islam (Lynne Rienner, 2010), for a discussion about the politics of the Gulf states and their role in the global economy. In the book, Foley presents a fresh picture of these states as cosmopolitan and tolerant societies that face many of the same socio-economic problems that other states do – including those that lack oil.
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and Taiwan’s Taipei 101 tower, the world’s two tallest skyscrapers, differ in height by a stunning 1,076 feet, are separated by nearly 4,000 miles of ocean, and are situated in countries and regions which, linguistically and culturally, have little in common ― except business.
Sri Lankan Migration to the Gulf: Female Breadwinners – Domestic Workers
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
A Lexicon of Migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
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.
Migrant Workers in Kuwait: The Role of State Institutions
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.
Malayali Migrant Women's Perceptions of the Gulf States
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.
The International Political Economy of Gulf Migration
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.
