Page 1 of 11

Journal for Studies in Management and Planning

Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/index.php/JSMaP

e-ISSN: 2395-0463

Volume 01 Issue 03

April 2015

Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ P a g e | 431

Arab regional politics in the oil-rich Gulf Arab states and Labor

Migrants, Refugees

Dr. Najib Malaud Almarhoon

Zawia University,Libya

Abstract:

This article explores the political dynamics

of labor migration in the Middle East. It

seeks to explain the politics of Arab

population movements by looking at

historical trends in regional integration and

contends that migration to the oil-rich

countries, including refugee flows, has been

the key factor driving Arab integration in

the absence of effective institutions and

economic integration processes. To account

for the influence of this largely forgotten

factor, the article looks at the formal and

informal institutions that have shaped

massive labor flows from the 1970s onward.

It offers historical evidence pointing to the

role of migration in Arab regional

integration by looking at free circulation of

Eritrean refugees and migrants in the Arab

region using oral history and administrative

archives. Linking labor migration, refugee

movements, and regional politics, the article

introduces the concept of "migration

diplomacy" as an analytical framework and

argues that the politics of regional

integration can be better understood when

looked at through the lens of migration.

Introduction: Magnitude and

Complexity of Migration in the

Middle East

The world's highest ratio of migrants

to national population is to be found in the

Middle East, and the region is one of the

most fascinating arenas in which to observe

international labor flows. Economic

migration and forced displacement have led

to the formation of a highly integrated

regional labor market. Labor migration is

one of the most dynamic economic factors

in the Middle East, and remittances sent

home by migrant workers in the region

exceed the value of regional trade in goods

as well as official capital flows. The growth

of migrant labor in the Middle East was

both rapid and massive and went hand in

hand with the development of the oil

economy. The stock of migrants went from

800,000 to 1.8 million between 1970 and

1975. In the 1980s, the Middle East became

the largest market for migrant labor the

world has ever known, and, according to

Sharon Stanton Russell and Michael

Teitelbaum, just before the 1991 Gulf War

the oil-rich states of the Arab Gulf taken

together numbered more than seven million

migrants, five million of whom were

workers. Migration to the oil-rich countries

accounts for an overwhelming part of

migratory trends in the region. In the Gulf

Cooperation Council (GCC) countries,

some 37.1 percent of the population is

foreign, with the United Arab Emirates

(UAE) hosting up to eighty-one percent of

migrants, and foreign workers constituting

at least seventy- five percent of the

Page 2 of 11

Journal for Studies in Management and Planning

Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/index.php/JSMaP

e-ISSN: 2395-0463

Volume 01 Issue 03

April 2015

Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ P a g e | 432

workforce in Saudi Arabia, eighty-two

percent in Kuwait, and almost ninety

percent in Qatar and the UAE at the

beginning of the 2000s. Since the mid- 1950s, the region has also played host to

one of the largest refugee populations in the

world. Numbering approximately 900,000

in 1950, 1.3 million in the 1960s, 1.6

million in the 1970s, and two million in the

1980s, the Palestinian refugee population

has grown steadily since 1947 to 4.5 million

today. Not including Sudanese internally

displaced (IDP) and international refugees,

the extended region itself holds more than

six million refugees, who include some 4.5

million Palestinian refugees (exiles from

1947, 1967, and 1973 and their

descendants) and approximately 1.5 million

Iraqis in Syria and Jordan since 2006. In

smaller but significant numbers, the region

has also been harboring refugees from the

horn of Africa: Eritreans in Sudan, Yemen,

and Saudi Arabia since the 1960s and the

war of independence against Ethiopia, as

well as Somali populations from Ethiopia

and Somalia in Yemen since the 1980s and

increasingly since 1991. Palestinians as well

as other refugees (Eritrean, Somalis,

Sudanese, etc.) from first to third generation

are generally included in foreign labor

statistics, notably in GCC states.

Considering the magnitude of the migratory

phenomenon in such a highly strategic

region, one may find it hard to understand

the relative paucity of research on the

politics of migration. Early work lamented

the absence of migration-related research

and data on the Middle East. Part of the gap

in knowledge has been filled, but mainly for

sending countries and mostly at the

macroregional level. An extensive body of

literature deals with the macroeconomic

effects of labor migration in sending

countries. The impact of remittances on

local economies is still a question open to

debate and its evaluation in terms of

development efficiency and sustainability

remains controversial.

Labor Migration in the Middle

East: A Critical Narrative

The narrative of labor migration in

the Middle East is well known and

thoroughly documented. The literature has

largely emphasized the economic and

demographic determinants of labor import,

and there have been many contributions to

the analysis of the political economy and

political demography of Arab intra-regional

migrations in the 1970s and the 1980s. Oil- rich states have long argued that their

migration policies were in fact depoliticized

along the lines of classical economics

arguments in favor of laissez-faire policy.

Their deeds belie this argument: What they

have in fact engineered is a political

management of migration flows. Contrary

to Nazli Choucri, who considers the initial

phases of Arab labor migration in the GCC

countries "individual," "private," and

nonpolitical compared to a "state"-managed

Asian labor import in the 1980s, and in

support of Sharon Station Russell, we will

argue that migration to the region has

always been politicized along lines that vary

across time and countries. After the Second

World War, the development of oil

production in the sparsely populated

Arabian Peninsula led to a massive increase

in labor demand and an urgent need for

Page 3 of 11

Journal for Studies in Management and Planning

Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/index.php/JSMaP

e-ISSN: 2395-0463

Volume 01 Issue 03

April 2015

Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ P a g e | 433

foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, the United

Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain.

The oil- producing countries' demand for

labor was mainly met by regional inflows

from highly populated neighboring Arab

countries like Yemen and Egypt and, to a

lesser extent, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, or

displaced populations like Palestinian

refugees after 1947. Almost all categories of

workers were targeted by public and private

recruiters in the oil-producing states, from

domestic laborers and construction workers

to blue- and white-collar workers, in the

private and public sector. The shift in price- setting power for crude oil from Western- owned private or semi-private oil

companies (ARAMCO or British

Petroleum) to the Arab states of the

Peninsula led to a massive increase in oil

prices, further enhanced by the regional

political context. During tafra (the period of

high oil income from 1973 to 1990-2014),

growth, state building, and massive inflows

of mainly Arab immigrants shaped the

countries' political development. The steady

increase in oil demand and the oil embargo

of 1973-1974 generated enormous income

for oil- producing countries and put them on

a rapid but "extensive" development path

heavily reliant on labor import. Within a

decade, oil revenues tripled (from two

hundred billion dollars for the 1971-1975

period to six hundred billion dollars for the

1976-1980 period), and oil-financed

socioeconomic development programs

targeting infrastructures, education,

industry, services, agriculture, etc.,

triggered a massive flow of contract labor

into economies lacking a sufficient and

adequately skilled or trained workforce.

Most oil-producing countries therefore

hinged heavily on foreign labor to achieve

economic development. As a result, in the

1970s, seventy- two percent of the labor

force in the GCC countries was foreign. The

most cited studies on migration during the

oil boom come from the numerous data

surveys, policy-oriented reports, and articles

conducted by the International Labor

Organization's team of economists.

Interestingly enough, economic and

demographic factors of migration fail to

account completely for the counterintuitive

variations in the volumes of migration

during the late-1980s economic recession.

Analysts agree that the collapse of oil

revenue caused neither a large-scale re- export of foreign labor nor a drastic fall in

regional migration levels.

Disenfranchised and likely to be

"passive observers of political processes

rather than potential activists or claimants

on social services and other benefits of

citizenship," Asian workers were not meant

to gain access to indigenous resources and

political participation. Beyond its economic

rationale and the response to immediate

market incentives, the selection of foreign

workers illustrated a regional political

strategy. Oil-producing states have justified

their labor import policies on the basis of

cost effectiveness. But along with the

mechanic effects of push-pull factors and

labor shortages, the dynamics of labor

migration also require a thorough analysis

of the policies and motivations that help

determine the nature and volume of migrant

labor flows. And in the case of the Arab

region, politics as much as economic