Please click on the picture to open the interactive map. (© bpb)While much of modern international migration is brought about by political factors due to both civil and international wars, the vast extent of international migration following World War II is comprised of labor migration, legal and illegal alike.
Historically, the Arabian Gulf region was comprised of city-states, called Shaykhdoms, each ruled by a dominant family. The current Gulf oil-states are an expansion of these city-states with the historical ruling families in power until the present.
The unprecedented scale of development projects in the Gulf oil states following the October 1973 “oil boom” led to an extremely rapid increase in the demand for labor, both skilled and unskilled, that could not be supplied domestically.
During the 1990s, particularly in the second half of the decade, a new phenomenon emerged among the GCC national workforces - structural unemployment.
Overall, there are five main characteristics indicating how the rentier nature distorts the GCC labor markets: a near total dependence of nationals in public sector employment, extremely low labor force participation rates, low productivity levels, inappropriate educational and professional skills and a huge number of domestic service workers.
During the first stage of the development process in the Gulf oil countries, namely, from the late 1940s until the early 1980s, the vast majority of the foreign labor came from the other Arab countries. However, following the end of the “oil decade” a gradual replacement of Arabs by Asian workers began.
The switch from Arab to Asian foreign workers has had an immense impact on the gender distribution of the GCC foreign population mainly due to the fact that the Asian workers tend to come alone to the Gulf. Thus, there is a high correlation between the percentage of the Asian workers of the total foreign workers and the percentage of females among the total non-national population.
One can find five main differences between the GCC labor markets and those of the developed economies. In the developed economies, in most cases, educated and skilled employees first prefer to find employment in the private sector while the public sector is only a second choice.
The onset of the “Arab Spring” and its spread to the Gulf in early 2011, mainly to Bahrain and Oman, led the GCC authorities practically, although not officially, to withdraw from their previous labor force nationalization policies. Instead, they decided to concentrate on reducing the unemployment of their educated youth and improving the living standard of the nationals, whatever the longer-run implications on the labor market might be.
Despite their sizable numbers, migrants can only have temporary residency, they have no access to citizenship, and they have limited membership in society, conditions which are unique to the Gulf states as destination countries.
The development of human capital was and remains the most important official socioeconomic target of the GCC authorities.
Here you can find official publications, publications of the United Nations (UN) and others, books, articles, reports and the sources for figures 1-4 of the country profile "The Gulf Cooperation Council States (GCC)" by Onn Winckler.
Ein Kurzdossier legt komplexe Zusammenhänge aus den Bereichen Zuwanderung, Flucht und Asyl sowie Integration auf einfache und klare Art und Weise dar. Es bietet einen fundierten Einstieg in eine bestimmte Thematik, in dem es den Hintergrund näher beleuchtet und verschiedene Standpunkte wissenschaftlich und kritisch abwägt. Darüber hinaus enthält es Hinweise auf weiterführende Literatur und Internet-Verweise. Dies eröffnet die Möglichkeit, sich eingehender mit der Thematik zu befassen. Unsere Kurzdossiers erscheinen bis zu 6-mal jährlich.
