Expats and the Labor Force

Abstract

The Middle East has seen much more economic change over the past few decades than sociopolitical change in spite of the continuous political instability that is often highlighted by the press. Collectively the region is best known for producing and exporting oil. While the oil industry significantly impacts the region through generating wealth and movement of labor, it also has become the agent of change for endeavors such as development and diversification. With higher rates of growth occurring more in the East than the West, the Middle East sits on the crossroads of this divide acting as a bridge between these two market places.This series is dedicated to highlighting the challenges and opportunities that lie within and around this central region of the global economy. It will be divided into four broad areas: resource management (covering topics such as oil prices and stock markets, history of oil in the region; water; labor migration; remittances in the region), international trade and finance (covering topics such as role of foreign direct investment in the region; Islamic banking; exchange rate and investments), growth and development (covering topics such as social inequities; knowledge creation; growth in emerging markets), and lastly demographic change (covering topics such as population change; women in the labor market; poverty and militancy).

Does Remittance Outflow Stimulate or Retard Economic Growth?

“…However, these countries have insufficiently skilled human resources, which makes them dependent on an external labour force to maintain their growing economic development (Kaabi, 2016). This gap between labour supply and demand has created an opportunity to attract highly skilled workers to these GCC countries (Naufal and Genc, 2012), which are the third largest labour migration destination in the world (Naufal, 2011).…”

A comparative analysis of migration systems and migration policies in the European Union and in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

“…In the Persian Gulf, the receiving nodes of the migration system are the oil-rich monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, called the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC countries). 4 In 1970, there were less than 2 million foreign workers in the GCC and the total population of the GCC countries was around 10 million (Naufal & Genc, 2012). However, the numbers of migrants in the GCC increased drastically in the last three decades and the massive growth in labour migrations has contributed to a rapid overall increase of population.…”

“…The labour markets in GCC countries are highly segmented, and professionals in the capital-intensive primary sector are well paid, also according to international standards. However, the wages in the large labour-intensive segment of the secondary labour market are highly suppressed and primarily attract labourers from the poorest regions of South-East Asia (Naufal & Genc, 2012;Oommen, 2015;Seshan, 2012;Wickramasekara, 2016).…”

“…It is clear that the labour-intensive secondary sector represents the large pull factor that generates large-scale migrations in the GCC. In the GCC countries, millions of low-skilled migrants are absorbed in the construction and domestic sectors, and other secondary segments of the labour market (De Bel-Air, 2014;Fernandez, 2014;Naufal & Genc, 2012;Seshan, 2012). For example, there are more than 1.5 million migrant domestic workers in the GCC countries (Fernandez, 2014).…”

“…Migrants from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines have for decades dominated migration flows to the GCC. Yet, sizable numbers of migrants in the GCC are from neighbouring Arab countries (Naufal & Genc, 2012;Shah, 2012). Labour workers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen and other neighbouring countries actually dominated migrations to the GCC until the 1980s.…”