National Security and the Management of Migrant Labor: A Case Study of the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

This article examines the main institutional developments that have accompanied the economic and political changes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the past twenty years. In particular, the different agencies of the UAE's Ministry of Interior have taken active roles in responding to the demographic changes and in developing preemptive policing strategies that include community policing, extensive surveillance networks, and increasingly individualized and standardized forms of identification. The paper assesses how that institutional growth has shaped the way the UAE has come to manage its guest worker program over time. It explains how the security apparatus is deployed by the state for managing the criminal and cultural impact of expatriates on the national body politic.

Serial Labor Migration: Precarity and Itinerancy among Filipino and Indonesian Domestic Workers

“…Exclusion, thus, defines the experiences of low-skilled temporary labor migrants, many of whom do not qualify for permanent residency (Hahamovitch 2013). Exclusionary conditions in the “transit states” (Khalaf, AlShehabi, and Hanieh 2015) of the Middle East are even more pronounced as no migrants, including professional workers, in these countries qualify for permanent residency (Ali 2011; Lori 2011). 23 Children born in these countries are likewise excluded from citizenship due to the absence of birthright citizenship (Gardner 2010; Ali 2011; Vora 2013).…”

“…One effect is their status as eminently deportable subjects (Ali 2010a; Gardner 2010). The UAE, for instance, now deploys its expanded security forces to criminalize irregular migration and police the transgressions of migrants (Lori 2011). Undocumented migrants, including domestic workers, become profoundly precarious, such that a raid in a working-class neighborhood or the checking of their identification on public transit can result in their deportation.…”

Cosmopolitanism in exclusionary contexts

“…Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia actively want and need to maintain high levels of immigration in order to sustain their labour markets (ʻAbd al-Hādī Khalaf et al, 2014), but their migration discourses and policies have become increasingly securitised (Lori, 2011). Such frictions are reminiscent of the "liberal paradox" that James Hollifield has identified in democratic societies (Hollifield & Faruk, 2017): Western European and North American states seek to further economic liberalism, which is contingent on continuous migration flows, but they are also constantly trying to manage the political risk that immigration creates through restrictive migration policies and anti-integration discourses (Hollifield, 1992).…”

“…Such policies did not, however, lead to lower immigration rates but, instead, to a worsening of already highly insecure living conditions for foreign workers. Besides, in the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings and, more recently, the diplomatic conflict pitting Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Qatar, as well as the war in Yemen, new migration politics, geared towards heightened control and discriminatory policies, emerged in the region in a bid to stem migration flows and exercise greater oversight over immigrants' lives (Lori, 2011). Migrant selection on the basis of nationality has become more pervasive: for those viewed as a security threat (such as Egyptians, Syrians or Lebanese Shias), access has been severely restricted and sometimes denied altogether, a policy that has also led to the mass deportation of Yemenis and East Africans, in particular in Saudi Arabia (Thiollet, 2015).…”

Un espace social transnational entre les Émirats et le sud de l’Iran : les Khodmouni (Lârestâni) à Dubaï

“…Compte tenu de la restriction de l'accès à la nationalité aux Émirats peu après la création de l'État, ceux qui ont suivi ont été considérés par l'administration émirienne comme des « travailleurs temporaires », comme tous les autres étrangers, et ont conservé la nationalité iranienne. Ils n'ont par ailleurs quasiment aucune chance de devenir Émiriens même après plusieurs années de vie aux Émirats (Lori, 2011).…”