Season 2, Ep. 9 – From oil to innovation: Changing economies in the Gulf
Show notes
Popular Media
The Dangers of the Middle East’s Kafala System. Council on Foreign Relations.
Gulf (external link) . (2017) Directed by Suneel Kumar Reddy.
Safeer (external link) . Migrant Lives in Pandemic Times. Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration and Migration Matters.
Sherman, Brooke (6 June 2022). Changing the Tide for the Gulf’s Migrant Workers (external link) . Wilson Centre.
Policy & Reports
Gulf Cooperation Council (external link) . Encyclopedia Brtannica.
Tadros, Mahfouz E. 2015. (PDF file) The Arab Gulf States and the Knowledge Economy: Challenges and Opportunities (external link) . Policy Paper 6. The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW).
Prospects of knowledge economies in the Gulf (external link) . Observer Research Foundation.
Books
Beaugrand, Claire. 2023. “Long-Term Residency Rights, Citizenship Schemes and the Attraction of Talents: Transnational Presence over Generations in the Face of Investment Migration.” (external link) Pp. 21–38 in Transnational Generations in the Arab Gulf States and Beyond. Vol. 10, Gulf Studies, edited by K. Matsukawa, A. Watanabe, and Z. R. Babar. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
Beaugrand, Claire, and Hélène Thiollet. 2023. (excel file) “Migration Intermediation: Revisiting the Kafala (Sponsorship System) in the Gulf.” (external link) Pp. 341–56 in Research Handbook on the Institutions of Global Migration Governance, edited by A. Pécoud and H. Thiollet. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Kanna, Ahmed, Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora. 2020. Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula (external link) . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University press.
Hanieh, Adam. 2011. Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (external link) . Palgrave Macmillan US.
Lejeune, Catherine, Delphine Pagès-El Karoui, Camille Schmoll, and Hélène Thiollet, eds. 2021. Migration, Urbanity and Cosmopolitanism in a Globalized World (external link) . Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Unnikrishnan, Deepak. 2017. Temporary People (external link) . Restless Books.
Vignal, Leïla, ed. 2017. The Transnational Middle East: People, Places, Borders (external link) . Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Scholarly Articles
Assaf, Laure. 2020. “‘Abu Dhabi Is My Sweet Home’: Arab Youth, Interstitial Spaces, and the Building of a Cosmopolitan Locality.” City 24(5–6):830–41.
Assaf, Laure, and Clémence Montagne. 2019. “Urban Images and Imaginaries: Gulf Cities through Their Representations.” Chroniques Yéménites (11).
Assaf, Laure, and Delphine Pagès-El Karoui. 2021. “Introduction: Ethnographic Perspectives on Cosmopolitanism in the Gulf: State Narratives, Individual Trajectories and Transnational Connections.” Journal of Arabian Studies 11(2):171–82.
Ewers, Michael C. 2013. “From Knowledge Transfer to Learning: The Acquisition and Assimilation of Human Capital in the United Arab Emirates and the Other Gulf States.” Geoforum 46:124–37.
Ewers, Michael C., and Edward J. Malecki. 2010. “Leapfrogging into the knowledge economy: Assessing the economic development strategies of the Arab Gulf States.” Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 101(5):494–508.
Le Renard, Amélie. 2008. “‘Only for Women:’ Women, the State, and Reform in Saudi Arabia.” The Middle East Journal 62(4):610–29.
Osmandzikovic, Emina. 2023. “The Golden Visa: Anatomy of Making a Long-Term Home in the UAE.” Migration and Diversity 2(2):183–202.
Thiollet, Helene. 2011. “Migration as Diplomacy: Labor Migrants, Refugees, and Arab Regional Politics in the Oil-Rich Countries.” International Labor and Working-Class History 79(1):103–21.
Thiollet, Hélène. 2016. “Managing Migrant Labour in the Gulf Transnational Dynamics of Migration Politics since the 1930s. (external link) ” University of Oxford International Migration Institute Working Paper 131.
Thiollet, Hélène. 2018. “Migration as Diplomacy: Labor Migrants, Refugees, and Arab Regional Politics in the Oil-Rich Countries.” (external link) Pp. 103–21 in International Labor and Working-Class History. Cambridge University Press.
Thiollet, Hélène. 2019. “Immigrants, Markets, Brokers, and States The Politics of Illiberal Migration Governance in the Arab Gulf.” (external link) University of Oxford International Migration Institute Working Paper 155.
Thiollet, Hélène. 2022. “Migrants and Monarchs: Regime Survival, State Transformation and Migration Politics in Saudi Arabia.” Third World Quarterly 43(7):1645–65.
Thiollet, Hélène. 2024. “Immigration Rentier States.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50(3):657–79.
Thiollet, Helene, and Laure Assaf. 2021. “Cosmopolitanism in Exclusionary Contexts.” Population, Space and Place 27(1):e2358.
Vora, Neha. 2008. “Producing Diasporas and Globalization: Indian Middle-Class Migrants in Dubai.” (external link) Anthropological Quarterly 81(2):377–406.
Vora, Neha. 2013. Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (external link) . Durham London: Duke University Press.
Vora, Neha, and Natalie Koch. 2015. “Everyday Inclusions: Rethinking Ethnocracy, Kafala , and Belonging in the A Rabian Peninsula.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 15(3):540–52.
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Transcript
Maggie Perzyna
Before we dive into today's episode, I just wanted to let you know about a podcast that we've been listening to here at CERC Migration, 'The Migration Podcast' produced by our good friends at IMISCOE. You may have noticed that we featured an episode with Alejandra Diaz De Leon. In it, Alejandra reflects about how the journey of Central American migrants walking north through Mexico is about much more than just having practical strategies to survive. If you didn't get a chance to listen, I highly recommend that you check it out. You'll find 'The Migration Podcast' on all the major platforms. Now on to our show.
Maggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores regional migration issues in a global context. This series is produced by CERC Migration in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Did you know that the Middle East boasts the world's highest ratio of migrants to its national population? In this episode, we're exploring the Middle East's labour migration phenomenon where economic migration and forced displacement have led to the formation of a remarkably interconnected regional labour market. This labour migration isn't just a footnote. It's a dynamic economic force that has far reaching consequences. Remittances sent home by migrant workers here exceed the value of regional trade and goods and official capital flows, revealing the crucial role of migrants in the region's financial landscape. The story of migration in the Middle East is one of evolution. Historically, it walked hand in hand with the development of the oil economy, spurring the need for support workers. But today, the Middle East's economic ambitions reach far beyond oil. We'll dive deep into how these changing economies are reshaping the character of regional migration, as countries in the Gulf increasingly focused on nurturing knowledge-based economies. In a moment, two esteemed researchers will help us unravel the threads between migration and regional politics, exploring the impacts on both migrants and host nations. But first, we'll speak with Deepak Unnikrishnan. He's a writer and an assistant Arts professor of literature and creative writing at NYU Abu Dhabi.
In a labour camp somewhere in the Persian Gulf, a labourer swallowed his passport and turned into a passport. His roommate swallowed a suitcase and turned into a little suitcase.
So begins the first chapter of Deepak Unnikrishnan's book, 'Temporary People'. If it sounds surreal to you, don't worry, that's kind of the point.
Deepak Unnikrishnan
It is essential for the book to be real, and surreal, and unreal, for everything to make sense. So, I've had critics who have looked at the book who say, you know, this doesn't make any sense because of the way human beings behave and how you write about them. But it also makes a lot of sense because this feels like the Gulf. That felt true to what I understood the Gulf was, particularly the city I come from, Abu Dhabi. On the first line in my bio is Deepak Unnikrishnanis from Abu Dhabi.
Maggie Perzyna
Deepak was born and raised in Abu Dhabi. And while his family has roots in Kerala, India, their connections to the Gulf go back three generations.
Deepak Unnikrishnan
We have history here. When I say 'we', every male member of my mother's side and father's side of the family has lived in the Gulf, in some way, shape, or form. Or has worked in the Gulf, in some way, shape or form.
Maggie Perzyna
Deepak's family originally migrated to the region for work, the same motivation that's led millions of others there since the 1950s oil boom. But Deepak doesn't want to contribute to the narrative that simply paints them as labourers and nothing more. He wants to shed light on the individuals, each with their own histories, dreams and challenges, that call the Gulf home.
Deepak Unnikrishnan
I think the book at the end of the day is also looking at characters who are wedded to occupation because that's what the Gulf has become. You can't enter the Gulf as someone who's not from the Gulf if you're not wedded to occupation or a tourist visa That is what the system is. That is the policy. So, you're always, your experience is attached to your work or tourist visa. Period. So, in other words, if you're writing about the Gulf, that's, that's what you're going to see. That's what you're going to ingest, digest. And I guess I'm also making a not-so-subtle point that, because we have all of these individuals who show up from so many places who work at gigs, what would their stories be?
Maggie Perzyna
With each chapter of 'Temporary People', we hear what some of these stories might be. Like the man who uses a magical phone to teleport to his wife, the taxi driver who gives unsolicited advice to wealthy clients in Hindi, or the woman who spends her days duct taping injured construction workers back together. These are not direct accounts of people Deepak knows per se, but they are rooted in the world that he and his family grew up in. One with a diversity of languages, cultures, and occupations.
Deepak Unnikrishnan
From my father's and mother's side of the family, every male member of their immediate even extended family has lived or worked in the Gulf. So, they've worked working class jobs, they've worked white collar jobs. And it's possible some of them may have worked pink collar jobs. So, it's familiar. Was my father taxi driver? No. But at the same time, there's something else to sort of consider here, which would be language. I grew up speaking Malayalam at home. I went to an Indian community school where English was the lingua franca. And then in the taxi cabs, it would be Urdu, or maybe Hindi. So, these languages gave me access to a backstory, which I've always been familiar with. So, I just wanted to sort of incorporate that into what the work is. The book, if you sort of treat the book as a book about labour, that would be inaccurate. I think at the end of the day, the book is a book about the Gulf.
Maggie Perzyna
When asked why he chose to write this book as fiction. Deepak explains that to him, he sees fiction as a tool that will give him more freedom to write uncensored than nonfiction would,
Deepak Unnikrishnan
Because this is a hyper surveillance state. And so, if you want access to the people that you'd like to write about it, most often, you're not going to get them. I also think about the ethics of that transaction. Because if I'm going to put someone at risk, because I want to have a conversation with them and write about them, I don't feel too great about that.
Maggie Perzyna
Ultimately, Deepak hopes that 'Temporary People' will serve as an homage to a region where stories, memories and legacies, are at risk of being disrupted by migration and movement.
Deepak Unnikrishnan
So, we have to sort of figure out a different way to think about our stories and not only think about them, take it elsewhere. The usual narrative, or the usual way of doing this would be to know that you're located in the place for a while, you may die there, you may have children who will die there, and they will carry your stories forward. You're not going to get that in the Gulf. So, when you're not going to get that in the Gulf, what do you do when you eventually have to leave or if you do leave, and this is something that I think about, and I think that's what makes our position, I wouldn't say unique, just different.
Maggie Perzyna
Many thanks to Deepak Unnikrishnanfor sharing the backstory of his book, 'Temporary People'. The Gulf region is dependent on migrant labour to fill the gaps in its workforce. So, this shift to a knowledge-based economy has ripple effects for those migrating to the region. Joining me to discuss this are Laure Assaf and Hélène Thiollet. Laure is an anthropologist and a specialist in Middle Eastern Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi. Hélène is a research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research, Sciences Po. Her research focuses on migration policies in the countries of the South, with particular interest in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Welcome, and thanks for joining me today.
Hélène Thiollet
Thank you.
Laure Assaf
Thanks for having us.
Maggie Perzyna
Let's look at some context first. Hélène, could you tell me about the historical correlation between the growth of migrant labour and the development of the oil economy in the Middle East?
Hélène Thiollet
Well, the two are, of course, neatly connected and the story of immigration and migrant labour in the region starts in the early 30s, with the first oil boom that is to say the discovery of oil in the region and during the colonial rule for most GCC countries, except for Saudi Arabia that was not colonized by the British Empire. But still, it's the moment when the first explorations of oil in the region lead to different kinds of mobility, mobility within the regions of national of Gulf shade domes, from non-oil to oil era as the mobility of inhabitants of the rest of the British Empire, notably, the subcontinent, the British Raj, coming to the Gulf to work in the emerging oil industry. And the third kind of mobility. It's the mobility of British and American skilled expatriates, such as engineers and manager who came to work in the region. The second period starts in the 1960s and opens onto what was termed the second oil boom, which is also a migration boom, culminating with the 1973 nationalization of the oil industries across the regions, which led to the increase of oil prices. And, and a substantial increase also in the number of people coming to work in the oil industry. So, the second period opens in the 1960s, with the second oil boom, which is really, you know, culminating in 1973, the increase in the oil prices and the increase in the sector in the region, also leading to increase in labour import to the region. The third sequence starts in the 1990s. It's really a post-colonial and also most modern phase of the industrial development in the region, which leads to a diversification of the economy. So, it's not just about oil, it's also about the service industry. It's also about tertiary sectors that grow and lead to renewed immigration waves to the region.
Maggie Perzyna
Laure anything to add?
Laure Assaf
Yeah, I think, you know, building on what Hélène has just said, what happened with the beginning of oil exploitation is a restructuration of migration flows. They grew in intensity, that migration to the Gulf did not start with oil, right. The Arabian Peninsula has been historically shaped by the circulation of people and of goods throughout the region.
Maggie Perzyna
Helen, you've introduced the concept of migration diplomacy to describe political integration in the region. Can you tell us about that?
Hélène Thiollet
Yes, it's interesting to look at international relations, focusing on the management of migration from this particular region where population movement have been so important for such a long time. As Laure said, mobility has always been a very political issue in the region. So, for instance, we didn't mention previously, the fact that the pilgrimages to the holy sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina have always drawn a lot of people to the Arabian Peninsula. And this has been regulated by diplomatic relations between countries of origins of the pilgrims and Saudi Arabia or the rulers of the area before the creation of the country itself. So, this is just an example of how historical the management the political management of population is, even when we're not talking about oil related migration. Now, when we talk about oil related migration, it has been also very neatly regulated by the British Empire across the various colonies. For instance, the RM coal in Saudi Arabia, which itself organized labour import with countries of origin and nowadays, countries of the GCC are also tying diplomatic relations with countries of origin to ensure the flows of incoming workers, but also constrain the rights and the ability of these incoming workers and their family to settle in the Gulf. So, the political dimension of migration in this region is often underestimated looking only at economic factor, but it's in fact extremely important.
Maggie Perzyna
With the high levels of expatriates in the Gulf. What are the factors driving such a high ratio of migrants to the now national populations, Laure?
Laure Assaf
So, in the smaller Emirates like Qatar and the UAE, the ratio of migrants is very high. It's in the UAE around 88%, and it reaches 90% in the main urban centers in Dubai, for example. And so about the factors driving this, this high ratio, as Elena was mentioning, migration was first seen as a necessity by the nascent Gulf States, as part of the State Building and urban development that was taking place after the beginning of oil exploitation. Also, with the increase in income that was fostered by the old wounds of the 70s that created both the means and the demand for for labour. So, it was just about bringing in the workforce and the skills necessary to build the cities and to build the new states. At the same time, these migrants who are in majority kept separated from the national population in the sense that there was very little formal incorporation. And there's no systematic process of naturalization in most Gulf countries. And so the idea was, this workforce was going to come and help build the cities and then go home. But at the same time, migrants’ presence also became, we could say structurally embedded in the ways described societies function does a situation of dependence on migrant labour, from the home itself, and through the work of domestic workers, to teachers in schools, but also increasingly to a consumer market that is now largely composed of these migrant workers. Since at least the 1980s, this huge presence of foreign residents, has been constructed as a public issue in many of these Gulf countries, at the level of the state because of concerns around national security, but also the competition of migrants with nationals on the labour market with rising rates of unemployment in the national population, but also at the sort of more social scale because of conflicts around social norms. For example, inter marriages are often portrayed in the media as a threat to the national identity of the local populations.
Hélène Thiollet
Just to, I mean, to add to the, to the very complete account that Laure gave, the situation is Saudi Arabia is the bit one of a kind in the region. It's the largest country with the largest population. So, it also has a large population of nationals among the resident of, of Saudi Arabia. And it also, it also has maybe a bit more of a diverse resident population, with various social classes among Saudis. And so, we have socio economic diversity among the Saudi population. So poor Saudis, middle class Saudis, as well as richer classes, which echoes the diversity, the non-Saudi population. So, this mix, we find less in smaller states in the region. And the ratio of foreigners to nationals is about one to four persons with the similar issues and concern for dependency upon foreign labour, and protection of cultural and ethnic identity of Saudi Arabia, are politicized in Saudi Arabia.
Maggie Perzyna
How were the efforts to transition towards a knowledge economy impacting the nature of labour migration in the Gulf region? Laure?
Laure Assaf
Yeah, so the question of the transition towards a knowledge economy is sort of no recurring keywords in all the economic, social and political divisions that are put forward by the Gulf photos, I would say at least since the turn of the 21st century. And it's often portrayed in these plans as part of the preparation of the post oil era, something that is going to lead economic diversification that will allow to alleviate the dependency on oil revenues. One thing to note, though, is that it happens along different timelines at the regional scale, but also even at the national scale. In the UAE, for example, Dubai has engaged in this diversification long before Abu Dhabi because of its relatively smaller oil resources. And so, one thing that both Hélène and I have been working on is that while there were before sort of hierarchies of migrant labour, based on skills were already salient before the capitalist system, which was the main mode of governance of migrants presents in in the Gulf. It's the system that took widely different shapes depending on one's nationality, gender, occupation, race, etc. But these hierarchies of skill have become more visible and more explicit in the policies adopted by this government today. So, for example, Gulf countries have made it very clear that they are welcoming investors and skilled workers, and very often they specify certain fields. But in the case of the UAE, they started attributing golden visas that are long term visas sponsored directly by the state in specific fields like science, engineering, healthcare, etc. Maybe another important thing to note here is that these hierarchies of skill also intersect with hierarchies of nationality, and race. This has been well studied by scholars like Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora. And, for example, in the labour market, on the one hand, these policies are turned towards recruiting investors, as skilled workers, etc. On the other hand, academic degrees and work experience from the west and especially from Europe and North America, are much more valued on this labour market, sometimes even to the detriment of national population and other migrant communities that have a more historical presence in the curve.
Maggie Perzyna
Hélène, Laure mentioned the Kafala system. Can you tell us more about that?
Hélène Thiollet
Well, the Kafala system is the local form of migration intermediation, which is has been institutionalized largely under colonial rules in the region. So, under the British rule, the Gulf countries, the Kafala works as follows in order to enter one of the Gulf country and to get a visa and a work permit, which is the condition for obtaining a visa, you need to have a local sponsor, who is either a person or a corporate entity. And so, it ties the presence and residents of foreigners in the Gulf countries to a national or national entity. So, it's a relationship of dependency in exchange of a fee, that sort of commodifies and privatize the management of migration. Now, of course, the Kafala system had various forms across sectors of the economy, for you know, it also varies across space in rural and urban areas. And it has changed over time, what we observe, what we've been observing in the past two decades, is what I called a ‘governmentalization of the Kafala system’, that is to say, nation states and governments have been increasingly trying to bring back this privatized governance of migration into governmental agency and to try and better control using the state apparatus migration. And so, there is basically a tension of both cooperation and a bit of competition between the Kafala system, which is a sort of delegation of migration politics to a society on the market, and the state effort to better control migration.
Maggie Perzyna
As economic migration and forced displacement shape a highly integrated regional labour market, what challenges and opportunities does this present for Gulf nations? Laure?
Laure Assaf
So, one thing we can note here is that Gulf states have very flexible migration policies. And that's also what Adam Hanieh, for example, has called a spatial dimension to this migrant labour force. That is these policies often sort of move according to what we could call a global labour market, the labour market that is very segmented. And so very often specific jobs or specific occupations are recruited from specific places. It's especially the case for low-income jobs that often sort of target specific nationalities, which is in part a factor of historical migration trends, but which also has evolved tweaked to include, let's say new economic developments at the global scales depending on labour supply, right. One example of that is that after the economic crisis, certain sectors like construction or taxi drivers started recruiting more and more workers from this from this country. And today in the UAE, many taxi drivers are from the African continent, Uganda, Cameroon, etc. So, this targeted recruitment evolves depending on these on this specialized global labour market.
Hélène Thiollet
To complement this a bit, the changing histories of migration also go together with changing geographies. During the colonial era in, you know, in the 30s 40s 50s, until the decolonization process in the 70s, immigrants coming from the subcontinent, from India, from Pakistan, but also from other Asian countries under British controlled, were largely dominant in the region. And then after, in the 60s and in the 70s. And after decolonization, there was a strong push for bringing in Arab workers to the GCC as a token of post colonial and regional integration among Arab countries. So there were the very, very strong political dimension to the immigration of Arab workers and their family to the GCC, we can see that particularly with the presence of large number of Palestinians, for instance, who settled in the Gulf after the creation of Israel, and throughout the 60s and the 70s, with the different wars that happened in Israel, and then migration was used as a proxy for a sort of deep politicized asylum process for Palestinians. The situation nowadays, is a bit different, rather than political justifications behind the selection of immigrants from particular, from particular countries, we see the Gulf operating along strategies of diversification. So, the different Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Canada, trying to diversify the origin of their expatriate communities to be less dependent upon, say, India or the Philippines and Indonesia. And this was particularly triggered by the early 1990s crisis at the moment of the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussien invaded Kuwait, a lot of expatriates from Egypt, from Yemen, from India left Kuwait, and showed the Gulf country how fragile they were, when their expatriate community, you know, just left, and what kind of consequences that could have on their economy. So, these strategies are actually driving a lot of the migration diplomacy We observe today. And in response, countries of origin like Indonesia, or India, or even Nepal, or the Philippines are trying to also, you know, also show their strength and negotiate welfare conditions for their nationals in the Gulf and trying also to enhance the level of protection of their national workers in the Gulf country, which is, as is well known, pretty low. I mean, the level of protection is pretty low.
Maggie Perzyna
Laure, you've written about cosmopolitanism in the Gulf. How do migrants fit into a social fabric of a country like the UAE or Saudi Arabia?
Laure Assaf
Thank you for this question. Actually, both Hélène and I co-wrote on this very question. Maybe the first observation in response to how migrant fit into the social fabric is that there to some extent, migrants are integrated in this in this fabric. I've mentioned earlier that there are no modes of formal incorporation of migrants the sense that there are no formal or systematic processes of naturalization in, in Gulf countries. But this is true today this this was not entirely true at the moment of creation of the states. And so, there is actually an internal diversity of the national populations, that is a result of the historical circulations that we discussed earlier in, in this podcast. There is a huge ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious diversity of the citizenry is that is often obscured in official discourses today in in the Gulf that tend to present citizens as a homogenous group. But that is also contested by a number of intellectuals, artists, writers, etc, that are pointing to this but also ordinary citizens and that are bringing forward this diversity. So that's the first point. The second point is that migrants are also not a homogenous category. They're a category that is hugely diverse. And diverse segments of this category are treated differently by the Gulf states, or let's say enter very different types of, of relationship with the states. So, at one end of this spectrum, you have these low-income migrants that I mentioned earlier that are very often people hired on short term contracts, often with a maximum of three years, and who are expected to leave the country once that job is done. Although there have been reforms in recent years to make it easier to change employers while remaining in the country, etc., this is still not a very, very simple process. At the opposite end of that spectrum, you find who you could call the global elites who tend to, to have different residences across the world, etc. But these are sort of the two polarized group. In between, you have a much larger segment of the migrant population that could be could diverse middle classes, right, that occupy a range of position and have very different modes of integration into these urban societies. For example, a lot of my work has been looking at young Arabs, both Emiratis and Arab expatriates who grew up in Abu Dhabi and are coming of age in the 2010s. And these are, so a large part of this group were second, third, sometimes fourth generation to live in the Gulf. There were often children of parents who had been working in the public sector in Abu Dhabi, who had gone to public schools with Emiratis students who are whose friend groups or very diverse within this, this Arab population, and who had a very similar practices of the city, etc. Another important observation is that many of the assumptions that we make when we think about migrant integration, is that migrant are the minority group that is integrating into a dominant group, that's the majority of the population, and that's overlapping with the citizen population. But the Gulf sort of disrupts these assumptions because nationals are not the majority of the population, at least not in, in all Gulf countries. Whether or not they're the dominant group can be debated at many, many levels. And so, one thing I've been trying to argue throughout my work is that both migrants and citizens, in a sense have to integrate into these diverse urban environments.
Maggie Perzyna
Hélène, can you discuss any specific policies or initiatives that Saudi Arabia or other Gulf nations have implemented to facilitate this transition to a knowledge economy and manage the effects of migration patterns?
Hélène Thiollet
Going back to what Laure said earlier, I think one of the striking features of migration policies in the past decade is the increased selection of migrants based on their skills, and also the differential allocation of rights, notably right to family reunion, right to long term residents, according to skills or social class. So let me explain. Basically, it's the idea that migration governance and migration politics is becoming increasingly class based in the region, people with high social capital, high skills, and corresponding to what others have called, 'talent migration', will be given rights to settle, rights to bring their family and to participate to some sort of an integration. While low skill workers, for instance, in Saudi Arabia, workers were allowed to bring their family whatever their skill level until recently, and some years ago, a tax was introduced, that asked foreign workers to pay a flat tax on the resident permits of their family members. And by having a flat tax, you see what the outcome is, for someone who doesn't earn a lot of money, say a taxi driver for Pakistan, paying so much for his wife and his children is going to represent a large share of his income as opposed to someone who earns a lot of money, say a surgeon in a hospital and for whom the flat tax will not represent a large share of his income and oftentimes is being in included in a sort of salary package. So here, you see that there is a class based differential treatment of migrants when it comes to their rights to live with their family to set a long term is introducing something which is relatively new in Saudi Arabia, but has been existing for much longer time, in the UAE, in Qatar and other countries. And I see this as a sort of return of a very Marxist class-based differentiation treatment of the labour force.
Laure Assaf
Yeah, I think, you know, Hélène has very well explained how it is that the main consequence of this transition is essentially the reshaping of migration policies, along the lines of social class, wealth and skill. And these are, of course, very overlapping or intersecting categories. There have been numerous ways through which this shift has been illustrated in policies, with many Gulf countries implementing reforms to the Kafala system, notably through the use of longer-term visas, like the golden visas that were famously brought forward by the UAE a few years ago, that are meant to encourage certain categories of migrants to remain in the country. At the same time, I would say that some segments of the migrant population, especially within these middle classes that I was discussing, have been able to sort of use these refunds to their advantage. In particular, those second or third generation, who have had a form of I would say, education, or mobility or class mobility by comparison to their parents. So, who were able growing up in, in the UAE to be educated abroad, come back with the better passport and sort of take some of these know, highly favored trips.
Maggie Perzyna
Hélène, looking to the future and the evolving economic landscape and changing migration patterns. How do you think the political landscape in the Gulf region will be shaped by these changes?
Hélène Thiollet
Thank you for this question. And actually it is quite a difficult one. The question may be understood, I think in two ways, is migration impacting political trajectory of the Gulf? And to what extent the political trajectories of the Gulf will be severely reshaping migration patterns for the first parts. If the first understanding of this question. I think that actually, this long history of immigration to the region has impacted the history of societies and of politics. It has, but in a way that has not changed the rather illiberal nature of migration governance in the region. And the fact that rights are still not available for most foreigners in these regions, even though they are born in these countries, they remain foreigners and have a hard time accessing naturalization except on exceptional circumstances. So, there is an impact. But it doesn't translate into formal policy, the impact of the presence of long-term foreign population is something that you see more on the grounds at the city levels through the kinds of ethnographic observation, Laure and myself have been conducting. What we see Laure and I, is through ethnographic observation is that on the grounds in an urban neighborhood, you see interactions and integrations between second and third generation of people from migrant origin, integrated into local societies, especially in this diverse middle class that law was describing. But at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum among the poor segment of societies, and the richest, of course, the segregation is very, very high. Now, turning to the second part of the question, or the second understanding of the question, basically, is the political, you know, all the political changes observed at the top of the GCC state going to reshape entirely migration patterns? Well, we already mentioned that there was an attempt to diversify the origin of incoming migrants in the past decades, but still, what we observe in a national statistic is the overwhelming weight as emigration from the subcontinent, from India and from Pakistan in most of the smaller GCC states. And so, the ability to diversify origin of immigrants and migration geographies is actually very limited by sort of path dependencies of economies of economic networks and social networks. And it sort of shows the resilience and resistance of migration as a social process to the authoritarian ruling imposed by States.
Maggie Perzyna
Laure, what do you see looking into the future?
Laure Assaf
I fully second, what Hélène just said in the sense, first, that it's indeed very difficult to predict what's going to happen also, because a lot of these policies have changed very rapidly in the in the previous years. So, it's hard to know what's, going to come. I also second what Hélène said in the sense that I don't think there's going to be sort of deep changes in sort of, not migration policies, as we've discussed, but migration, politics, in in the Gulf, in the sense that there are clearly, the funds of sort of longer-term residents that are now offered to some categories of this migrant population. And this restructuration in terms of social class, and skill, and, and wealth, are clearly not accompanied by funds of political participation, or by further sort of formal integration of these foreigners into the states. I think, if anything, what's more likely to transform or what's already transforming as part of the transition to the knowledge economy and the process of economic diversification is actually the relationship between the state and its citizens. And that's these are processes that have happened, maybe earlier in in Gulf states that have larger citizen populations like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and also that have national population, they have sort of a wider, wider class differences across their national population. But it's a process that we are witnessing very clearly now in the UAE, which is essentially a slow disengagement on the part of the state from the type of welfare that it was offering its citizens before. And that's translated. I've looked particularly at the youth. And these this shift is, is translated in many injunctions to young Emiratis to join the private sector, for example, join specific fields in which the state is currently investing as part of this process of economic diversification. The sort of more typical or historical ways through which the state had redistributed the other end, which was through employment in the public sector, and in the in the states bureaucracy, is now portrayed in official discourse as sort of an easy path, and one that young citizens are not sort of encouraged to take anymore. They're either encouraged towards the vocabulary that is being used now is that of entrepreneurship, innovation, etc. So, I think it is in this in this relationship between the state and its population that that we see most of these changes are currently happening.
Maggie Perzyna
Thanks to Laure Assaf and Hélène Thiollet, for joining me today, and thank you for listening. This is a CERC migration podcast produced in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Borders & Belonging on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on the Gulf region moving from an oil to a knowledge economy, please visit the show notes. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening!