Hélène Thiollet

Migration as Diplomacy: Labor Migrants, Refugees, and Arab Regional Politics in the Oil-Rich Countries

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.

The Regional Politics of Labour Import in the Gulf Monarchies

The world’s highest ratio of migrants to national population is to be found in the Middle East,1 and the region is one of the most fascinating arenas in which to observe international migration flows, both regionally and internationally. The growth of migrant labour in the Middle East was both rapid and massive and was directly linked to the development of the oil economy in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf and also marginally to forced migration that triggered displacement at the regional level. Interestingly, mobility in the case of the Middle East generally intertwines labour migration and refugee flows: from Palestine, Sudan and Iraq and, since 2011, Syrian refugees have found refuge in neighbouring countries. Refugees and labour migrants are often counted together in national statistics and censuses. The number of migrants in the region rose from 800,000 to 1.8 million between 1970 and 1975.2 In the 1980s, the Middle East became the largest market for migrant labour the world has ever known, and just before the 1991 Gulf War the oil-rich states of the Arab Gulf taken together accommodated more than seven million migrants, five million of whom were workers (Stanton Russell and Teitelbaum, 1992).