Temporary labour migration to United Arab Emirates: a complex story

Abstract

In this study, we take a point of departure in two recently available large quantitative sources of data from the United Arab Emirates(UAE) in order to analyse social and economic aspects of temporary labour migration to the country. We attempt to present a nuanced and broad-scale description of social and economic situation of labour immigrants in the UAE. The results paint a rather complex picture. On one hand, immigrant workers are often low-paid and harshly treated, on the other there are opportunities for economic advancement for many of them. We conclude that, although far from being a neo-liberal utopia, the UAE does provide better opportunities for millions of immigrants. Life in the country is harsh for many of immigrants but it is less harsh than the alternatives they have in home countries. Regarding the UAE citizens, they surely are or will be facing economic challenges due to massive immigration, but the country has experienced the levels of economic development that would be unimaginable without a large-scale immigration. Thus, the immigration experience of the UAE has so far largely been a win-win situation, for both natives and immigrants.

Keywords:

• Immigrants
• UAE
• wages
• occupations

Notes

1. Authors own calculation based on data from Table 1.1 in Kamrava and B. (2012, p. 8).

2. Estimated number of immigrants in Saudi Arabia is about 10 million. For more details about size of foreign-born populations in GCC countries, see Valenta (2017). One of the smallest GCC countries, Qatar, has a proportion of immigrants that is approaching the one of the UAE (76%), but the total population of the country is only about 2 million (all population estimates are from United Nations, 2016).

3. We do analyse the wages of this sector using Labour Force Survey data.

4. The UAE Dirham(AED) has been pegged to the U.S. dollar at the approximate exchange rate of 1 US$ = 3.67 AED since November 1997 (Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, 2005).

5. Conditions in these camps, while generally modest, vary considerably; perhaps from acceptable to very harsh. There has been much criticism of the conditions in the labour camps (cf. Human Rights Watch, 2006; Kanna, 2007). The living conditions have arguably improved in many of labour camps in the UAE, but the federal structure of the country combined with employers’ economic interests makes consistent imposition of acceptable minimum standards of living conditions in the camps difficult.

6. Although the small group of OECD immigrants has income that is actually higher than the one of nationals.

7. Kafala system is sponsorship-based system for recruitment of migrant workers, requiring workers to have an in-country sponsor (‘kafeel’) and tying workers to sponsor, making change of job difficult.