Foreign Labor and Identity Issues in the Gulf

Volume 1|Issue 3| Winter 2013 |Theme of the Issue

Abstract

Many studies see that the size of the foreign labor force in Gulf societies will one day lead to the loss of identity. The large number of ethnically diverse settlements of foreigners represent in reality societies not connected to the existing political, social, and cultural environment, given their links with their original societies in India, Pakistan, Iran, the Philippines, the Arabs states, and elsewhere. These settlements, due to their major presence, represent groups who differ in terms of their customs, traditions, languages, and cultures from the host societies in the Gulf. In some of their activities and economic investments and monetary remittances they are strongly linked with the home countries in Asia and around the world. In fact, attempts to grant some groups of migrant workers the nationality of the GCC host country failed to absorb them as a result of the absence of social policy in general. They remain linked to their migrant ethic groups and their home countries more than to the local population in the host country, or tend to form Indian, Iranian, Arab, or Chinese ethnic ghettos.

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Professor of Sociology at the University of Bahrain. His research focuses on social issues in the Gulf region. Prior to that he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, England. He obtained his PhD in Sociology from Durham University, England in 1983.

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