Abstract
Migrant workers have lived in the Arabian Peninsula for more than two centuries. Starting in the 1970s, however, the dynamics of migration flows to the Persian Gulf region took a new twist with the rise in oil prices and the development boom in the region’s newly independent countries. These changing dynamics were most notable in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).1 In 1968, the population of the UAE was 180,000, of which two-thirds were nationals and one-third migrants.2 By 2005, the UAE’s population had risen to 4.1 million, of which about 80 percent were migrants.3 The changing dynamics of migration flows to the region have triggered a debate over labor conditions and practices that violate the rights of migrant workers and subject them to modern day exploitation and abuse.
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Notes
According to the UAE’s National Bureau of Statistics, the first population census in the UAE was conducted in 1968 by the Council of Developing Trucial States. http://www.uaestatistics.gov.ae. Last accessed on June 28, 2010. Even then a large percentage was expatriate Persian. See Frauke Heard-Bey, “The Gulf in the 20th Century,” Asian Affairs, 33: 1, 3–17 (2002). See also
Fred Hallliday, “Labor Migration in the Middle East,” MERIP Reports, No. 59, pp. 3–17 (Aug., 1977);
Frauke Heard-Bey, “The United Arab Emirates: Statehood and Nation-Building in a Traditional Society,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No. 3, Democratization and Civil Society, pp. 357–375 (Summer 2005);
Onn Winckler, “The immigration policy of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 480–493 (1997).
John Lahad, “Dreaming a Common Dream, Living a Common Nightmare: Abuses and Rights of Immigrant Workers in the United States, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates,” Houston Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, p. 658 (2009).
Ryszard Cholewinski, Migrant Workers in International Human Rights Law: Their Protection in Countries of Employment. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, ch. 2.
Shari Garber Bax, Preface for the Journal of the Institute for Justice and International Studies (2005), p. vi.
Nisha Varia, “Sanctioned Abuses: The Case of Migrant Domestic Workers,” Human Rights Briefs, Vol. 14, No. 3, p. 17 (2007).
John King, Oil in the Middle East, Heinemann-Raintree Library, 2005, p. 16.
United Nations Minority Rights Group, “Migrant Workers in the Gulf,” Report No. 68, September 1985, p. 6.
Mohammad Shihab, “Economic Development in the UAE,” in United Arab Emirates: A New Perspective, ed. Paula Vine and Ibrahim Al Abed, London: Trident Press (2001), p. 253.
David Keane and Nicholas McGeehan, “Enforcing Migrant Workers’ Rights in the United Arab Emirates,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 15: 81–115 (2008).
John Lahad, “Dreaming a Common Dream, Living a Common Nightmare: Abuses and Rights of Immigrant Workers in the United States, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates,” Houston Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, p. 670 (2009).
Human Rights Watch, “Building Towers, Cheating Workers: Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in the United Arab Emirates,” November 11, 2006, available at http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2006/11/11/building-towers-cheating-workers-0. Last accessed on January 4, 2009.
See, for example, Richard Poulin, “Globalization and the sex trade: trafficking and the commodification of women and children,” Canadian Women’s Studies, Vol. 22, Nos. 3, 4; Susanne Kappler, “The International Slave Trade in Women, or Procurers, Pimps and Punters,” Law & Critique, Vol. 1, p. 219, 235 (1990);
Hilary Charlesworth et al., “Feminist Approaches to International Law,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 85, p. 613, 630 (1990); Ron Corben, “Asia-Rights: Open Borders Aid Sex Traffickers,” Inter Press Service, Dec. 28, 1997.
Luz Estella Nagle, “Selling Souls: The Effect of Globalization on Human Trafficking and Forced Servitude,” Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 26, Spring 2008, pp. 152–155.
Ron Soodalter, Keynote Address, “The Commodification of Human Beings: Exploring the Reality and Future of Modern Day Slavery,” Connecticut Journal of International Law, Vol. 25, Fall 1999, p. 40.
Ranee Khooshie Lal Panjabi, “Born Free Yet Everywhere in Chains: Global Slavery in the Twenty-First Century,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 37, Winter 2008, p. 2.
Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran, Hila Shamir, and Chantal Thomas, “From the International to the Local in Feminist Legal Responses to Rape, Prostitutional Work, and Sex Trafficking: Four Students in Contemporary Governance Feminism,” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Vol. 29, Summer 2006, p. 361.
John Willoughby, “Ambivalent Anxieties of the South Asia-Gulf Arab Labor Exchange,” in Globalization and the Gulf, ed. John W. Fox, Nada Mourtada-Sabbah, and Mohammed al-Mutawa. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 223–243; see especially p. 229.
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© 2011 Mahmood Monshipouri
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Monshipouri, M., Assareh, A. (2011). Migrant Workers and Their Rights in the United Arab Emirates. In: Monshipouri, M. (eds) Human Rights in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001986_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001986_13
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