Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf

by Omar AlShehabi, Omar AlShehabi (Editor), Adam Hanieh (Editor)

The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar) form the largest destination for labour migration in the global South. In all of these states, however, the majority of the working population is composed of temporary, migrant workers with no citizenship rights.

The cheap and transitory labour power these workers provide has created the prodigious and extraordinary development boom across the region, and neighbouring countries are almost fully dependent on the labour markets of the Gulf to employ their working populations. For these reasons, the Gulf takes a central place in contemporary debates around migration and labour in the global economy.

This book attempts to bring together and explore these issues. The relationship between ‘citizen’ and ‘non-citizen’ holds immense significance for understanding the construction of class, gender, city and state in the Gulf, however too often these questions are occluded in too scholarly or overly-popular accounts of the region. Bringing together experts on the Gulf, Transit States confronts the precarious working conditions of migrants in a accessible, yet in-depth manner.

Genres: Nonfiction, Middle East

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 2014

Reviews

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of chapters by various scholars of political economy / labour / migration in relation to the Gulf. The book flowed very smoothly despite the wide range of themes discussed in relation to migration and migrants in the Gulf. At the end of it, it was nice to go back and tie together what previously seemed to be unrelated types of migrations to the gulf, and their implications on both migrants and receiving societies. I especially enjoyed the chapters linking various spatial perspectives (that of Harvey, Massey, Lefebvre) to migration, the use and appropriation of urban space, and urban segmentation / commodification in the Gulf. The one chapter that was quite uncomfortable in digesting was Neha Vora's attempt at normalizing a comparison between labour camps (for construction workers) and expert camps (for European / N. American expats working in Qatar's Education City). I understand the need for a counter-narrative to the mainly 'economic / market-based' or 'top-down / exploitation-related' models to understand migration to the Gulf, but her comparison was quite over-reaching.

[Raya Al-Raddadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب ممتاز يقدم مجموعة مقالات من زوايا مختلفة عن موضوع العمالة في الخليج ونظام الكفيل. المميز فيه أنه يطرح الموضوع من خلال سياق أوسع عالمي للسوق وعلاقات القوى ولا يقيّد تحليلاته بالسياق الخليجي فقط ولكنه في الوقت نفسه لاينكر خصوصيته.