Highly Skilled Migration to the Gulf in Comparative Perspective

This research project revisits some of the fundamental assumptions about the nature, patterns, and processes of labor migration to the GCC states. Given their own relatively small populations in tandem with their oil-derived, wealthy Gulf States have depended on migration to facilitate their rapid industrialization. The cities of the Gulf thus articulate the transnational organizational and social networks of skilled migration, spatially embedded within expatriate social spaces. Notably highly skilled migrants in certain sectors–for example, extraction, construction, banking and financial services–have enabled these states’ relatively swift integration into the global economy.