Indians in the Gulf: The Other Side of the Story
Part I: Trends, Opportunities and Increasing Population
By Priyansha Singh and Mohammed Ameen Arimbra
This is Part I of a two-series blog where we make an attempt to understand the impact of migration on the Gulf countries. We look at the patterns and trends in labour migration to the Gulf specifically from India and then compare it with migration from other countries to the Gulf. We then look at the impact of labour migration on the social, economic, and political circumstances of the Gulf countries.
Part II of the series will look at how locals in Gulf countries themselves enjoy limited rights, the perceptions of locals towards migrants, and how the factors discussed in Part I become the drivers of restrictive policy regimes in Gulf countries.
Migration from India to the Gulf countries often dominates the public discourse around migration in India. But the Gulf destination perspective is often missing. This lopsided understanding is partially due to the sensitivity and opaqueness of Gulf regimes towards migration issues. Inadequate data and suppression of journalistic and academic scholarship on migration have also contributed to the one-sided understanding of the Indian diaspora in the Gulf.
Around 8.5 million Indians live and work in the Gulf countries, one of the largest concentrations of migrants in the world. The geographical and historical proximity of the Arabian Peninsula to India makes it a convenient destination for Indians, and today migrants from across India are working and living in the Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait).
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), India is one of the two top sources of origin countries (apart from the Philippines) of migrants to the Gulf countries. These migrants serve as an important source of income for India through the transfer of remittances whilst also playing an important role in the economic development of the Gulf States.
Migration of Indian workers to the Gulf increased after the oil boom of the 1970s. The numbers grew steadily as the Gulf economies expanded exponentially in the decades to follow. The Gulf initiated its policy of inviting foreign workers because of a small local workforce. Gulf countries were particularly interested in recruiting more labourers from India and other South Asian countries due to South Asian workers’ readiness to accept poorly renumerated low skilled jobs.
South Asian workers did not demand political rights nor interfered in the political and cultural spheres of the Gulf countries, which was significant for the ruling elites to stabilise their power and authority. In return, the Gulf regimes allowed labour migrants (both skilled and unskilled) to be pillars of construction, oil and other integral sectors of their economies.
The scale of migration to the Gulf is so high that Asian, Western and non-Gulf Arab migrants collectively comprise the majority share of the Gulf population — almost 70 per cent of the total workforce. Over time, as Gulf economies have developed, hosting such a large foreign population, has had implications for the GCC states in the social, political and economic spheres and now policies are being pushed to create a ‘De-Arabised labour market’.
Migration from South Asia
To understand the magnitude of Indian migration to the Gulf, it is important to compare it with migration from other South Asian countries. According to the UNDESA Migration Report 2017, out of the total 28 million foreign workers in the Gulf countries, 16.9 million (60 %) comprise workers from South Asia. In total, 31.5 % of migrants are from India, followed by Bangladesh (11 %), Pakistan (10.8 %), Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan. Other than these South Asian countries, the Philippines is another major source of foreign workers. (Table below)
Indian workers encompassed the largest share of residency visas issued in Kuwait in 2011, they also constitute nearly 50% of the foreign workforce in the private sector of Oman and were the largest group among migrants in the UAE. As per the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, in 2016 out of total 6 million Indians residing in GCC countries, Saudi Arabia had the highest number of overseas Indians, followed by UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and others respectively. (see figures below)
Trends in labour migration to the Gulf
From the various studies analysing labour migration to Gulf countries, some of the key emerging trends are:
- Increase in the proportion of foreign workers over the last two decades despite concerted efforts and policies to decrease the number of non-nationals in the population and labour force through an indigenisation process of the workforce.
- About two-thirds of all migrant work-forces consist of men while the rest are women.
- More than half of the male migrants engage in low-skilled occupations in the production and labour occupational category, or in the service sector.
- A large majority of “Asian female migrants” are concentrated in a single occupation, domestic service. Other than that, they work mainly as nurses, receptionists and hospitality-related jobs.
- Dependence on domestic workers has been on the rise in all GCC countries and this pool of workers comprises about 10 % of the total population in some countries such as Kuwait.
- A negligible proportion of low-skilled migrants are accompanied by their spouses and children, even though a high proportion of them (70–80 %) are married.
Migration to the GCC countries is termed “temporary” but in practice many workers live in the Gulf for several years, expanding the pool of second and third-generation migrants. While Saudi Arabia has several restrictions in practising religion or building a Hindu temple or a Christian church, some countries like UAE and Bahrain are more ‘open’ societies with the freedom to exercise cultural norms or values of the migrant communities. However, the overall socio-cultural interaction or integration of migrant communities in the Gulf countries has been absent or limited.
Profile of Indian Migrants in the Gulf
A large number, around 70 % of Indians, work as labourers or technicians in the construction sector, as domestic servants and drivers. However, there has been an increasing trend of skilled and highly skilled migration in the past decade.
If we look at the regional pattern in the migration of Indian workers, a shift in trend can be observed: During the initial phase of labour migration from India to the Gulf, workers were predominantly from Kerala but recently Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have emerged as leading source states of labour emigration.
While migration from Uttar Pradesh is largely driven by low skilled labourers, more skilled and educated labour can be seen migrating from Kerala. The trend of labour migration from India to the Gulf countries is shifting from states like Kerala, Telangana and Tamil Nadu to states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This can clearly be observed in the emigration clearance data published by the Ministry of External Affairs. The figures below represent this shift over time:
Impact of large scale labour migration: the destination perspective
During the last four decades, the percentage of non-nationals has steadily increased in the six GCC countries. Currently, almost half (48.1 %) of the combined GCC population consists of non-nationals. Therefore, in this section, we look at the various impacts that this large scale labour migration has had on the GCC countries.
- Changing Demography
Since the discovery of oil, GCC countries have transformed themselves from tribal kingdoms into modern states. This process has been triggered by rapid population growth. The population of GCC states has grown more than eight times during 50 years, from 4 million in 1950 to 40 million in 2006, making it one of the highest growing populations in the world. This massive rise has not been caused by the natural growth of the indigenous population but by the inflow of foreign workers.
Consequently, unlike in European countries, where foreign workers have only complemented the national workforce, usually by filling lower-status jobs, in the GCC states they have become the primary, dominant labour force in most sectors of the economy. The percentage of foreigners in the GCC population has systematically grown over the last 50 years, increasing from 31 % in 1975 to over 38 % in the mid-1990s, levelling, and diminishing slightly at the beginning of the 2000s, only to grow again in the later years.
However, this growth of the foreign labour force is not constant in all the GCC countries. In Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, foreigners constituted a majority; in the United Arab Emirates, they accounted for over 80 % of the population. However, Oman and Saudi Arabia have a relatively low proportion of foreigners, about 30 %, as they are large countries with a significant native population. This difference in the proportion of the foreign population has been a major determinant of policies in the GCC countries.
2. Economic Impact
Over the decades, nationals have developed an unwillingness to perform manual work or to engage in the private sector, although they have been very attracted to jobs in the public sector. Therefore, large scale migration has led to a kind of ‘work apartheid’ in sectors employing nationals and non-nationals. For example, a study by Shah on Kuwait points out that “it would socially be almost unimaginable that a Kuwaiti woman could work as a domestic helper in another Kuwaiti’s home. Hence, certain occupations have come to be defined as culturally appropriate only for non-Kuwaitis, and nationals would be greatly reluctant to take them up”.
A study conducted in 2013 on Saudi Arabia observes that foreign workers are largely employed in the construction sector, retail and wholesale, with a minority of them in household domestic services (15%). In Qatar also, an overwhelming majority of migrant workers are employed in the construction sector (see Graph below). In Bahrain as well, the construction sector remains the top employer of the foreign labour force, especially Asian migrants (80% in 2010).
3. Socio-cultural Impact
Asian workers are cheaper and flexible, but more importantly, Asian migrants are not considered dangerous politically. Migrant communities and the native population grow and exist as two different entities with little scope for cultural or political integration. However, there are some studies that indicate the impact of domestic workers on living arrangements and care of elderly persons in the Gulf countries. It has been observed, for example, that the probability of nucleation of families is aided by the presence of domestic workers in Kuwait.
The surge in both oil prices and production scale on the one hand and the small national populations on the other transformed the GCC countries within a short period of time into pure “rentier states” with oil revenues amounting to 80% (and in some cases even higher) of the total governmental revenues. A major tool for distributing the oil income to the indigenous populations was through public sector employment with high salaries and luxury work conditions. Hence, the political implication of the rentier state was “no taxation and no representation.”
The end result was the creation of a dual labour market with nationals employed almost exclusively in the public sector while the vast majority of the foreign workers were employed in the private sector.
Despite playing an important role in building their economies, the issue of immigrant rights has been largely ignored by the GCC. Currently, migrants enjoy few, if any, of the civil, political, or social rights associated with citizenship i.e. are offered no integration possibilities. In the next part of this blog, we understand the historical and political contexts in the Gulf determining immigrant outcomes.
- The authors are researchers at India Migration Now, a migration data, policy and research agency based in Mumbai.
