marichiko

Quite a few people, actually. The Middle East is not all about war torn Iraq or Palestine. Its also about countries and sheikdoms which have become VERY wealthy off of oil money. People from the poorer countries of Africa and S.E. Asia have been immigrating their in droves to face often miserable working conditions and a hostile native population (sound familiar?) There was recently a huge strike by migrant workers in Dubai over draconian treatment and low wages. (Dubai Ports, anyone?)

The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) is an autonomous UN agency engaging in multidisciplinary research on the social dimensions of contemporary problems affecting development.

From a recent UNRISD report:

The major influx of foreign workers into the Middle East began following the oil price boom in 1973, which resulted in an enormous surge of wealth for the Arab Gulf states (United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC). The Gulf countries were faced with grand development plans and the funds to pay for them, but with a totally inadequate workforce: the GCC countries had a combined workforce of only 1.36 million. Initially, both skilled and unskilled workers from other Arab countries (principally Egyptians, Yemenis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Sudanese) and from Asia (mainly Pakistanis and Indians) almost doubled the populations of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait within the decade between 1975 and 1985. By the early 1980s, an increasing number of migrants were recruited from Southeast Asia. Until the end of the 1980s, these comprised over half of the Asian migration to the Middle East.

In 1985, oil prices fell rapidly, prompting a cutback in infrastructure development in the Gulf states, and migration from Asia dropped by almost one-third. This fall was less severe because of the growth in employment in the service sector, which absorbed large numbers of workers, especially women from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines. At the same time, the numbers of expatriate migrants from other Arab states were being reduced, as often for political reasons as for economic.

Unlike the Arab sending countries, Asian governments pursued active policies
for overseas employment, partly to alleviate unemployment and partly to generate foreign income. Their labour force became a major export item that generated considerable earnings. For example, in 1999 total remittances to Sri Lanka from workers abroad totalled $1 billion, which constituted around 20 per cent of foreign goods imports for the previous year and more than the trade deficit of $0.7 billion.

As increasing numbers of “cheap” foreign workers from Asian and African countries have fulfilled the demand for unskilled workers, so the particular kinds of jobs found in the secondary labour markets have become racialized. That is, the dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs become associated with foreign (Asian and African) workers to such a degree that nationals in these countries refuse to undertake them, despite high levels of poverty and unemployment.

If the above weren't bad enough, there have been reports of children as young as two years old being kidnapped to function as camel jockies in the highly popular Arab sport of camel racing. These children are captured by local gangs in their home countries and sold as slaves to the Middle East Camel Racing crowd. Once the children become too old (and too heavy) to make good jockies anymore, they face an existance as low paid stable hands at best, being dumped back into the nearest poor country whether that's where they originated from or not, or even being imprisoned as illegal immigrants.