Immigration vs. Population in the Gulf

“Capital-rich and labour-poor”. !is is how the curse of the Gulf States was described "#y years ago. !e world’s largest oil stocks had just been discovered under the earth’s most arid and depopulated region. With oil internationally recognised as the property of the state and not of the company that did the pumping, the scarcely populated states of the Gulf acquired enormous wealth. From the largest and oldest (Saudi Arabia) to the tiniest and youngest (Qatar), all six Gulf states soon faced income surpluses with population shortages, to which they all responded by importing labour. In just "ve decades, the Gulf, which for centuries had received only small population $ows, became the world’s third largest receiver of global migrants a#er the United States and the European Union. !e way in which these nascent nations would incorporate massive numbers of newcomers into the workplace but not into their societies is a unique feature of the Gulf.