Immigration in Qatar & GCC multiplying at a fast rate
Today some 232 million people — 3 percent of the world's population — live outside their country of birth. The magnitude and complexity of international migration makes it an important force in development and a high-priority issue for both, the receivers and the senders.
West Asia was the world's third biggest receiver of migrants in 2005-10, with the GCC countries in the lead. In UAE and Qatar net migration flows reached new record numbers, as a stock data study of Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital very appealingly shows.
The GCC countries and most notably Qatar, UAE and Kuwait, have for some time been the largest per capita immigration recipients in the world.
Since 1970, temporary labour immigration has been used by all the GCC countries to compensate for small populations, low participation rates and -to extent- missing skills. The highest annual growth rate took place during the period of 1975-1985.
With booming economies owing to oil industry, immigration into the GCC countries continued to increase throughout the period 2000—2012 (since 2000, the total GCC labour force has increased from 11.3 m to 46.2 m in 2011) and the influx of foreign workers is expected to continue for a long time.
In last years, Dubai and Qatar have become the major recipients of the foreign labour due to their growing construction sector. Expatriates constitute over 95% of all labour force in the two countries.
Migration in and out of the GCC countries is nothing new. It all started with the discovery of oil reserves in 1930′s and continues to this day. But with time the trends changed. Initial migration flows happened almost exclusively within borders of Arab world and Arab nationalities.
In 1975, nearly 70 percent of foreign workers were Arab and the rest mainly from Asia, with a small percent of skilled occidental workers.
The proportion of Arab workers declined throughout the 1980s and the 1990s as they were being replaced by increasing variety of nationalities (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand).
To know more on Global Migration Flow, visit bqdoha.com.
Photo: Michel
