Introduction

International labour migration is defined as the movement of people from one

country to another for the purpose of employment. Today, an estimated 105
million persons are working in a country other than their country of birth. Labour
mobility has become a key feature of globalization and the global economy with
migrant workers earning US$ 440 billion in 2011, and the World Bank estimating
that more than $350 billion of that total was transferred to developing countries in
the form of remittances. However, despite the efforts made to ensure the
protection of migrant workers, many remain vulnerable and assume significant
risks during the migration process.
Migration may be individuals, family units or in large groups. Migrant workers
contribute to the economies of their host countries, and the remittances they send
home help to boost the economies of their countries of origin. Yet at the same time
today's migrant workers face many challenges - poor conditions of work,
discrimination, little social protection and vulnerability to exploitation and human
trafficking.
The First and Second World Wars, and wars, genocides, and crises sparked by
them, had an enormous impact on migration. Muslims moved from the Balkan to
Turkey, while Christians moved the other way,

Definition of migrant workerA person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a
remunerated activity in a state of which he or she is not a national.
(UN Convention, 2003)
Movement of persons from one State to another, or within their own country
of residence, for the purpose of employment. Labour migration is addressed
by most States in their migration laws. In addition, some States take an
active role in regulating outward labour migration and seeking opportunities
for their nationals abroad.
(ILO Migration for Employment Convention)

Reasons for Migration

The Major Cause for voluntary migration is economic.
Migration flows are generally from economically backward or stagnating areas to
prosperous or dynamic areas. It tends to be largely from comparatively less
developed countries to developed countries like US.
Demand Driven Market: Influenced by Laws of Demand and Supply.
Economic growth and development in state + Demand for Labour +Excess
Of Supply= Demand Driven Market.
Higher Wages and Better Standard Of Living: The Basic Reason For People
Migrating to Developed countries is to earn more wages or salaries and
enjoys a better standard of living the important economic factors that are
motivate migration may be grouped as push and pull factor.
Population pressures
Disparity in lifestyles between developed and
developing nations
Political conflict
Poverty
Growing urbanization
Increased linkages because of globalization
Access to cheap transportation
Search for better economic opportunities
Better medical care
Job opportunities
Better living conditions
The feeling of having more political and/or religious freedom
Education
Better medical care
Family links

 Political and Religious Causes: History shows that some Of international

migration which took place in 19th century were motivated by the desire to
escape political and religious operations like in the case of Europe
Foreign direct investment from emigrants back to their countries of origin
such as Indians who convinced their company to extend their operations to
India.
Better Education: Migration takes place for educational purpose. The Desire
to improve the qualifications, quality education and better prospects
motivate people to migrate to develop countries.
Of the 200 million international migrants, 50 per cent are women and men migrant
workers who have left their homes and communities to find work and better
opportunities elsewhere in the world to support their families and communities.
While the full impact of the crisis on migrant workers is yet to unfold, there are
reports of direct layoffs, worsening working conditions including wage cuts,
increasing returns, and reductions in immigrant intakes.
There is strong push from developing countries to further liberalized labour market
for many benefits. Workers within developing country benefits from migration of
local workers as the out flow of labour causes the supply of labour to decreases
which in turn causes in real wages

Conditions of Migrant Labour

In terms of employment, construction is the largest employment sector in India
after agriculture. Most of the employees in construction are migrants. The working
hours are from sunrise to sunset. The working day for women often stretches from
14 to 16 hours, combining house work and work on site where women are paid Rs.
60-70 a day while men are paid Rs.100-175. Masons earn up to Rs.175-250 a day.
Work places are unsafe. Workers have no social security, compensation for injuries,
access to drinking water and health care. India has the world's highest accident rate
among construction workers. A recent study by the International Labour
Organization shows that 165 out of every 1,000 workers are injured on the job.
There are 20 million domestic workers mostly migrants from rural India. Regular
streams of new migrants leave behind scorched fields and emaciated families in the
tribal belts of Bihar, Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam, and Mizoram for
Mumbai, Delhi and other Metros. They are desperate to join the army of domestic
workers. They are willing to work for much less than those who are already
working. They are victims of constant verbal and sexual abuse and work without
any grievance mechanisms. Their situation is made worse by local governments
brutal eviction drives dislocating and destabilizing the lives of the very people
without whom the cities would come to a crippling halt. Further, they have to live
in make-shift tents with plastic covers. They are forced to bathe and defecate out in
the open. As they are migrant workers, they do not possess Public Distribution
System (PDS) Cards and hence are forced to buy food grains and kerosene at
higher than market prices. The ruling elite which consider child labour a menace
little realize that it is a natural consequence of migrations.
Migration can be of two types

I)
II)

internal migration or
international migration.

When people migrate within the same country or region is called Internal
migration. For example, moving from Maharashtra to Karnataka. When people
migrate from one country to another then it is called International migration. For
example, moving from India to the USA. People migrate for many different
reasons. These reasons can be classified as follows,
1. Economic migration - moving to find work or follow a particular career path.
When people are interested in a particular job and if it is available, in that case
people are motivated to move to that area.
2. Political migration - Individuals prefer to stay in peace. When there is constant
fear of war people move to escape political harassment or war.
3. Social migration - People also move due to social factors like the urge to have a
better quality of life or to be closer to family or friends.
4. Environmental causes of migration include natural disasters such as flooding,
earthquakes, famines, highly polluted area which adversely affects the health of the
individuals.

Push and Pull Factors of Migration:

 Push factors: Due to lack of services, lack of safety, high crime, crop failure,
drought, flooding, poverty, war people leave an area it is known as Push factors.
Pull factors: Due to higher employment, more wealth, better services, good
climate, safer, less crime, political stability, more fertile land, people attracted
towards a particular country is known as Pull factor.
Migration usually happens as a result of a combination of these push and pull
factors.

Main Causes of Migration:

1) Poor living conditions:

Roughly two thirds of the worlds population today lives in economically poor
countries. The growing gap between rich and poor is the most significant driving
force for global migration.
Many leave their homes due to lack of arable land, food, water, work or other
fundamental requirements. In 1960 the income of the richest fifth of the worlds
population was on average 30 times higher than the poorest fifth. By the year 1990
it was already 60 times higher.
2) The high rate of population growth:
The high rate of population growth and the poor perspectives for economic
development in some regions leads to migration. In some countries, debts absorb a
major part of the economic power. Falling raw material prices as well as the
customs barriers and import restrictions imposed by the industrialized countries
prevent the development of viable export industries. Unstable economic policy, a
lack of legal stability and widespread corruption discourage investors and concerns
from locating their long-term industrial projects in such countries.
3) Violence and the abuse of power force people to flee:
People who are affected by conflicts and violence conflicts mostly flee in large
numbers to safe regions in their native land or in a neighbouring country. In order
to prevent unrest, hunger, disease and other problems, they are frequently
accommodated in refugee camps.

4) Tourism, television and the Internet:

These factors also enhance the attractiveness of migration. They make the poorest
aware of the wealth of the rich. The poor people are attracted by the wealth of the
rich nations which motivates people to move.
5) Better living standard:
Migration to advanced countries provides better employment opportunities to the
people which motivate the people to migrate. Higher income leads to not only
improvement in the standard of living of the migrant, but even there is
improvement in the standard of living of the family members due to the remittance
of the migrants.
6) Education:
When the educational standards in a country are high, people with higher income
are induced to move the host countries so that they can provide better educational
facilities for their children.

The effects of labour mobility (migration) can be studied in the following two
categories:

Positive Effects of Migration:

1. Wage Effect:
Labourers usually migrate from low wage countries to higher wage nations. Such
movement of labour leads to changes in wages in both countries unless it is
prevented or guarded by law. The effect of migration can be explained with the
following diagram:
2. Effect on Skilled and Unskilled labour:
Countries where there are shortages of skilled and unskilled labour will benefit
when there is movement of labour from other country to that country. Labour can
be productively employed who can contribute to economic development in a
positive manner.
3. Effect on Unemployment:
Emigration enables some countries to relieve their excess manpower and
unemployment. The emigrant labour force forms a significant portion of the total
labour force of several countries. In some of the European countries, emigrations
helped to reduce employment demand which otherwise could not have absorbed
domestically.
4. Remittance:
Emigrant remits a part of their income back to the native country for their families.
It helps the home country to reduce their balance of payment problem and increase
investment at home, import capital goods and promote development of the home
country. Remittance from developed and developing economies with higher levels
of per capita income, have become an increasingly important source of external

10

development finance. Remittance rose steadily in the 1990s, reaching more

than$60 billion in 2001.
5. Emigration has enabled some countries to relive their excess manpower and
unemployment. Large migration streams have caused wage increase in the labour
sending countries.
6. Quality education and better job opportunity are the important benefits which
many migrants enjoyed. the last decades witnessed a large no. of students
migrating to U.S.A, Canada.
7. Higher remuneration and Better Employment prospects.
8. Inflow of emigrant Remittances.
A benefit to the manpower exporting countries is the inflow of emigrant
Remittances. A number of countries receives huge amounts of remittances.

Negative Effects of Migration:

1. Brain Drain:

11

Flight of human capital, more commonly referred to as brain drain. It is the largescale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge.
The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from countries
and individuals.
In terms of countries, the reasons may be social environment (in source countries:
lack of opportunities, political instability, economic depression, health risks, etc.;
in host countries: rich opportunities, political stability and freedom, developed
economy, better living conditions, etc.).
In terms of individual reasons, there are family influences (overseas relatives), and
personal preference: preference for exploring, ambition for an improved career, etc.
Brain drain is often associated with de-skilling of emigrants in their country of
destination, while the country of emigration experiences the draining of skilled
individuals.
2. Illegal immigrants:
It is a serious problem in many countries India, USA, and Canada. It may take
place due to political, economic, social and religious factors. Changes in the ethnic
composition of the population can have socio-political repercussions. It can create
social tensions.
3. Problem of social integration:
Immigrants belong to different countries, religion, race, colour, culture. Social
assimilation with the people of host countries becomes difficult in the initial stages
due to colour, religion and cultural difference. At times ethnic and religious
differences create a problem for the host country as it happens in UK and India.
4. Fiscal imbalance:

12

When immigrants constitute in large numbers, the host country requires spending
huge amount of capital to provide the required economic and social infrastructure.
As some immigrants settle down permanently, the government as to spend greater
amount on social security benefits. Expenditure on all these counts may create
fiscal imbalance in the form of increase budgetary deficit.
5. Rise in Wages.
A very important negative effect was reduce supply of labour in labour supplying
country and rise in wages large scale migration of skilled and semi-skilled workers
can adversely affect an exporting country.
6. Socio-Political Effects.
International migration also has important social and political implications.
Migration result in changes in ethnic composition of population. This can have
socio-political repercussions. It may lead to social tension and the social
acceptability may create some problems. Religious and cultural difference may
make the migrant misfits and these difference can culminate in fights and antisocial activities.
7. Illegal migration.
At most all the countries are facing the problem of illegal migration. Developed
Countries like U.S.A Canada Australia face this problem.

LABOUR MIGRATION
INDIA TO GULF COUNTRIES

13

Introduction

14

Indians moved to the Gulf in large numbers following the oil boom of the 1970s,
and their numbers grew further as the economies of the GCC statesBahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
expanded in the following decades.
Although Indians manned the clerical and technical positions of the oil companies
in the Gulf after oil was discovered in the region during the 1930s, the over all
numbers were still small. Between 1948 and the early 1970s, these numbers
gradually increased from about 1,400 to 40,000. When large scale development
activities started following the 1973 spurt in oil prices in the six Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) countries of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the
UAE, an upsurge in the flow of workers and labourers began from India to the
Gulf. As of date, there are approximately 6 million Indians living and working in
the six Gulf states. Not only are they the second largest overseas Indian community
situated in a geographical region, they also remit more than one-third of the annual
$69 billion remittances by the Indian expatriates to India. Collectively, they also
outnumber expatriates from other individual countries in the region. Indians, along
with other migrants to the region, benefited from the Gulf states policy of inviting
foreign manpower in order to offset the mismatch between the availability of local
workforce and the requirement to sustain the rapid modernization of these
economies. Labour market in these economies, with Asian, Western and non-Gulf
Arab migrants collectively comprising a significant share of the labour market. The
presence of migrants comprising almost 70 per cent of the total workforce in the
GCC, thus, has profound implications for the GCC states in the social, political,
economic and cultural spheres.
All the GCC member countries have initiated steps for nationalisation, to reduce
the share of immigrants in population and labour force with varying degrees of

15

effectiveness. Though nationalisation polices were initiated in the early 1980s, the
last few years have seen an increasing intensity in the implementation of such
policies. This can partly be attributed to the global economic slowdown. The role
of factors such as the demographic changes occurring in most of the Gulf countries
and the increase in the numbers of educated young native people entering the
labour market cannot be denied. Some nationalisation strategies adopted by the
Gulf countries include: restricting the entry of migrants in certain sectors;
prescribing quotas on the employment of non-natives; reserving the major share
of public sector jobs for nationals; strict implementation of immigration rules;
increasing the skill levels of native workers; and increasing the cost of hiring and
living of foreign workers (Shah, 2008). From viewing labour flow as a
satisfactory/too low in 1976, all Gulf countries except Bahrain have found the
migration levels to be too high and have initiated policies to lower it by 2009
(Table 4).
Table 4. Immigration Policies of GCC Countries
Country
Bahrain

1976
View
www

2009
Policy

View

Policy

Satisfactory

Maintain

Satisfactory

Maintain

Kuwait

Satisfactory

Maintain

Too High

Lower

Oman

Satisfactory

Maintain

Satisfactory

Maintain

Qatar

Satisfactory

Maintain

Too High

Lower

Too Low

Raise

Too High

Lower

Satisfactory

Maintain

Too High

Lower

Saudi Arabia
UAE

It is often perceived that wages and working conditions in EU countries are much
better than those offered in the Gulf. Over the years, the wage rates for low skill

16

occupations have stagnated in the Gulf and for a low skilled migrant worker from
high migration prevalence regions in India, say, Kerala, wages in the Gulf are
increasingly less attractive. In the EU even minimum wages would be higher in
comparison with the average in India or even in the Gulf, as they are either
determined by the State or through collective bargaining. In most of the EU
countries under consideration, low skilled migrant workers are guaranteed nondiscrimination vis--vis native workers. While in Poland and Italy the rights of
workers are not dependent on skill levels, in countries like UK and Spain, the skill
of the workers is considered while examining, for example, their right for family
reunification.

Indian Migrants in the Gulf: A Profile

17

While Indians have always been present in West Asia, the last 40 years have seen
large-scale migration of Indian nationals to the region seeking job opportunities,
especially to the Gulf states. Initially comprising primarily of unskilled and semiskilled labour, this expatriate community is steadily encompassing small but
growing numbers of skilled and professional migrants.
The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA),the nodal ministry dealing with
the Indian diaspora, estimates that approximately 6 million Indians live and work
in West Asia, mostly in the GCC countries. Of the approximately 22 million
overseas Indians(including non-resident Indians [NRIs] as well as people of Indian
origin[PIOs]), those in the Gulf comprise the second largest expatriate Indian
community in any single region in the world, with South-East Asia accounting for
the maximum.
Indians in GCC States
Country

Population (2012)

Number of Indians (2012)

Bahrain

1,248,348

350,000

Kuwait

2,646,314

579,390

Oman

3,090,150

718,642

Qatar

1,951,591

500,000

Saudi Arabia

26,534,504

1,789,000

UAE

5,314,317

1,750,000

18

Indian migrants in the GCC states can be divided into the following categories:
1.unskilled workers, employed in construction companies, municipalities,
agricultural farms and as domestic workers;
2.skilled and semi-skilled workers;
3.professionals, such as doctors, engineers, accountants, nurses and paramedics,
employed in government and private sectors; and
4.businessmen/entrepreneurs.

Five phases of Migration to Gulf

19

The first phase in the modern history of migration to the Gulf occurred in the
period prior to the 1970s oil boom. During this phase, more than 80% of migrant
workers were Arabs, mainly from Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine. There also
were Asian workers, who were employed in European companies and government
agencies. The number of Asian workers was estimated to be 247,700 in the entire
Arab region in 1970.2 During this period, there were narrow wage differentials
between sending and receiving countries. Iraq and Oman were net exporters of
manpower. Thereafter, both became the major labor importing countries.
The second phase the point at which migration to the Gulf began to intensify
was triggered by the post-1973 oil price hike. During this phase, the number of
Arab migrants, especially from poorer countries such as Egypt and Yemen, rose
considerably. About 1.3 million migrants were estimated to be in the region in
1975.
The third phase spans the latter part of the 1970s and the early 1980s. Due to the
second oil price hike in 1979, government revenue rose sharply in the course of a
single year. As a result, the Gulf states launched more ambitious development
plans, lavish projects, and even more generous social welfare programs. These
initiatives caused a surge in demand for an additional 700,000 migrant workers in
Saudi Arabia and the other GCC countries in 1980. The number of migrant workers
in Iraq also increased to about 750,000.3 The number of Indian workers alone
exceeded 500,000 by 1980. Apart from the increasing number of workers, two
other trends emerged during this period. First, the share of Arab migrant workers
declined from about 43% in 1975 to about 37% in 1980. This was primarily due to
the inflow of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and other Asian workers to the
region. This was perhaps the result of the policies of the Gulf countries that
favored South Asian workers (they were believed to be politically safer than

20

their Arab counterparts). Second, the demand for unskilled labor slowed as major
infrastructure projects were completed, while the demand for skilled workers
increased.
The fourth phase began with the decline in oil prices in late 1982. With the
contraction of oil revenues, some development projects slowed and demand for
foreign workers slackened. However, the preference for skilled workers continued.
The fifth phase began in the 1990s. With the end of the Cold War, new migrant
workers began to arrive in the Gulf countries, particularly from China and the
newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. These migrant workers
created additional competition in the labor market. The second Gulf War (1991)
resulted in the displacement of about 1.5 million people, including one million
Yemenis (who were expelled from Saudi Arabia) and 200,000 Jordanians, 150,000
Palestinians, and 158,000 Egyptians (most of whom left Kuwait).4 This mass
displacement created job vacancies in the Gulf countries that were filled by South
Asians (particularly by Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis).

21

Over the past few decades, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)one of the world's
pre-eminent oil-rich nations located in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region
has become a popular destination for temporary labor migrants seeking
employment opportunities and higher standards of living. In 2013, the UAE had
the fifth-largest international migrant stock in the world with 7.8 million migrants
(out of a total population of 9.2 million), according to United Nations (UN)
estimates.

With immigrants, who come particularly from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan,
comprising over 90 percent of the country's private workforce, the UAE attracts
both low- and high-skilled migrants due to its economic attractiveness, relative
political stability, and modern infrastructuredespite a drop in oil prices and the
international banking crisis in 2008.

22

Heavily reliant on foreign labor to sustain economic growth and high standard of
living in the country, the UAE government in 1971 introduced a temporary guest
worker program called the Kafala Sponsorship System, which allows nationals,
expatriates, and companies to hire migrant workers. The Kafala system has posed a
number of challenges for UAE policymakers both at home and in the eyes of
international onlookers. Chief among them: ensuring economic opportunities for
UAE nationals, and closing policy and implementation gaps to address widespread
concerns that migrants fall victim to labor and human-rights abuses in the UAE.

Over the past several years, the UAE government has substantively reformed its
laws to address the concerns of those who condemn the Kafala system for exposing
migrant workers, especially domestic workers, to abusive practices. Recent
measures have ranged from outlawing employer confiscation of workers' passports
to allowing workers to transfer employer sponsorship and introducing wage
protection measures. Despite these efforts, human-rights and migrant organizations
maintain that abusive labor practices have persisted at alarming rates, largely due
to poor enforcement. Furthermore, the Kafala system poses many domestic
challenges for UAE policymakers, from effectively controlling the costs of the
program (according to researcher Mouawiya Al Awad, the UAE government
invests approximately $3,000 per foreign-born worker to maintain its national
infrastructure and services, e.g. police security and subsidized programs) to, more
generally, ensuring economic opportunities for its own nationals.Drawing from
policy reports and interviews with UAE policymakers, this article examines the
economic, social, and political challenges and implications of the Kafala system
for the UAE government, Emirati nationals, and migrant workers in the UAE.

23

Temporary Labor Migration: A Regional Trend

The GCC regionBahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAEis
the most popular destination for temporary labor migrants of any world region, and
flows have continued to increase over the past three decades. According to
researchers Nasra Shah and Philippe Fargues, these migrants comprised more than
43 percent of the region's total population in 2010, and their share is expected to
continue to grow over the next decade.

Kerala Emigrants in Gulf

24

How many Indians work abroad? We have no answer to this question even today.
However, available evidence indicates that the state of Kerala in India has the
highest number of emigrants in the Gulf countries.In order to make an assessment
of the emigrants from Kerala to the Gulf, the Centre for Development Studies
(CDS) conducted four large-scale surveys over the last 10 years in 1998, 2003,
2007, and 2008. This essay is based on the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) 2008,
funded by the Department of Non-Resident Keralite Affairs, the Government of
Kerala, and the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Government of India.2 In this
survey, the sample size was enhanced to 15,000 households from 10,000
households in the three earlier migration surveys. The increase in sample size
with a minimum of 1,000 households in every district of Kerala is expected to
yield reliable migration estimates at the district and taluk levels in Kerala. These
estimates are made on the basis of answers to the following question: Has any
person who was a usual resident of this household (HH) migrated out of Kerala
and is still living outside India? Those who are still living outside India are called
emigrants. Similarly, those who worked abroad and returned to Kerala are called
return emigrants.
Number of Emigrants, Return Emigrants, and Non-Resident Keralites from Kerala, 1998-2012

Kerala

Number

Increase

Per 100 Households

2012

1998

1998-12

2012

1998

Emigrants (EMI)

2,193,412

1,361,919

831,493

29.0

21.4

Return Emigrants (REM)

1,157,127

739,245

417,882

15.3

11.6

Non-Residence Keralites

3,350,539

2,101,164

1,249,375

44.3

33.0

Migrant Women in the Gulf:

25

Malayali Womens Perceptions of the Gulf States

Multi-sited studies enriched by data collection in both the Gulf and the sending
state are slowly emerging. Since 1989 have been conducting ethnographic
fieldwork in India and in various Gulf states among women from the state of
Kerala. Keralites (Malayalis) long represented the largest demographic among Gulf
migrants, and Kerala is still the Asian space enjoying the tightest links to the
region, thanks to a long history of transoceanic trade, marriage,and religious ties.
The first point to appreciate is that, as among males, the category of migrant
woman immediately breaks down into so many sub-categories so as to become
practically analytically useless. Malayali women come from Muslim, Christian,
and Hindu families; matriculation fails through to postgraduate degree holders,
housemaids to medical doctor-cum-hospital owners, working class through to
super-elite; they hail from rural villages, small towns and big cities; are employed
in business or as unwaged homemakers; they are young dependent singles living
with Gulf-based families, working wives, and mature grandmothers running two
households one Gulf and one Indian, between which they constantly shift.
Many Kerala women have been raised and educated in the Gulf, gone to Kerala for
a brief period of college, marriage, and childbearing, and then have returned to be
with their Gulf husbands, whether early, and with dependent children who will
themselves then become Gulf kids or later on, once the children are less
dependent and can be left in boarding schools or with other relatives, or are of
college age. While men in the Gulf are always workers or job seekers, providers
for natal or marriage families, many Gulf Indian women are dependent
homemakers. Mens experience and conversations revolve around contracts,
sponsors, work visas, wage rates, etc., but womens is more refracted through
marriage and children.

26

In the Gulf, a matriculate rural woman will become aware of a wider range of job
opportunities and skill requirements, and may have higher ambitions for her
childrens education and future employment than she would have back home.
Womens participation in family decisions about migration strategies, and their
opinions and wishes, tend to be expressed in terms of effects upon the entire
family, and to be very heavily future-oriented. Religious community, as intersected
by social class, emerges as the biggest influence upon womens experiences and
evaluations. Here, Indian communalism articulates with the Gulfs own ethnicized
and religious population segmentation. While many knew that Malayali women
were heavily represented in Gulf hospitals in nursing staff,6 in the early days, these
nurses were overwhelmingly drawn from the Christian communities, where values
of education and female employment, and a strong orientation towards ideals of
being modern and achieving material progress are strong, and where largely
Hindu ideas about ritual pollution and female respectability through religious
segregation are less pronounced. The Gulf offered Indian Christian women a
minority at home chances to use their education, save money and find a
stepping stone towards further migration to the United States. Observing the
rewards, Hindu and, recently, also some Muslim families are allowing their
daughters to work as nurses.

27

Paradigm Shifts in Indias Migration Policy toward the Gulf

From fewer than 258,000 in 1975, the migrant Indian population in the Gulf rose to
3.318 million in 2001 and is now estimated at over four million. Indian migrant
workers in the GCC countries belong to all three categories of labor:
1) professionals (e.g., doctors, nurses, engineers, architects, accountants, and
managers),
2) semi-skilled workers (e.g., craftsmen, drivers, artisans, and other technical
workers), and
3) unskilled laborers in construction sites, farmlands, livestock ranches, shops and
stores, and households.
Indian white-collar workers and professionals comprise only about 30% of the
Indian workers in these countries; the rest are semi-skilled and unskilled workers.
The highly skilled and technically trained professionals remain in great demand in
the government departments and public sector enterprises, and they also earn high
salaries and attractive emoluments. They also are allowed to bring their families.
Children are allowed to stay with parents until their education is completed.
However, Indians, like all other ex-patriates, are not allowed to acquire citizenship
through naturalization. Life in general is comfortable only for the professionals and
white-collar workers in the Gulf. They are able to maintain contacts with
compatriots and nationals, form associations, and participate in socio-cultural
activities.

28

After the 1990-91 Gulf War the number of low-skilled Indian workers in the Gulf
de-clined due to Indian government restrictions (i.e., tight monitoring of the
Emigration Clearance Required, or ECR, passports). However, the flow soon
resumed to pre-Gulf War levels. This has facilitated the proliferation of recruitment
and placement agencies, sometimes colluding with prospective employers to prey
upon and dupe illiterate job seekers.
Not with standing the recent initiative, the Indian government still does not have in
place a comprehensive policy on labor migration or overseas employment, whether
for skilled migration to the West or unskilled migration the Gulf. Yet, the Indian
policy paradigm for migrants in the Gulf nonetheless can be said to have shifted
from protective/restrictive, to welfare/compensatory, to developmental/restorative.
The 1983 Emigration Act, which replaced the 1922 Emigration Act, has been
designed mainly to ensure protection for vulnerable categories of unskilled and
semi-skilled workers, and women going abroad to work as housemaids and
domestic workers. The Act provides a regulatory and legal framework in respect to
emigration of Indian workers for overseas employment on a contractual basis.
Under the Act, all Recruiting Agents are obliged to register with the government
before recruiting for overseas employment. Mainly comprising a large number of
private sector players, this includes nine State Manpower Export Corporations
established by the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab,
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Delhi. At present, active
private sector recruiting agents are mainly located in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and
the state of Kerala. Registered agents are held responsible for worker complaints
regarding non-payment or delayed payment of wages, unilateral changes in the
contract, arbitrary change of jobs, denial of employment, and inhuman working
and living conditions, etc. A proposed amendment to the 1983 Emigration Act4 is

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aimed at curbing the activities of, and protecting migrant workers from illegal
recruiting agents that operate clandestinely.
The new Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, constituted in 2004, has taken the
initiative to bring about a paradigm shift by amending the Emigration Act (1983)
and introducing welfare measures to complement its protection objectives, such as:
An e -governance project to modernize the offices of the Protectorate of
Emigrants (which administers the Emigration Act and the associated ECR
monitoring) and make emigration of uneducated workers simple,
transparent, and orderly.
A Universal Integrated Electronic Remittance Gateway, a partnership
between the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and Indian banks, aimed at
making the transmission of remittances more convenient and less costly.
Pravasi Bharatiya Bima Yojana (PBBY), since 2006 a compulsory insurance
policy with an enhanced cover of 500,000 rupees for all worker migrants
recruited by agents. An increasing number of insurance companies are to
provide cover at a reasonable premium for contingencies such as death,
physical disability while in employment abroad, transportation of the body
in case of death, maternity benefits for female mi-grants, medical benefits
for families of migrants in India, etc.
An Overseas Indian Workers Welfare Fund.
The new Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, constituted in 2004, has taken
the initiative to bring about a paradigm shift by amending the Emigration
Act (1983) and introducing welfare measures to complement its protection
objectives .
The Indian government also has introduced the landmark Overseas Citizenship of
India (OCI) initiative, which affords partial dual citizenship benefits. (To date,

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mainly highly skilled migrants settled and naturalized in developed countries have
taken advantage of these benefits.) Another measure, which is primarily intended
for Indian workers in the Gulf who send large remittances back home but can
never hope to become naturalized citizens of the countries where they work
because of restrictive regimes grants Indian citizens abroad the right to vote in
India elections.6 The modalities for operationalizing this measure are being
worked out and are expected to be in place by the next general election in 2014.
These two major policy measures aim to empower migrant workers to participate
in Indias socioeconomic and political development rather than merely looking to
India for protection and/or welfare. The measures are complemented by the
introduction of Pravasi Bharatiya Samman awards to 15 overseas Indians each year
to recognize achievements of the Indian Diaspora and their contribution to
strengthening of Indias relations with other countries, promoting the honour and
prestige of India, and fostering interests of overseas Indians.

Recent Article

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Global trends may force many to return from Gulf:

According to the article in newspaper THE HINDU on 10th January 2015
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy seeks government help to rehabilitate
Indians returning from Saudi Arabia. The Nitaqat law makes it mandatory for
companies in Saudi Arabia to hire one Saudi national for every 10 migrant
workers; over two million Indians are currently working in Saudi Arabia.
The woes of Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries seem to have multiplied with
the drop in oil prices, and there are indications that a large number may be forced
to return home.
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said on Friday: The global trends in
economy indicate that the employment opportunities in the Gulf sector may
diminish and reforms like Nitaquat [a law that makes it mandatory for companies
in Saudi Arabia to hire one Saudi national for every 10 migrant workers] may force
[workers in the Gulf] to return to the home country.
The region is the most important for India because seven million Indians live there.
Kerala alone accounts for Rs. 60,000 crore a year in remittances from this region.
At a session on Issues of Labour and Employment in Gulf Countries, K.V.
Shamsuddin, a Dubai-based NRI, said only five per cent of the returning
immigrants had the means of looking after their families. The reverse migration
had already begun; and if the trend continued, India, especially Kerala, would face
the major issue of their rehabilitation.

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Addressing a gathering on the concluding day of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, Mr.
Chandy said: We must think about how we can rehabilitate those who are
returning to India and in what way we can make use of their expertise for their
benefit. The government of Kerala has chalked out a rehabilitation package, but
lack of resources is our problem in implementing it effectively.
Indian workers are living in pathetic conditions. Their labour is exploited They
are given hope and then cheated. India has not demanded the dignity of pay, like
the Philippines. It would be difficult to hire Filipino workers at a low salary, but
Indians get paid only 500-600 dirhams, Prakash Sebastian, a Dubai-based
surgeon, told The Hindu.
The issue of Indians languishing in UAE jails was also raised at the session. Syed
Akbaruddin, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said India was
working with countries in the Gulf and elsewhere for a prisoner exchange system.
It already had an arrangement with the UAE, under which Indian prisoners could
be transferred to Indian jails for completing their sentence. An agreement had been
signed with Saudi Arabia, but it had not been ratified.

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CONCLUSION
1. Migrant worker rights in gulf-ignored or upheld-Migrant workers are engaged in every sector of development activity in the Gulf.
They contribute substantially to the economic growth of labor receiving countries.
Ironically, however, migrant workers are considered to be a threat to national
security. Meanwhile, migrants are often exploited by unscrupulous employers,
recruitment agents, and others. The international norms and standards are often
violated in order to promote individual interests. A change in the mindsets and
policies of Gulf governments is urgently necessary and long overdue a change
that not only acknowledges the economic benefits of hosting migrant laborers, but
that also recognizes, respects, and works to ensure the rights of migrant workers.
2. Kerala Emigrants in Gulf
Keralas Gulf connection is so strong that even during the current global crisis,
both emigration and remittances seem to be resilient. According to our recent study
conducted for the Government of Kerala, even at the peak of the recession in the
Gulf, when 173,000 emigrants returned to Kerala, 239,000 emigrants left Kerala to
work in the Gulf, resulting in a net migration of 66,000. Similarly, the total cash
remittances that Kerala households received in 2009 registered a modest increase
of 7%.
3. The impact of remittances on Kerala is manifested in household consumption,
saving and investment, the quality of houses, and the possession of modern
consumer durables. Remittances also play a major role in enhancing the quality of
life and contribute to a high human development index for Kerala in terms of
education and health, along with the reduction of poverty and unemployment. The
Gulf, which is home to a large majority of emigrants from Kerala, has figured
prominently in this equation.

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4. Paradigm Shifts in Indias Migration Policy toward the Gulf

Over the years, Indian policies with respect to labor migrants in the Gulf have
evolved from a narrow emphasis on protection/restriction to the implementation of
welfare initiatives, and most recently to developmental/restorative measures. It is
still too early to gauge the impact of the developmental measures, which are in
their infancy. Maximizing their impact will, of course, depend on the extent to
which migrants avail themselves of these measures. But it also will depend on a
change of attitude toward Gulf migrants who, unlike many IT professionals and
other talented Indians who are considered a source of pride, have been regarded
merely as a burden. In addition, it will require that the interests of the stakeholders
in the Gulf be examined, and that innovative programs to involve them in Indias
development be implemented effectively.

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Recommendations
Based on the detailed study of the Indian migrants in the Gulf, discussions with
experts and practitioners and observations made during a field trip to the region,
the following recommendations are being made:
1. Undertake more collaborative projects vis--vis labour/migration management,
such as the one undertaken under the aegis of the Abu Dhabi Declaration with the
Philippines and the UAE, in all the GCC states. This would go a long way in
strengthening both the bilateral as well as collaborative multilateral processes to
better manage labour migration to the region.
2. Make use of latest technology to manage the migrantssmartcards can be
instituted for all migrants, especially for those holding ECR passports. This
digitised smart card is essentially a tool, somewhat akin to the unique identification
(UID)/Aadhaar card but with information of relevance to the migrant in the
destination country. All relevant information pertaining to the migrant, including
passport details, recruitment, validity of the contract, terms of employment,
insurance, medical details, whether return fare has been paid or not, etc., should be
stored in the card. A digitized copy of that information should be shared with all
Indian embassies in the region, which can further share relevant information with
the concerned host government. Rights of the migrants and the authorities to be
contacted in case of a need should also be included in the information provided.
3. While registration of recruitment agencies is mandatory with the MOIA, a
similar databank of information regarding recruitment agents, including
registered/approved or deregistered agents/agencies, should also be provided to all
relevant parties in digital format. It is also recommended that there should be a
public announcement in local media catering to the Indian migrant com-munity
be it through the written or the audio-visual mediumregarding deregistered
agents on a regular basis.
4. Passport renewals could be made more frequent, for example, annually or every
two years, which would ensure that all migrants appear at the Indian embassies and
consulates in the region at regular intervals. This would enable the missions to
keep track of exploitative practices and mitigate such instances.

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5. A formal initiative to identify the skills that would be required in future in the
Gulf states and creation of training facilities at home to provide relevant skills to
prospective migrants should be considered at the earliest. This will have two
advantages: on the one hand, the training will build much-needed skills; and on the
other, in the long run, it will ensure a more or less permanent/recurring demand for
Indian migrants. Basic knowledge of nutrition, hygiene, language, etc., would go a
long way in ensuring the suitability of the Indian migrant for the demanding Gulf
labour market. This will increase the proportion of skilled workers as against
unskilled workers migrating to the Gulf states and will also enhance their social
profile in the region.
6. Contingency plans to evacuate Indian migrants from the Gulf states in times of
emergency must be formulated at the earliest. This must include nomination of a
central authority to formulate contingency plans; creation and updating of database
of migrants in various countries; establishment of channels of communication for
passage of information through a community network in the host countries;
identification and earmarking of state-level coordinating agency; earmarking of air
and sea-borne resources for transportation; identification of evacuation centres in
various countries and relief camps in countries not affected by internal or external
conflict; and agreements with host and neighbouring countries for assistance in
evacuation of migrants from affected areas. All the agencies of the state who will
have a role in the evacuation process need to be involved in drawing up the plans.
The central and the state governments should also have contingency plans in place
to provide temporary relief, including employment and health facilities, to the lowearning returnees to rehabilitate them till they find gainful work at home or abroad.

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Bibliography & Webliography

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala-chief-minister-oommenchandy-seeks-govt-help-to-rehabilitate-indians-from-gulf/article6772055.ece
http://arabicuniversitycollege.yolasite.com/resources/Faculty/NS/Publication
s/Indian%20Diaspora%20in%20GCC%20countries%20-%20%20The
%20case%20of%20Kerala.pdf
https://www.google.co.in
www.wikipedia.org/

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