CULT 320: Migrant Labor in the Gulf States, with a Special Focus on Women

MIGRANT LABOR IN THE GULF STATES, WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON WOMEN
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Introduction
The rising of globalization has brought many different changes to the world. Some are good some are bad. Owing to the global awareness and the overall inequality among countries, or groups of people, labor migrants often tend to move from one place to the other searching for better life opportunities. Labor migrations are fostered by various reasons, the main one being poor living standards in the immigrants’ home country, often developing countries. Although both men and women are part of the migrants, there is evidence showing that the number of women, as labor migrants, has substantially increased transnationally. The situation is because of the expanding sectors such as care-giving jobs, construction industries, and entertainment industries among others. Specifically, the care-giving industry is one of the major sectors attracting women labor migrants with women migrating to others countries to seek employment as domestic and health-care workers.
Although the situation is witnessed all over the world, there has been much attention on the pattern of women labor migrants to the Gulf States, which include the countries like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE), just to name a few. The majority of the women migrating the Gulf States for the care-giving jobs come from the less developing nations from Asia and Africa. Although the migrant women go to seek better paying jobs to improve the condition of the lives and that other their family members back at home, many of them face many challenges that become a barrier for them to realize their dreams. To provide more insight on the issue of migrant labor in the Gulf States, with a special focus on women, this paper seeks to present an annotated bibliography of various literature sources that have focused on the matter.
Annotated Bibliography
Rachel, Silvey. “Transnational migration and the gender politics of scale: Indonesian domestic workers in Saudi Arabia”. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geograph, 25, no. 2 (2004):141-155.
The article analyzes gender politics from a transnational perspective specifically looking at Indonesian activist approaches in regards to migrant domestic workers. The author analyzes some of the dynamic nature of transnational migration looking at migration from a feminist perspective. The article presents Indonesian activists approach to gender politics from a transnational perspective looking at overseas migrant and domestic workers challenges. Focusing on one of the communities in Indonesia in West Java where many migrant to Saudi Arabia have originated from, the article presents some of the activist concerns.
Readers are able to understand the gender –specific ways in which these activists use to describe the transnational domestic work. The article provides insights about migrant domestic workers rights, and how best migrant women can use the theory “approach to scale” to call for changes. Exploring and acknowledging the scale theory used by the activist as a strategy to call for action and to fight for gender equality among domestic workers in Indonesia .This article aimed at explaining the meanings of specific scales and make readers have a broader understanding the uncertain relationship between feminism theory and transnationality
Bina, Fernandez. “Exploring the Relevance of Fraser's Ethical-Political Framework of Justice to the Analysis of Inequalities Faced by Migrant Workers.” International Journal of Social Quality 1, no. 2 (2011): 85–101.
International debates about migration generate question like which type of equalities matter and how do we decide, and what do we do about them. Using Nancy Fraser’s framework of redistribution, representation, and recognition, the author analyzes how inequalities might be fruitful. The main concern for the author is the methodology used by different approaches to describe inequality .The other concern is about how inequalities is addressed given the opposing location and some of one-sided experiences of global migrants makes it more difficult to understand inequality .
In most cases the debates about inequality is describes between citizens and non-citizens within specific nationals. In any state, the sovereign power revolves around protection, administration, and welfare of its citizens that constructs their national identity. Migrant indemnity might be non-existent. Therefore, exclusion of non-citizens migrant from claiming any state identity has been the foundation of inequality. Activists have frequently challenged the description of international migration and the framework of justice used to understand inequalities. The article is more concerned how providing long-term care for the aging population is being conducted giving a case study of Ethiopian women who become migrant as domestic workers in the Middle East. From this article, we understand why many authors recommend the need for adopting transformative approaches to justice within the context of international migration.
Pyle, L. Jean. “Globalization, Transnational Migration, and Gendered Care Work: Introduction.” Globalizations 3, no. 3 (September 2006): 283–295.
The article examines migration issues from a transnational perspective. Although care work is under-acknowledged caring labor in increasingly, being sort for in the market especially in developed countries. The article gives the recent scenario where female health care workers are increasing seeking caring jobs internationally. This has resulted to caring labor being categorized as either skilled or unskilled depending on the country’s view of caring labor. In the past, caring labor has been considered as unskilled labor. Many issues have been raised when analyzing migration because of the introduction of transnational domestic care workers that comprises of people from different backgrounds.
Since transnational labor cannot be described, the same way international movement of goods is defined because it involves not just people but new relationships races, class, ethnicities and different ages. All this presents unequal power relations, human rights violation, cultural shock, strong emotions and varied value systems. Even though the flow of goods and services defines any nations economic outcomes, the flow of people transnational have been more restrictive.
The article offers a new perspective about the relationship that exists between the process of globalization and gender migration for caring labor from multiple perspectives. The authors shed some light on policy recommendation and formulation. It also presents some of the useful fundamental human aspects as result of globalization.
Mizanur, Rahma. “Gendering Migrant Remittances: Evidence from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.” IOM International Migration 51, no.1 (2013): e159–e178.
The article present research conducted to indicate how gender recognition is slowly gaining popularity in the migration process. Since 50 percent of the migrants are female there is need to explore gender dimension under the current condition of migration in Asia. The study explores some of the gender dimensions of payments especially for temporary immigrants in Asia. The research presents how migrants’ payments are mainly influenced by several factors apart from just gender. These factors includes the context of the remittance, which many researches have not capture and elaborated on to understand the dynamism of migrants and the labor market.
To assess some of the influencing factors that affect migrants’ remittance, 150 migrant in the United Arab Emirates and 100 migrant households in Bangladesh were examined. The study examined some of the gender dimension of payment linking the process of receiving and sending points looking at the areas of remittance. These included the receipt process, sending process the use and who control the remittance and the implication on migrant households. The study findings presented the different patterns of gender remittance behaviour whereby female migrant do remit a greater percentage of their earning to their spouses.
The study revealed that male remit more money to females; this means women have more control on men’s payment. The article recommends that there is need to integrate and develop an elaborative perspective to understand the complexity involved in payments and the dynamics involved in the process of considering payments to understand some of the gender dimension of remittance among migrants.
Michelle, Buckley. “On the Work of Urbanization: Migration, Construction Labor, and the Commodity Moment”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104, no. 2 (2014): 338–347.
When studying urban and migration most research overlook the current composition of the labor markets even though they are very crucial in understanding urbanization. Many scholars and labor historians argue that the flexibility of the labor market in the construction industry in place like the Northern and Southern Asia is as a result of their reliance on migrant labor. The inclusion of migrants into the construction industry has become a common occurrence in cities like Dubai; however, such shifts that exist in the modern political economies of employment ate yet to be integrated into the Marxist theory of urbanization. In one of the research conducted within the construction, labor market in Dubai urbanization was analyzed through the lens of migrant construction world and employment. The research highlighted intersectional politics presenting how migrant construction work and employment can offer fruitful outcome because they form social relation of urbanization across several cities internationally.
The article present how trends of flexibility have greatly influenced the current labor markets internationally giving an example of how Dubai as one of the wealthy cities that have embraced flexibility. The article present how such trends meet with the increasing involvement of temporarily migrant labor. Looking at the feminist migration point of view and also from the post-colonial urban study, the article presents some of the opportunities and the need to reframe and Marxian theories of urbanization.
Johan, Lindquist. “Labour Recruitment, Circuits of Capital and Gendered Mobility: Reconceptualizing the Indonesian Migration Industry.” Pacific Affairs 83, no. 1 (2010): 115-132.
Even though several interest groups have called for reforms when dealing with the transnational industry of domestic work, not many reforms have been implemented because most of them focus on women their family relationships. When dealing with transnational industry for domestic work, the focus is on the plight of women especially in foreign countries and their relationship with their family members especially children. For decades, labor recruitment within the migration sector has been generally overlooked by researchers. Research has failed to analyze labour recruitment as an enterprise therefore today the trend is still the same. To understand the changing structure and reforms of transnational labor migration, it is also important to consider infrastructure or the migration institutions that give permission for the movement of people.
Looking at migration from this perspective, the author suggests that understanding of the emotional experiences of migrant, the forms of injustices they face in the destination countries and the brokerage systems that permits the move from one place to the other should be investigated. This article is useful because it greatly contributes to some of the existing literature about labor migration and the recruitment process as some of the critical vantage points that can enable us reconceptualize gendered regimes of transnational migration. The reader is able to understand why undocumented events about how domestic labor recruitment is conducted especially about Asian immigrants affects policy reforms, with the limited evidence not much can be discussed the plight of migrant workers.
Storbeck, Doreen. “Indian Labour Migration to the Arab Gulf States: The Impact of a Growing Interdependence Internationals Asian Forum”. International Quarterly of Asian Studies 42 (2011):1-2.
The author presents the impact of migrants in resource rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council like the United Arab Emirates where more than 5 million Indian migrants live. The article highlights the history of Indian migration from the colonial times up to today. According to the author, Indians migrants live in more than 189 countries making them one of the largest migrant community worldwide .Indians migrants are one of the largest overseas laborers dating back from 1833 during the British rule.
The British Empire needed manpower in their plantation in overseas territories and also in their rice and sugar plantation in countries like France and Portuguese. In the present era, the Gulf Cooperation Council State is a unique part of the world because it attracts causal laborers. The global financial crisis greatly affected labor market in several countries including the United Arab Emirate whereby up to 150,000 Indians returned to Indian from Persian Gulf. Despite such occurrences, Indians are still one of the largest expatriate communities within the gulf regions. The articl...