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Migration to the Middle East: Issues and Prospects

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Book cover India’s Low-Skilled Migration to the Middle East

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Abstract

Middle East countries absorbed high volume of labourers from Asia to work in both unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. This mobility has given rise to various issues; unsolved labour issues such as operation of illegal recruiting agents and illegal migration, and problems such as salary issues, working and living conditions and abuse at destination countries are discussed in this chapter, with major focus on India. Importantly, emerging new destinations like Israel are discussed to highlight the swift mobility of Asian female care workers from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries due to large number of exploitations reported in recent years and the ban imposed by some source countries in Asia to recruit female care workers. Thus, gender-wise and sector-wise labour mobility to Middle East is discussed to show the characteristics of Asian migrant workforce in this region. Finally, the economic diversification taking place in the Gulf countries shows optimism with regard to their economic growth and job creation. However, in the past few years we saw a decline in Asian workforce moving to Gulf, but the ongoing economic reforms in Gulf needs cheap expatriate workers to meet their labour shortage in private sectors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://emigrate.gov.in/ext/, accessed on 6th January, 2019.

  2. 2.

    Government of India, considering the plight of emigrants, separately created a category called Emigration Check Required (ECR). The main objective in forming this category is to provide safe migration for intending emigrants. Under this category, MEA included 18 countries.

  3. 3.

    Afghanistan, Bahrain, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

  4. 4.

    NORKA Roots of Kerala, Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants (ODEPC) of Kerala, Overseas Manpower Corporation Ltd. (OMCL) of Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh Financial Corporation (UPFC) of Uttar Pradesh, Overseas Manpower Company Andhra Pradesh Limited (OMCAP) of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Overseas Manpower Company Limited (TOMCOM) of Telangana.

  5. 5.

    https://betterwork.org/dev/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Jordania-Annual-Report_V5.pdf accessed on 9th January, 2019

  6. 6.

    https://www.indianembassybeirut.gov.in/page/display/79/58 accessed on 9th January, 2019.

  7. 7.

    http://graphics.eiu.com/marketing/pdf/Gulf2020.pdf accessed on 26th January, 2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Development Studies, Ulloor Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

    S. Irudaya Rajan

  2. Department of Population Studies, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

    Prem Saxena

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  1. S. Irudaya Rajan
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  2. Prem Saxena
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Correspondence to S. Irudaya Rajan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Development Studies, Ulloor Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

    S. Irudaya Rajan

  2. Department of Population Studies, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

    Prem Saxena

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Rajan, S.I., Saxena, P. (2019). Migration to the Middle East: Issues and Prospects. In: Rajan, S.I., Saxena, P. (eds) India’s Low-Skilled Migration to the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9224-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9224-5_1

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