Chapter 13 - Post Oil Migration Futures in the Khaleej: Thinking With/Out Borders

Summary

Introduction

Borders are a part of the destiny of the Khaleej, (or the gulf ) the typology of which is infected by the notions of bordering, as the Persian Gulf was the norm as Persia was a dominant regional player competing for influence along with the Ottoman Empire and the British Raj. The Sheikhdoms of the Gulf from Kuwait City to Muscat to Jeddah, were British-aligned in the imperial chess game. The port town of Muscat had its twin town in Mandvi as per historian Chaya Goswami. The Gulf has the imagination of a desert frozen in time, yet this oriental framing does injustice to the Gulf which has been trading as a part of the Indian Ocean world for centuries. Manama to Muscat were important trading ports for pearling to slavery. Jeddah was known as the ‘Queen of the Red Sea’ being the eclectic Ottoman port which was the hub of the Muslim Pilgrimage to the twin holy cities of Makkah and Medina (Freitag, 2020).

The pandemic and the years of stagnant oil prices have had a defining role on the migrant lives as many businesses had to reduce as the main employer in the region, the oil sector was contributing to reducing revenues and thus had a cascading impact on the shifting priorities. The region is quickly adapting to a new demographic normal, where millions of migrants who have built the region since oil was struck are being offered hard choices as incomes fall. The realities are reflected in the recalibration of borders externally, and internally as would be fleshed out in the subsequent sections.

Racial ‘Kafala’ Capitalism as (B)ordering

Slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia under pressure from the American administration in 1962 and in the rest of the Gulf in that decade, as the region decolonised (Wald, 2019). The Gulf is a tribal society with many actors aligned in a hierarchy, with power stemming from proximity to the power structure which is the ruling family. Slavery from East Africa to the Gulf was a prominent feature of the Indian Ocean trade till the British outlawed slavery in the 1830s however the trade continued under the mast of the dhow, and enforcement was inadequate.