ABSTRACT
The new Arab social order has been shaped by the intersection of oil wealth and the already existing demographic and socioeconomic structures of various countries of the Arab World. With the exception of brief large-scale migrations, namely in the early Arab-Islamic conquest of the seventh and eighth centuries, human movement remained small though frequent. The early Arab migration of the seventh century and the Hilaliyya movement of the eleventh century were both from the Arabian peninsula outwards. In 1980, the size of inter-Arab migration was probably in the neighborhood of 3 million. There are two important characteristics of inter-Arab migration. First is the migration replacement in the Arab countries that are both labor exporters and labor importers. The second phenomenon is migrant Arab labor circulation. Oil and the revenues it has generated have triggered an unprecedented inter-Arab migratory system.
