ABSTRACT
Unlike most developing countries, the Arab oil states found their development plans strongly constrained by lack of labour and of specific skills rather than by lack of capital. In the 1970s most Arab oil producers sought to overcome this problem by introducing large quantities of immigrant labour. By 1975 almost half (48.7 per cent) of the workforce of the Arab oil states (excluding Iraq) consisted of foreign workers. The number of labour migrants and their families grew in the decade which followed from an estimated 2.8 million in 1975 to 7.2 million in 1985.
