ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns recent labour migration from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to the six Arab states which together make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). It focusses on the economic significance of this movement for the sending societies, and the relative balance of advantages and disadvantages which accrues to those societies through emigration, expatriate remittances, and return migration. The Gulf has had a long-established economic and political link with the Indian subcontinent. Dubai, for example, has traditionally been an entrepot for trade between the Middle East and India, and Hindu merchants dominated both the gold and textile trades. Emigration provides temporary relief for the unemployed, remittances allow existing economic and regional structures to persist when they are threatened with change, and return migration may create a petite bourgeoisie of modest proportions.
