Labor Migration Policies in the United Arab Emirates - Essay Example

Abstract

This paper is a discussion on the labor migration policies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). UAE is a member of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) which is a political and economic association of six Middle East states. The GCC was founded in May 1981 with its headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and it brings together Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia. It aims to promote unity of the member countries by relying on the common objectives, political and cultural identities which are based on the Islamic beliefs (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016). The council has an annual rotational presidency. UAE is one of the top oil-rich states in the world hence is a preferred terminus for labor migrants who search for job opportunities and better standards of living. Hence the paper is organized as follows: introduction which briefly discusses labor migration; labor migration in UAE; policies regarding the migration policies; the challenges of labor migration; responses to the challenges; and the conclusion.

Keywords: labor, migration, political, economic, UAE, GCC, job opportunities, living standards

Introduction

Labor migration is the movement of people from one region (country) to another with the purpose of securing employment opportunities (Mueller and Mills, 2013). Other than seeking for job opportunities, it is also increasingly being driven by economic, social and demographic factors. Different countries handle labor migration differently, for example some countries implement certain migration programs while some make use of proxy scheme but achieve similar outcomes (Panizzon et al, 2015). Labor migration is beneficial in two major ways as follows: first, the country from which the laborers migrate get relief from the pressure of unemployment. They also get remittances which enhance development, transfer of knowledge and establishment of networks for businesses and trade. Secondly, for the countries where the laborers land in, they are relieved from the challenge of labor shortages (IOM, 2015).

Moreover, the labor contracts are usually temporal and so the migrant workers cannot get the right of permanent residency in those destination countries. It is reported that there are approximately 105 million people who are employed in countries which are not their home of origin. Hence it is argued that labor migration might develop into a major aspect in globalization and global economy. This argument is based on a report released in 2011 that the total earnings of the migrant workers stood at $ 440 billion, with $ 350 billion of that amount being estimated by the World Bank to have been transferred as remittances to the developing countries (IOM, 2015). It is worth noting that efforts have always been made to ensure migrant workers are protected, yet many still face several vulnerabilities and risks during the process of migrating. This paper discusses labor migration policies in the United Arab Emirates.

Labor migration in the United Arab Emirates

UAE is a leading oil-rich country in the world and has therefore developed into a preferred destination for labor migrants looking for jobs and improved standards of living (Malit and Youha, 2013). Due to its relative economic and political stability as well as modern state of the art infrastructure, it draws both low and high-skilled migrants. The low-skilled include men, majorly absorbed in the low-skilled service sectors and women who are mainly employed to do domestic chores and retail jobs. The high-skilled are recruited in the oil and gas industries, finance, education and the investment sectors.

The UAE migrant workers majorly come from Bangladesh, India, Dubai, Philippine and Pakistan and other parts of the world and comprise over 90 % of UAE’s private labor force (Bel-Air, 2015). In 2013, the UN estimates revealed that UAE emerged as the fifth largest in the world in terms of international migrant stock. This saw it record a total of 7.8 million migrants out of the 9.2 million people. In sourcing for the foreign labor force, the UAE only seeks for temporary work force hence there is no permanent residency for the migrants (Carl, 2014). But to continue being the most eye-catching destination for the migrant workers depends on its government. That is, whether or not it will be committed to attracting, training and retaining the migrant workers for the good of its future labor force (Singh and Rajan, 2016).

UAE has grappled with the challenge of poor education, training and advancement of its national human resource (Singh and Rajan, 2016). This is what can facilitate its activeness in backing and making positive contribution to its rapid developments. This explains why Emirati employers, especially those in private sectors, greatly depend on foreign labor for the good of its economic growth and high living conditions. The government jobs are most preferred by a larger percentage of the Emirati citizens as they operate with a single shift i.e. working eight hours a day for five days. This is different from the private sectors which operate on a ten hour per day basis for six days and with daily split shifts. In addition, they have better terms of payment and other non-monetary benefits (Singh and Rajan, 2016).

Hence the government adopted an impermanent program called Kafala Sponsorship System enabling its citizens, companies and expatriates to hire migrant workers (Fosu, 2013). It advocates for the protection of the wages of foreign workers. As such, it calls on the employers to directly deposit the wages of migrant workers into their bank accounts so as to ease the process of resolving claims regarding wage non-payments (Singh and Rajan, 2016). However, the system has presented numerous challenges for the policymakers in UAE both locally and at international levels. Some of these challenges include difficulty in availing economic openings for the UAE citizens. Also, there are closing policy and implementation gaps for dealing with increased concerns of labor and human rights abuses that the UAE migrants are subjected to.

Moreover, the government of UAE has in the past couple of years significantly changed its laws with the aim of addressing the fears of those against the Kafala system (Malit and Youha, 2013). They disapprove it on the grounds of subjecting migrant workers more so the domestic laborers to abuses like denying the workers basic human rights and confiscating their travel documents. Some of the measures that have been adopted in the recent past include outlawing such employers and enabling the workers to change employers. They are also introduced to enhanced strategies for wage protection.

However, reports emerge from migrant organizations and human rights groups that the measures are poorly enforced (Casasola, 2013). Hence the abusive labor practices have continued at startling rates. Also, UAE policy makers argue that Kafala system makes it hard to achieve effective control of the costs of the program and provide economic opportunities for the Emirati nationals. In other words, there is a seemingly struggle of attaining balance of the native labor market needs with many other pressing issues (Singh and Rajan, 2016).

Policies governing the labor migration in UAE

As is noted from above, UAE is a greatly preferred destination for many migrant workers searching for better terms of employment and standards of living. Due to the increased influx of foreign immigrants, the UAE government has developed certain policies to regulate such a great inflow of people and these include the following:

No permanent residency

This is a regional trend characterizing the GCC states which is reported to have been receiving an increased inflow of foreigners in the past three decades (Malit and Youha, 2013). UAE being a member of the GCC and a leading preferred destination for foreign laborers has come up with this temporal means of getting and containing the inflow of migrant workers. Carl (2014) writes that UAE is not looking for new citizens, but only seeks for temporal services for the betterment of its political and economic stability. The migrants must get a sponsorship from an Emirati resident or business. Furthermore, the traveling documents of these workers are not permanent and are to be frequently renewed. This implies that in the event the job comes to an end, the migrant workers have to immediately fly out of the country.

No permission for family members of the workers in the country

The rules governing UAE migrant employees are very strict such that they cannot bring in their family members to live with them there. They can only be let in if they attain the requirement for the minimum salary. Furthermore, the rules on UAE family sponsorship are highly discriminative on the grounds of sex (Carl, 2014). But this policy is used as a strategy of encouraging the workers to depart from the country once their employment contracts end. And failure to adhere to the directive amounts to deportation or imprisonment as is decided by the authorities.

The Kafala system (protection of the wages and rights of foreign workers)

The UAE nationals, business organizations, companies and expatriates seeking to out-source for the services of migrant workers must be registered in the Kafala Sponsorship System (Malit and Youha, 2013). This policy outlaws employers who abuse migrant workers and enable them to change employers. It also introduces enhanced strategies for wage protection. However, though the strategy was adopted to protect wages of foreign workers, it has been characterized by certain gaps due to poor enforcements. Due to this, recruitment agencies, local and external employers have repeatedly violated the rights of the workers. Hence UAE has not been able to uphold the standards for global human-rights requirements. Also, the system has posed various domestic challenges arising from the country’s dependence on externally sourced labor force.

Gender balance

The UAE employers and recruitment agencies absorb both female and male foreign workers to build the posterity of their nation. The female workers are mostly employed in homes and retail shops and also in the deserts to do milking of goats and making of yoghurt and cheese. Sabban (n.d.) states that the statistics relating to the foreign female employees are essentially used in the analysis of feminization trends and ethnic changes in UAE. The male migrant workers are employed in the oil and gas industries, mining sectors, banking and investment sectors.

No formation of labor unions

The migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates are not permitted to form any kind of labor unions to represent them before their employers (ILO, 2010).

No human trafficking and application of restrictive immigration measures

UAE allows for limited immigration measures so as to regulate unlawful immigration and recruiting of foreigners who land in the country illegally. This policy involves strategies such as imposing of temporary bans on migrants from certain countries or holding off any issuance of new visas. It also makes use of high-tech devices for the scanning of the just-arriving migrants to block those who arrive illegally. It also performs highly restrictive controls on labor migration particularly within and along its borders (Malit and Youha, 2013).

Challenges of labor migration in UAE

Numerous cases of human rights abuse

Many of the UAE migrant workers are exposed to a lot of vulnerabilities and risks as well as limited access to basic human needs (iaIGO, 2016). Such practices are majorly directed at the domestic migrant workers who are in most cases females. A report released by the Human Rights Watch in 2014 revealed that UAE foreign domestic employees suffer from assaults, exploitation and confinement to forced labor. However, the UAE government has severely failed to give sufficient protection for the female domestic workers who face abuse from their employers and recruiters (Human Rights Watch, 2014).

Many considerations by the human rights groups

The Human Rights Watch and other global rights sponsors assert that the UAE Kafala system has led to subjection of migrant workers to various forms of abuse. These include putting them in working conditions that exploit them, entitlement to poor accommodation facilities, lack of freedom for the collective organizing or bargaining and non-payment of salaries. The government acknowledges the existence of gaps in implementing the labor laws and related mandates, but points an accusing finger to the Human Rights Watch. It argues that the Human Rights Watch has not recognized its past attempts and even the present developments aimed at enhancing protection of migrant workers from such abuses (Malit and Youha, 2013).

Labor complaints

While UAE boasts of the Kafala Sponsorship System which offers protection of the wages of migrant workers, numerous complaints have consistently risen against it. The legal adjudication procedure of UAE has been grappling with the challenge of matching voluminous labor complaints that are filed by both migrants and employers. For example, the number of cases of labor disputes filed in the Dubai courts during the first half of 2008 twice exceeded those filed during the same period the year before (Malit and Youha, 2013).

When the effects of the world-wide economic crisis hit the UAE companies and private employers in the betimes of the year 2008, a lot of them paraded bankruptcy cases in the courts. Also, some of them opted to flee from the country without giving out the wage dues of their employees who mostly happened to be the migrant workers. This has led to the declaration by critics that there exists inadequate funding for the institutional and staff capacity and poor coordination between federal and local agencies so as to implement the labor laws.

Recruitment agencies

Reports of over-exploiting foreign workers by the recruitment agencies have emerged that exorbitant visa fees are being charged thereby resulting into debt bondage. This is an illegal practice but it has been hard to fight as many of the agencies have their operations based out of UAE. Furthermore, bilateral agreements have been signed between UAE and countries like China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India whose citizens are migrant workers in UAE. Such steps have been adopted mainly to wipe out the presence of “middlemen” who reportedly charge the higher visa fees yet the challenge continues to persist (Kumaraswamy, 2014).

The presence of stiff economic competition

United Arab Emirates has a smaller high-skilled labor force but its government faces the challenge of difficulty in providing for employment and career development opportunities. UAE professionals are constrained in every public, private and quasi-government sectors. They are also faced with the problem of less lateral mobility when relocating from the public or quasi-government sectors to the private sectors. In fact, there is no recognition of the work experience gained from their previous public sector when they apply for a job in the private sector. This has seen them being forced to accept pay cuts or face occupational downgrade in the event they successful manage to get the lateral mobility (Malit and Youha, 2013).

UAE citizens are also considered as lazy, dependent and incompetent hence their values in the labor market are negatively shaped and normalized. Hence employers tend to prefer the high skilled expats from outside while overlooking the high skilled manpower of UAE leading to their under-utilization in the labor market. This results into economic competition between the two categories of workers with migrant professionals having to bear the brunt of it all. Failure has also been reported on the part of the government whose work is to regulate the equivalent access to entry-level job chances in the public, private and quasi-government sectors. This is due to the fact that follow-up for the evaluation of the experiences of the UAE citizens has been poorly done in the organizations and the labor market as a whole.

Response to the challenges

This section is divided into parts i.e. the UAE government response to the challenges and the regional (GCC) perspective.

Response of the UAE government to the challenges of labor migration

Over the past years, the government of UAE has restructured its laws and bilateral agreements with the countries where the laborers come from in a bid to address the challenges. It has also increased its international cooperation relating to labor issues in addition to adopting strategies of protecting the rights of migrant workers. Hence the responses of UAE authority to the challenges include the following:

Labor issues: federal actions and international cooperation

Several developments in the form of federal and Emirati laws and regulations have been taking shape in the UAE with the aim of addressing labor issues. For example in 2005, a mid-day break law was enacted to shield the construction and outdoor workers from injuries that may be caused by heat (Malit and Youha, 2013). The UAE Ministry of Labor has also set offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi courts to help handle cases involving labor disputes. In 2009, a Wage Protection System (WPS) was brought into law so as to deal with salary non-payment in the private sector i.e. retail, construction and small businesses. It has enrolled an estimated 2.9 million laborers and 205,000 businesses and has seen the penalization of over 600 employers.

The WPS does not give a cover for the domestic workers however there are some policy advancements to help deal with their cases. Such is the approval of legislation in 2012 by the UAE Federal National Council to deal with protecting the rights of the domestic workers for example giving them vacation and sick leave payments. The Emirati government also amended a federal law in 2013 to offer an enhanced protection for those who face human trafficking. It even set up a campaigning for instance airport security personnel for the raising of awareness of eliminating trafficking (Malit and Youha, 2013).

UAE authorities have also opened up for international cooperation on the standards of labor. For example, they have been actively involved in the Abu Dhabi Dialogue of 2008 which comprises 11 labor origin countries and 7 Asian destination nations. Its aim is to formulate a regional framework for the regulation of labor migration. In addition, the government of UAE has an enduring bilateral connection with many labor-giving countries. Chief among them is Philippines whose connection with UAE started in 1981 with the Protocol Agricultural Cooperation. But the bilateral cooperation touching on labor issues came to materialize in 2007 after the establishment of standardized contract and protection for the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in UAE, mostly domestic workers.

Economic competition

The UAE government has adopted numerous state programs for the enhancement of employment opportunities for the UAE professionals in the private sector. This is also important for addressing the rivalry and hatred existing between the Emirati professionals and the high-skilled migrant workers in the UAE private sector (Malit and Youha, 2013).

Sending countries, civil society weigh in

Most of the countries which send laborers to UAE have opted to protect their citizens in UAE. An example is the case of the Filipino women who are given pre-departure orientation and training prior to assuming the domestic chores in UAE (Malit and Youha, 2013). Philippines also encourage the sending of high-skilled laborers who are significantly subjected to less abuse as opposed to the low-skilled workers.

Also, civil society groups have recently been actively involved in reaching out to UAE migrant workers. For example, the Indian based NGO, Lawyers for Human Rights International (LFHRI) advocates for the protection of the Indians who are working overseas. There is also the extensive and vibrant Filipino civil society which provides assistance for close to 500,000 migrant workers in the UAE (Malit and Youha, 2013).

Immigration enforcement: amnesty, migrant workers strikes

The UAE government applies limited immigration measures so as to regulate unlawful immigration and recruiting of illegal immigrants. This includes strategies like levying of impermanent bans on those migrating from certain countries or holding off the issuing of new visas. It also makes use of high-tech devices to scan the just-arriving migrants and bar those who arrive illegally and perform highly restrictive controls on labor migration particularly within and along its borders (Malit and Youha, 2013).

The UAE government also embraces amnesty programs as a way of containing unlawful immigration and hiring. For example in 2012, it issued a 2-month amnesty program to enable illegal migrant workers regularize their conditions in UAE or depart from UAE without facing penalty. In addition, immigration enforcement strategies have also been applied by the UAE administrators in suppressing the collective migrant workers’ actions. For example, 43 migrant workers were deported by the UAE government in May 2013 after going on strike to demand for higher pay and improved working conditions (Malit and Youha, 2013).

The regional perspective

The other GCC member countries are also grappling with the challenges of huge statistics of migrant workers but continue to experience increasing influx of labor migration (Malit and Youha, 2013). They have therefore in the recent years scaled up efforts to control temporary labor migration. Such efforts include limiting in-flows so as to contain illegal immigration for the sake of the regional security. Some member countries have resolved to campaign for the increase of the employment shares of the UAE natives especially the youths. Nevertheless, struggle for the balance between foreigners and natives continue to hit the regional labor market needs.

Conclusion

United Arab Emirates is a popular destination for many job seekers who come from countries like China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines and India. It has relative economic and political stability and improved infrastructure but lacks the necessary education, training and development of national human resource to facilitate its massive growth. Hence the Emirati employers, especially those in private sectors, source for foreign laborers to spur its economic growth and high living conditions. It has policies which regulate such labor migration from abroad and these include: no permanent residency for the migrant workers; no permission for their family members to live in UAE; the Kafala system which protects the wages and rights of foreign workers; gender balance; no formation of labor unions; and application of restrictive immigration measures.

However, the labor migration policies in UAE are faced with various challenges which include the following: a lot of cases of the abuse of human rights; too many considerations by human rights groups; numerous labor complaints; problem with recruitment agencies; and the presence of stiff economic competition between UAE nationals and foreign workers. Some of the responses to these challenges include: implementing federal actions and global cooperation on labor issues; addressing issues of economic competition; weighing in on civil societies and labor sending countries; enforcing strict immigration laws.