The Coronavirus pandemic has imposed many social and economic challenges and changes on our daily lives. Some of the outstanding issues were put under the microscope, especially with regard to the issue of foreign labor, which was associated with the Arab Gulf states.

These countries are highly dependent on low-wage expats. Hence, many questions arise, the most important of which are: What are the difficulties that migrant workers faced before and after Corona? Will their departure lead to localization of jobs? And how reality compels us to revise our economically unsustainable lifestyle in the post-oil era.

Our view of employment

The way we talk about employment varies according to how we view them. Some call them migrant workers due to their temporary presence. On the other hand, others see them as “loose” labor, to indicate the sponsor’s role in bringing the worker and not providing him with work. The term “marginal” and “contravention” is used for unskilled workers who get their daily strength from irregular or irregular work.

The term “foreigner” is used for Arabs and Westerners who work in middle and high-ranking jobs. While the debate rages about employment and ways to solve it, many of us still do not dispense with “domestic” labor.

Therefore, it may be missed by some that our dependence on employment is not limited to a specific space, but rather has become a lifestyle. The tasks assigned to them formed a chain that begins at home and ends outside. So the existence of the worker becomes a luxury and a necessity upon which the local economy was built.

How did employment become a problem?

The influx of workers in Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf states, began during the oil boom and the resulting urban expansion and lifestyle change. As foreign workers now constitute about half of the population of Bahrain and the Sultanate of Oman, two thirds of the population of Kuwait, nearly ninety percent of the population of the Emirates and Qatar, and one third of the population of Saudi Arabia.

And since the size of Saudi Arabia and its population is much greater than the rest of the Arab Gulf states, the total number of foreigners in Saudi Arabia is higher than others in neighboring countries, reaching thirteen million foreigners.

Therefore, Saudi Arabia began in recent years to reduce the number of foreigners for a number of reasons, the first of which was the attempt to deport the violating workers, which began in 2013.

One of its most important campaigns was “A nation without violators”, which was launched in 2017, and was able to arrest many violators of the residency system, the work system, and the border security system, and deported about a million violators until 2019.

The implementation of Vision 2030 requires localizing a greater number of jobs in the private sector and reducing the proportion of foreigners in it, by setting labor fees and empowering the private sector to raise its contribution to the GDP at the same time.