International Migration in the Middle East and North Africa: A Political Interpretation

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1 EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE ISTITUTO UNIVERSITARIO EUROPEO ROBERT SCHUMAN CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES Third Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting Montecatini Terme and Florence March, 2002 Terzo Convegno di Studi Socio-politici sul Mediterraneo Montecatini Terme e Firenze Marzo 2002 International Migration in the Middle East and North Africa: A Political Interpretation Philippe Fargues Institut National d Études Démographiques (INED) Workshop XIV New Generations and the Future of International Migration South of the Mediterranean Philippe Fargues. All rights reserved. For any query or information, please contact the author(s): fargues@ined.it No part of this paper may be distributed, quoted or reproduced in any form without permission by the author(s). For authorized quotation(s) please acknowledge the Mediterranean Programme as follows: Paper presented at the Third Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence, March 20 24, 2002, Mediterranean Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.

2 Abstract Theories of international migration build upon rational choice and focus on economic and social determinants, but not on political factors that might condition individual choices. Looking at MENA during the last half century, shows that developments pertaining to international politics have played a leading role in shaping patterns of international migration. The most decisive event for the course of migration is the Arab- Israeli war of Before this war, the Gulf and the European migration systems were working independently from each other, and MENA was actually divided into disconnected entities, according to which system they belonged. October 1973 initiated a wave of globalisation in the domain of international migration and the two systems became dependent, not upon each other as much as upon the same complex of regional factors. Oil rent, Panarabism, and international labour migration within the Arab world became intrinsically linked. Beyond the region, the escalation of oil prices coincided with the beginning of a protracted economic crisis in Europe, and its decision of closing external borders to labour immigration, a measure which until now has not been lifted. Other political developments, such as civil strikes in various parts of MENA, the Gulf crisis of 1990/91 or the international embargo imposed on Libya, have conditioned the play of economic and social factors of migration. Page 2 of 26 - Fargues

3 Introduction International migration is a product of nations. While spatial mobility has always existed, inter-national migration is recent since it supposes the division of the world into nations that recognize each other as such. The distinction is not a purely formal one. It refers to the legal and political conditions under which people move. Becoming international, population movements that had existed from time immemorial suddenly passed under the control of new actors: the states, eager for their sovereignty over territory and borders, which is increasingly contested in matters related to the circulation of ideas, goods or capital, but still determinant when it comes to limiting the circulation and settlement of people. Massey and others (1998) have convincingly validated the main economic and social theories of international migration. Through a comparative analysis of the five major migratory systems observed in the present world, they have shown how economic factors (maximizing income and minimizing risk) account for the initiation of a migratory movement, while sociological factors (taking advantage of social capital) account for its perpetuation. All the theories reviewed except one (Wallerstein s world system) build upon the idea of rational choice. What theories do not account for, is the role played by political factors in conditioning individual choices, in shaping the lines economic differentials and social networks along which migration flows will take place, and in controlling borders. This paper is an attempt to address the political dimension of recent migration trends in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 1. Although it is basically a descriptive overview, it defends a thesis, i.e. that developments pertaining to international politics have played a leading role in shaping MENA migration patterns during the last half century. Migratory systems are defined by social scientists as a combination of a pole toward which migrants converge, and a basin from which they come. From this point of 1 MENA comprises the Arab countries, Israel, Turkey, and Iran, although the present paper concentrates more on the Arab countries. Page 3 of 26 - Fargues

4 view, MENA is conventionally considered to be shared between two migratory systems: one polarized by Europe and the other by the Gulf. Accordingly, the region would be made of disconnected parts, Turkey and the Maghreb belonging to the European system, and the Arab Mashrek and Iran to the Gulf system. An alternative and more political vision has recently emerged in Europe, in the wake of the Barcelona process, dealing with the South & East Mediterranean countries those bordering the Mediterranean sea as forming together one of the main gates of regular and irregular entries into Europe. None of these visions takes into account the fact that all individual Mediterranean countries of the South, except Algeria and Morocco, are connected by migration to Europe and to Arab oil exporting countries at the same time. Emigration from Tunisia is shared between European and Arab destinations, with Libya coming first among the latter. The same holds true for Lebanon, or for Turkey, from where emigration occurred to Arab countries after the closure of Europe to labour immigration in 1974 until the second Gulf war in 1991 (Içduygu, 1996; Içduygu & Sirkeci, 1998). In the near future, even Egypt, after three decades of emigration mainly towards the Arab countries, could be a strong candidate for migration to Europe. According to a 1997 national survey of potential migrants asked about the country they would choose to go to, 75% of those who are not former migrants would make the choice of a Gulf country, against 59% of the returnees. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is much more attractive for those who have no experience of migration (48%), than for those who already know what expatriation is (26%) (Schoorl, 2000; Makhlouf, 2000). Migrants are by definition flexible, and migration systems are not stable over time. Migration facts in the Middle East and North Africa Looking at migration, one can set out four major features of MENA. Firstly, the region considered as a whole is a receiving area as much as a sending one. This results from its economic heterogeneity, since MENA comprises at the same time countries which are major labour importers the oil exporters of the Arabian Peninsula (Table 1), and Libya and others that are major countries of emigration, such as Turkey, Morocco, or Egypt (Table 2). In total, immigration is approximately balanced by emigration, with numbers of non-mena foreigners having immigrated into Page 4 of 26 - Fargues

5 the region and MENA nationals having emigrated outside, both ranging in the 7-10 millions in 2000 figure 2. At this stage, two observations can be made. Firstly, after more than twenty-five years of all European governments having a restrictive immigration policy, Europe is by far the first region of destination for MENA emigrants 3. Secondly, ten years after the Gulf crisis of which had resulted in the flight of several million migrants, and despite the firm policy of gulfization 4 of the labour force following the war, immigration has spectacularly resumed in the Arab Peninsula, with a total number of expatriates equivalent and possibly higher than it was before the crisis 5 (Table 3). The equivalence of numbers, however, must not hide the dramatic changes that have occurred in the composition of foreign populations in oil countries during and in the aftermath of the war. Secondly, not only the whole of MENA, but most individual countries within the region are at the same time migrant receivers and senders. This is a paradoxical facet of labour migration in the region, that emigration calls for replacement immigration. During the decade after the civil war of , Lebanon hosted considerable labour immigration from Syria, with a balance estimated between half a million and one million, while the country was experiencing an unprecedented stream of emigration at exactly the same time, with a net departure of some 800,000 to 1 million Lebanese to the Gulf and overseas between 1990 and 2000, i.e. a quarter of the population in ten years (Labaki, 1998). Jordan is still feeding regular flows of emigrants (mostly of Palestinian origin) while the country accommodates 200,000 aliens, including Egyptian farm workers in the Jordan valley to whom the country owes its recent successes in agribusiness exports. Iraq and Oman have for long been countries where sizeable immigration and emigration could coexist. Egypt is another case, having some two million citizens temporarily abroad (Table 4) and being a country of asylum and a place of work for probably hundreds of thousands of Sudanese. Yemen itself, one of the poorest countries of the world and a major sending country, was receiving significant numbers of immigrants from Turkey before the Gulf war, in addition to waves of refugees from Somalia or Eritrea. Replacement migration seems to be more important in the Mashrek than in the Maghreb. Nevertheless in the case of the latter, the number of 2 Figures are very approximate. In many countries, accurate statistics on international migrations are note available. In addition, some countries produce statistics on immigration ( migrants being persons residing in a country other than that of their birth) while others release statistics on nationality (foreigners being persons bearing a nationality other than that of their country of residence). Some sources give estimates of numbers of persons who can claim an immigrant origin. Such numbers are usually much higher. However, the notion of immigrant origin is neither a measurable, not even a scientific concept. For a discussion, see Le Bras (1998). 3 Possibly 7 million, composed of 3 million regular immigrants from the Maghreb countries, around the same number of Turks (not all of them immigrants), some hundred thousand regular immigrants from other countries and unknown numbers of irregular immigrants. 4 Takhlîjiyya : policy designed to replace foreigners in the Gulf by nationals, in particular in the private sector. 5 In 2000, the countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council together had some 9 million non-nationals, among whom there were more than 5 million in Saudi Arabia, and one and a half million in the United Arab Emirates. Asians had now become a large majority (5-6 million Asians, against 3 million Arab non- Nationals). Page 5 of 26 - Fargues

6 transiting migrants, among whom there are many African asylum seekers on their way to Europe, stay from a few months to several years in order to be able to pay for their passage to the North. Thirdly, international migration within the region is of the same magnitude as its external exchanges, a feature which probably signals cultural cohesion more than economic integration. The number of immigrants in MENA countries who are nationals of other MENA countries ranges somewhere between five and ten million. This dense internal circulation of a relative scale comparable to that observed in the European Union is partly the result of the recent history of oil and Panarabism, and partly the continuation or the reminiscence of a long history of free circulation within the Ottoman Empire. The Empire had created a vast space of free circulation for persons, within which areas controlled by capitals of provinces certainly existed, but with no tangible borders. It was crossed by all kinds of migration, from proximity to long distance movements. It is only starting from the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) that the states born from the dismemberment of the Empire created material borders and defined nationalities, thus submitting movements of persons to constraints which did not previously exist. It is meaningful that one can read in an official Kuwaiti memorandum directed at aliens the following warning: The most prominent aspect of the state s sovereignty over its lands is the protection of its territories from any offender who daringly violates the said sovereignty by infiltration and residing in it without having secured a proper residence permit (quoted by Russell, 1990: 384). Panarabism has claimed a concern for abolishing the compartmentalization of the Arab world, but it always went unheeded. Proclaiming the unity of Arab nations, the Charter of the League of Arab States (1945) can be interpreted as an implicit recognition of the right of Arab nationals to freedom of movement among the Arab states (Dib, 1978: 37). Later, the Agreement on Economic Unity (1957) was more explicit by stipulating that full economic unity shall be established among the members of the Arab League, which shall in particular guarantee [ ] freedom of movements of persons and capital and freedom of residence. However, this clause will never bring the expected freedom, because national legislation to implement this freedom was nowhere promulgated (Dib, 1978: 38). The only trace of Arab unity in matters of residence is the purely symbolic distinction between Arab non-nationals and foreigners (read non-arabs ) which one can find in statistical yearbooks of most Arab countries. Fourthly, MENA is by far the world s first producer and first receiver of refugees (Table 5). Their massive presence in the region stands in apparent contradiction with the fact that no Arab Middle Eastern countries have acceded to the 1951 Geneva Convention or its 1967 Protocol, but the reason why they are not signatory to the convention is precisely that the most important population of refugees, the Palestinians, are not entitled to the United Nations Refugees Agency s status (UNHCR) status. There are 7.4 million refugees currently living in MENA, out of 17.8 millions enumerated in the world, that is 41.5% of world s refugees, in a region which represents only 6.6% of the world population. Among them, only one-third (2.6 million, that is 36%) benefit from the UNHCR status. The rest are 4.8 million Palestinians refugees, out of whom 3.8 million are registered at UNRWA and 1 million non-registered. A majority of MENA refugees are internal to the region (originating from and living in MENA): they are 5.5 million, out of whom 1.3 million non-palestinians (Iraqis in Iran, Sudanese in Egypt, Turkish and Iranian Kurds in Iraq, etc.). The region is a net receiver of refugees, with 1.7 million coming from outside (Afghans in Iran, Somalis in Yemen, Eritreans in Sudan, etc.), against 0.7 million sent by MENA in other Page 6 of 26 - Fargues

7 regions (Sudanese in Uganda & Ethiopia, Iraqis in Europe, etc.). By comparison with movements of refugees to / from bordering regions, MENA citizens who are refugees or asylum seekers in Europe represent relatively modest numbers, despite a recent increase 6. Lastly, it has to be noted that refugees are not all immigrants, i.e. persons born abroad. The high mobility which is observed among recent refugees 7 is in sharp contrast with the very low mobility of ancient refugees. Suffice it to recall that 85% of the Palestinian refugees of 1948, despite the majority of them being third or fourth generation refugees, are still living within a one hundred-kilometre radius of Palestine. Their immobility is precisely explained by their condition as refugees: they have no recognized nationality and no passport; in addition, their national identity has constantly been fostered by the hope of return to Palestine. In the following sections which are dedicated to the interpretation of the above facts, we argue that developments pertaining to international politics are critical milestones in the recent history of international migration in MENA. In particular, conflicts have had a major impact on migration. It was not only their direct effects, such as the production of refugees or the destruction of economies, but also their many indirect effects, some of them tremendously protracted. From this point of view, the war of October 1973 between Egypt and Israel will appear as a decisive event: a pivotal date after which migration could not continue as it had done before, and the trigger of a wave of globalization in the domain of migration due to world wide economic repercussions. The rest of the paper is accordingly divided into periods, before and after 1973, and within each period into places of immigration, the Gulf and Europe. The wars of Palestine and pre-1973 migration in the Mashrek The events of Palestine have had an enormous impact on the migratory scene of the Middle East. To both sides, Jews and Arab Palestinians, migration has been at the heart of the nation-building process. For the Israeli Jews, immigration has been by far the first factor of demographic growth throughout the twentieth century. Without migration, the Jewish community of post World War I Palestine (60,000 individuals in 1918) would have been a small population of only ,000 in By comparison with the actual size of the Jewish population of Israel (5 million), it means that 95 % of this population in 2000 are the result of immigration which took place after Most immigrants (85 %) arrived after the creation Israel, in compliance with the Return Law proclaimed by the new state and enacted in 1950, which entitles every Jew to immigrate. For the Palestinians, the war of resulted in the forced emigration of the majority, and their scattering between neighbouring countries. Against the Return Law decreed by the state of Israel, they could set the Right of Return recognized to them by the international community (UN General Assembly Resolution 194(III) of 11 December 1948). Since that time, there is an obsession of numbers 6 The share of MENA was 27,8 % of the 450,000 asylum applications submitted in Europe in the course of 2000 (UNHCR Report). 7 Notably Iraqis and Afghans, who are in principle destined to return, but actually found in a world wide wandering. Page 7 of 26 - Fargues

8 among them: How many are they? Where do they live? From where in pre-1948 Palestine do they come? The very high value attributed to demography has been eloquently symbolized by the fact that one of the very first measures taken by the newly established Palestinian National Authority was the creation of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in 1994, and that among the first achievements of the latter, was the realization of a population census (1997) and the full publication of its detailed results on the web in record time (1998). One can interpret the Israeli sabotaging of PCBS s equipment, computers, and files in the course of the second Intifada (December 2001) as an implicit recognition of the strategic importance of population data to the Palestinians. Beyond the Palestinians and the Jewish Israelis, the conflict has indirectly conditioned migration in the whole of Middle East, on the long term. Claiming their solidarity with the Palestinians, hence their state of belligerence with Israel, has been a strategic resource available to more than one Arab regime for legitimizing their perpetuation of authoritarian practices, themselves conducive to two opposite effects: on one side, limiting emigration by putting administrative obstacles to border crossings and expatriation, and, on the other side, increasing individual or collective insecurity and consequently the propensity to emigrate. Egypt of Nasser is an example of these contradicting trends. But it is probably through another channel, regional economy, that the conflict has produced its greatest impact on migration by favouring the emergence of an enormous demand for foreign labour in the Gulf. It is indeed an exceptional coincidence of all exogenous elements which made the Arabian Peninsula the centre of a migration system gradually extending to the whole of the Islamic world. The consecration of oil as the first source of energy, the existence of the world s biggest oil reserves in the Peninsula and the Gulf a then scarcely populated area, the availability of labour force in bordering countries confronted with rapid population growth, all of these factors would probably not have resulted in such a gigantic labour market if the Arab-Israeli conflict had not caused a constant political and military insecurity in the vicinity, which stimulated the escalation of oil price and therefore created an international context propitious for oil to generate a bigger rent. Decolonization and pre-1973 migration in the Maghreb Emigration from Maghreb to Europe began as a facet of colonization. Its economic causes are to be found in the way French occupation dismantled traditional agriculture in North Africa, and therefore generated labour surpluses available for long distance mobility (Talha, 1989; Kateb, 2001). Its very beginnings can be precisely dated from 1905 in Algeria and 1912 in Morocco, when the French state operated the first collective recruitment of workers bound for industry in France. Labour imports took momentum with World War I, when immigrant workers were called to replace French men drafted into the army. The ministry of War then became the first employer of Maghrebians in France, with its special Page 8 of 26 - Fargues

9 agency of recruitment ( Service de l Organisation de Travailleurs Coloniaux ) established in In total, close to 500,000 Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans passed by France during the war, representing one third of the male adult population of their respective countries. From then until independence 8, significant numbers of workers, mainly from Algeria, migrated to France. However, their migration did not result in any sizeable Maghrebian community in France, since it was mostly temporary movements which trace an up and down graph but give a near zero balance, and almost exclusively movements of men without an impact on demographic reproduction. Migration to France was simply a step in the professional life of many men bound to come back home, and a means for them to temporarily escape the colonial order (Liauzu, 1996) and its economic implications, including discrimination in salary. During the Algerian war of independence emigration grew, leaving some 350,000 Algerians residing in France in However, it is independence itself which has been the occasion of the largest South to North migration across the Mediterranean, inaugurated by the departure of the whole of the European populations (some 1.5 million persons in the three countries) and of the Jewish local communities (0.5 million). Between 1962 and 1973, the number of Maghrebian workers arriving in Europe increased and their duration of stay lengthened. According to French population censuses, the number of Maghrebians residing in France passed from 410,000 in 1962 to 1,110,000 in 1975, predominantly from Algeria (711,000). Post independence migration was regulated by bilateral agreements. The Treaty of Evian (1962) established the free circulation of persons between Algeria and France, but it was soon followed by a convention (1964) limiting the number of entries to those required by the French labour market. Morocco and Tunisia also signed agreements with France, as well as with several other European countries. Being less tightly tied to France during the colonial times, these two countries could enfranchise themselves from France more easily than Algeria, after colonization ended. Consequently, by contrast with Algeria whose expatriate community is almost entirely located in France, emigration from Morocco and Tunisia is much more diversified. Only 49.8% of Moroccan expatriates (statistics of regular migrants) are living in France, against 72.7% of the Tunisians and 90.9% of the Algerians. In sum, from World War II until 1973, the Maghreb (as well as Turkey, whose emigration was mainly destined to Germany) was not in a situation very different from that of Southern Europe: at that time, most Mediterranean countries, be they on the Middle Eastern and North African or on the European shore, were pools of labour force emigration to the then much more industrialized North Western Europe. If migration was driven by economic demand i.e. by market factors it was largely falling under the control of states. Because state relations were not of same nature within Europe and between Europe and MENA countries, things were going to radically diverge when a sudden reversal occurred in the demand for migrant workers on the European labour markets. 8 Independence was gained in 1956 in Morocco and Tunisia, and in 1962 in Algeria. Page 9 of 26 - Fargues

10 The turning point of October 1973 Due to the multiplicity and diversity of its remote effects, the war of October 1973 was probably the most important event in the Middle East during the second half of the twentieth century. The military game unfolding on the Suez canal and in the Golan heights was to produce a considerable impact on the economies of Arab oil countries very rapidly, and soon after on societies of the whole MENA, including the distant Maghreb. It is neither the uncertain outcome of the battle between Israel and Egypt, nor the first peace treaty ever signed between Israel and an Arab state which was to follow (Camp David Treaty of 1979), but the invention of a new weapon of war namely oil that disrupted the economic and social order of the region. Let us briefly recall the facts. On 6 October, the Egyptian army breaks the Bar Lev line on the Suez canal while the Syrian army attacks Israeli positions on the Golan. Ten days later, while fighting seem to give advantage to Israel and President Sadat of Egypt announces a cease-fire, Arab oil countries come into the battle by unilaterally deciding to reduce their production of oil. Soon after, King Faysal of Arabia imposes a total embargo on exports to the United States (20 October) then to the Netherlands, a major market place for oil. The barrel jumps from 3 to 18 dollars, then stabilizes at 12 dollars, i.e. four times its price a few months earlier. Together with the barrel, it is the rent of oil producing countries which increases four times, and consequently their wealth and their demand for imported labour. With the strategic alliance of Egypt and Arabia, two complementary but disconnected until then assets of the Arab Middle East, i.e. demography and capital, would cross-fertilize under the form of labour migration. Shortly after the war, President Sadat pioneered his open-door policy (infitâh), which unlocked the borders of Egypt to the entry of foreign investors and at the same time to the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers. Nevertheless, the relative share of immigrants of Arab origin will start to decline in the Gulf, with the dramatic expansion of immigration from South and East Asia. Paradoxically, the solidarity of weapons and oil concluded in wartime was to put an end to the Panarabist utopia. Instead of recalling well-documented facts on Asian migration 9, let us rather elaborate on the relationship between Panarabism and migration. The Aftermath of 1973: I Migration v/s Panarabism in the Arab East The Arab East possesses a diversity of wealth, but is divided into states. Some states have oil, that is capital, while others have manpower and skill, that is means for transforming capital into material well being and welfare 10. A call for population from the former to the latter was meant to solve the equation at the scale of the Arab nation. Oil rent, Panarabism, and international labour migration within the Arab world seemed to be intrinsically linked. The Arab-Israeli conflict was bound to exacerbate this link. It created an area of permanent insecurity in the proximity of oil wells, as well as an Arab solidarity, or at least the inescapable obligation to claim so. Insecurity raised the price of oil and consequently the call for imported labour in the Gulf, while solidarity pointed out the Palestinians and all the Arabs as the 9 Literature is abundant on the topic. The best survey of the period following 1973 is Birks & Sinclair (1980). 10 With the exception of Iraq and Algeria, no individual country possesses wealth in oil and in human capital at the same time. Page 10 of 26 - Fargues

11 most legitimate candidates to answer the call. Organizing the encounter of oil and demography through migration was meant to lay the economic foundations of Arab unity. Such an idea was unambiguously voiced by President Saddam Hussein, justifying in the following terms the call made to Egyptian labour by Iraq, and criticizing the employment of non-arab Asian workers by other countries of the Gulf: Our decision to grant free access to the province (qutr: read Iraq in the vocabulary of the Ba th at that time) to all Arab citizens, has not been taken with the objective of achieving our own development plans, but on the basis of our conception of the stakes of the nation (watan: read the Great Arab Nation ) [ ] Impacts of immigration on the development of the province are only side effects, compared with the fundamental objective which is to make local sovereignty (sovereignty of Iraq) an instrument in the service of national action (national: panarabist) (quoted from Beaugé & Roussillon, 1988) A profuse literature of that time reflects a consensus among intellectuals about the idea that combining Arab capital with Arab manpower was a unique chance for the accomplishment of the political goal of Arab unity (see for example: Serageldin, 1980). Dozens of conferences, meetings and workshops of all sorts were organized throughout the Arab world on the topic of international migration 11. Intellectual debates culminated in the early 1980s, exactly at a time when international migration was itself reaching a peak. A first question asked was whether migration to Arab oil countries was beneficial, or harmful, to economies of the sending countries, in other words whether the Arab space established by migration was equitable or inequitable. Does migration reduce, or on the contrary accentuate, disparities within the Arab world? This first question was asked by reference to national entities and examined through data aggregated at the level of countries: labour was a production factor and the social situation of individual workers was not taken into account in the way benefits and costs, equity and inequity, were appraised. The focus was on economic masses, not individual freedom; it was the material production of nations, not the right of persons to circulate between them, which was then at stake. A second question was about the kind of relationship established by migration between Arabs and the rest of the world. On the cultural register, the elevation of the proportion of Asian immigrants in the Gulf was interpreted by Arab intellectuals (mostly from outside the Gulf) as a threat against Arab identity in the richest part of the Arab world. This concern expressed aloud in the media of sending countries (notably Egypt and Lebanon) was echoed in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf by the silence of the authorities about immigration figures. With the exception of Kuwait and Bahrain, no population statistics were released on immigrants 12. Saudi Arabia is a case in point. Until the population census of 1992, not a single piece of quantitative data on foreigners residing in the country could leak out, as if a state which pretends to hold a spiritual ascendancy over more than one billion Muslims in the world should not publicize population figures showing, not only its modest demographic place among Muslim nations, but the fact that its national economy relies on a labour force in which Saudi nationals are a 11 See for example the abundant production on labour migration released by the Centre for the Study of Arab Unity in the 1980s. Interestingly, no volume on migration was to be published during the following decade by the same centre, whose interest had radically shifted to the then fashionable issue of globalization. 12 Despite the fact that some data are collected everywhere, such as persons entering and departing the country (collected by the police of borders), work permits delivered and renewed, pupils enrolled at school, etc. Page 11 of 26 - Fargues

12 minority (Table 6). On the economic register, another debate was about the use of remittances. Modes of consumption introduced in the countries of origin by nouveau riche returnees from the Gulf were considered a factor of increased dependency upon the West, since local economies were not producing most of the items symbolizing success that emigrants would acquire as soon as they returned back home. Panarabism had indeed inherited from anti-imperialist stream the notion that economic construction had to be self-centred. The Aftermath of 1973: II Closure of Europe to labour migration Beyond its regional effects on migration to oil countries, the escalation of oil prices in the course of the war of October 1973 had a tremendously far-reaching impact on migration between MENA and Europe. It actually coincided with the beginning of, and possibly triggered, a protracted economic crisis in industrialised countries heavily dependent on oil imports. A major dimension of this crisis was a rise in unemployment, unprecedented since the Great Depression of France and Germany, followed by the rest of Europe, unilaterally decided the closure of their borders to labour immigration, a measure which, until now, has not been lifted. At the same time, radical economic and political developments were unfolding in Europe. With the fall of dictatorships in Greece, Portugal and Spain, and their subsequent admission into the European Union (Greece in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986), the Mediterranean countries of Europe became places of immigration from the Southern shore and beyond (King & al, 2000). On the one side, their rapidly developing economies were offering new labour opportunities, mostly precarious (seasonal jobs, often requiring a high level of spatial mobility), and thus well fitted to the flexibility of migrant labour. On the other side, their geographic situation and their long history of emigration until very recently, made them easier countries to enter than those of North Western Europe, and places from where to get access to the rest of Europe, which became an open space with the enactment of the Schengen agreement 13. The lift of internal barriers within Europe was accompanied by the strengthening of its external borders. With the Euro-Mediterranean process initiated in 1995 in Barcelona, free circulation across the Mediterranean was encouraged for goods and capitals, but discouraged for persons: economic exchange was promoted, but demographic exchange was prevented. What is more, opening borders to economic flows was expected to offer an alternative to migration, i.e. to reinforce the closure of borders to labour migration. In particular, the establishment of a free trade area in the Mediterranean region and the development of foreign direct investments in the Maghreb countries, were repeatedly advocated as the best means to reduce the propensity to emigrate from countries of the South by elevating the standard of living of their citizens. These measures would entitle economies of the Maghreb to take full benefit of their comparative advantage, which is cheap labour. However, economic studies have shown that the establishment of a free trade area and the development of foreign direct investments are more likely to stimulate than to prevent migration, at least in the short term (Tapinos, 1996 & 2000). Other measures which could enhance the economic security of the Maghreb and therefore reduce the migration pressure, 13 Signed in 1985 by Germany, France and the Benelux on an intergovernmental basis, and later extended to the whole of the EU with the exception of the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Schengen Agreement was to introduce freedom of movement for all citizens of the European Communities within the Schengen area and to deal with visa, immigration and asylum issues. Page 12 of 26 - Fargues

13 such as relaxing the EU restrictions on agricultural imports, would represent a cost for the economy of Mediterranean Europe and therefore are opposed by Southern European governments (Collinson, 2000). The end to legal economic immigration in Europe and the relative ineffectiveness of economic policies devised to substitute migration 14 has been accompanied by two deep changes. Firstly, a shift occurred from labour mobility to permanent settlement. While back and forth movements of workers were becoming subject to increased restrictions, family reunification was still respected as a fundamental right and thus escaped the new restrictions. Consequently a one way immigration of women and children succeeded the two-way mobility of men which had taken place during the previous period. At the second generation, family reunification itself evolved and it now tends to bring more men than women. The reason for this gender shift is that young women of Muslim origin born in Europe usually marry a Muslim man in compliance with the Muslim law, but do not necessarily find a suitable groom in their Muslim community in Europe, whose young men are entitled by Islam to marry non-muslim women and thus are not all available for intra-community marriage. Because young men brought to Europe by marriage are also breadwinners, family reunification is a legal way to perpetuate labour immigration. Secondly, labour immigration also continued through alternative means. Starting from the second half of the 1970s, irregular migrants made an appearance on a large scale in European countries. They form a category composed of persons regularly admitted (tourists, visitors, students, etc.) but staying beyond the duration of their visa, and of persons entering without a regular visa, notably those smuggled by traffickers. Legal procedures for asylum were also used for disguising economic immigration. Numbers are uneasy to establish (Salt, 2000). It has been estimated that half a million people per year entered the EU illegally in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and that the total number of illegal immigrants present in the EU runs into millions 15. From 1989 to 2001, more than five million people have applied for asylum in EU member states. Illegal entries have become a matter of dispute in internal as well as international politics. Should European governments legalise illegal migrants, or is it better to open legal channels? has become a recurrently debated issue. On the diplomatic side, states lay the responsibility for traffickers in migrants at each other s door 16. A spectre of invasion is brandished by European politicians who point out migration as the main avenue through which welfare at home is endangered by poverty and political instability abroad (Collinson, 2000). A link between crime and migration is suspected, despite evidence that terrorist activity among ethnic minorities, when it happens, is rather ascribable to persons born in Europe, i.e. people who are not immigrants. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 against the United States have motivated the reinforcement of immigration controls, including those applicable to asylum seekers in the fear that terrorists may be hiding among persons fleeing their native countries. This happened in Europe as well as 14 Various policies were invented with the objective of encouraging return migration to countries of origin through economic incentives, such as the return allowance offered by the French government in the 1980s to those immigrants volunteering to return. Actual numbers of returnees always remained very modest. 15 The last estimation dates from 1991, when irregular migrants were estimated at 2.6 million (Salt, 2000). 16 For example, in August 2001, the government of Spain complained to the Moroccan ambassador after 1,000 new illegal arrivals were disclosed in a few days, and Morocco was pressed to tighten up border security. Soon after, King Mohammed VI replied in a French newspaper by accusing Mafia gangs in Spain of playing the biggest role in the trafficking of humans (Interview published in Le Figaro, 6 September 2001). Page 13 of 26 - Fargues

14 in every part of the world. In January 2002, Iran reimposed entry visas on Gulf Arabs. The reinstatement of the visa requirement, which had been lifted two years earlier to boost tourism, was presented as part of Iran's efforts to stop members of terrorist networks. However, it came just after the Gulf Co-operation Council reaffirmed its support for the United Arab Emirates in its territorial dispute with Iran over three islands at the mouth of the Gulf. This apparently trivial news introduces our next point, on how international migration has been affected by international politics in the Arab East from the Gulf war until the present. The Gulf crisis of and the great migratory turmoil The Gulf war of was the first large-scale military conflict to take place on the scene of a major crossroads of international labour migration. The ebb it caused was an unprecedented trauma in the history of manpower migration. For the first time, millions of legal immigrants, all with regular documents, were suddenly thrown on the roads of exodus. In total, three million legal expatriates were compelled to leave (Van Haer, 1995), a majority of them being Arab citizens who had suddenly become unfaithful because of their nationality, and others fleeing a war which was no concern of theirs 17. Three communities were particularly targeted: Palestinians in Kuwait, Egyptians in Iraq, and Yemenis in Saudi Arabia. On the eve of the Kuwaiti invasion by Iraq, some 400,000 Palestinians were living in the emirate. Their community emptied in three waves: the first occurred just after the entry of Iraqi troops in fear of an imminent war, the second at the liberation through fear of persecutions (in response to Yaser Arafat s support given to Saddam Hussein), and the third at the enactment of new regulations affecting the residence of aliens. The only Palestinians left in Kuwait (some 40,000) were those whose parents or grand-parents were refugees from Gaza, and consequently held Egyptian documents: they were protected by the fact that Egypt had participated in the coalition against Iraq. The others were bearing Jordanian documents due to their West Bank origin. In brief, what mattered was not the political position of individual expatriates nor their collective quality of Palestinians, but a distinction referring to the situation of a past period between the war of and the war 1967 when the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt while the West bank was annexed by Jordan. Egypt was among the very first Arab countries to condemn Iraq and to take part in the military coalition led by the US. Egyptian residents in Iraq, a community of 700,000 to more than one million according to estimates, would have to leave en masse in no time. However, it seems that their departure was planned before the crisis, and that the latter was a pretext more than a cause. Egyptian migration to Iraq dated from a bilateral agreement of 1975, and peaked during the war between Iran and Iraq, when Egyptians were employed in agriculture in replacement of Iraqi peasants mobilized in the army. At the end of hostilities in 1988, the demobilization brought half a million Iraqis back to the labour market. Egyptian immigrants were no longer auxiliaries, as in wartime, but competitors. The government of Iraq took several measures against them, including severe restrictions on remittances and the freeze of their wages. A first wave of returns took place during the autumn of 1989, the size of which is unknown but Page 14 of 26 - Fargues

15 represents probably half of the Egyptian population in Iraq: fourteen flights per day during three months were chartered by Iraqi Airways to Egypt. When the crisis broke up in August 1990, 327,000 returns were recorded in two months, and at the beginning of the military operations, only 180,000 Egyptians were still in Iraq. Not all of them left (Fawzi el-solh, 1994). The most large-scale expulsion of the war took place outside the battlefield, in Saudi Arabia from where almost the entire Yemeni community was expelled. The proximate cause was opposite stances adopted by the two governments in the crisis: Saudi Arabia offering major military bases to armies of the coalition and Yemen voting at the Council of the Arab League against the condemnation of Iraq. The Saudi response was a decree of the King (19 September 1990) instituting equality of treatment between foreigners whatever their nationality: for one million Yemenis, it meant the loss of a privilege exemption of residence and work permits, and more importantly exemption of sponsorship and their sudden fall into illegality 18. Between September 1990 and January 1991, 800,000 returnees are recorded in Yemen (Yemen, Central Statistical Office, 1991). Just after the war, Qatar followed Saudi Arabia and refused Yemeni expatriates renewing their residence permits (April 1991). In response Yemen, who before the crisis was experiencing a shift from an emigration to an immigration country, decided to expel immigrants working in the country (100,000 departures in ) and to unilaterally revoke its migration agreement with Turkey (1993). Ten years later, Yemenis are back in Saudi Arabia (Table 7). Yemeni society has overcome the recent trauma by calling on its remote memory of the worlds oldest emigrants 19 : in May 1999, a First General Congress of Yemeni Expatriates was convened in San a under the patronage of the Ministry of Expatriates, the proceedings of which were introduced by Premier Abdulkarim al-iiryani (Athawabit, 1999). A lesson was learnt from the events of 1991: if Yemenis had been expelled from Saudi Arabia, it was because they were unskilled workers who had been unable to progress since the 1960s and to compete with the much better qualified Egyptians, Jordanians, and Asians; the political confront of the two governments had only been a pretext (Al-Faqîh, 1999). In total, the Gulf war was an occasion for major oil exporters and labour importers of the Arabian Peninsula to reaffirm national policies of gulfization or saudization (takhlîjiyya, tas ûdiyya) of the labour force. After the political crisis they were confronted with an economic crisis. Paradoxically, oil price had not reacted in 1991 to a war taking place in the very centre of the area of extraction as it had done eighteen years earlier when the October 1973 war was unfolding in the distance. Oil price increased a little during the events of , but then decreased continuously until The astronomical bill of post-war reconstruction had to be paid with oil rent on the decline. For the first time since the discovery of oil, emirates and kingdom s subjects were confronted with a drop in purchasing power, and soon with the emergence of unemployment among graduates. Young generations of the oil bust had to enter labour markets with diplomas but without guarantee of being hired, while their fathers, the oil boom generation had simply ignored labour markets. Immigrants were pointed out as competitors. Plans for transferring 17 In addition to the expulsion or flight of three million expatriates, two million Iraqis were forced to seek asylum across borders (Kurds in Turkey, and Shi ites in Iran) to escape their repression by the Iraqi regime. 18 One month was given to Yemenis either to leave the kingdom, or to get their status regularized, which was impossible for the vast majority of them. 19 Yemenis like to date their emigration back to 6000 BC. They also like to recall the contribution of the Yemeni diaspora to the diffusion of Arab culture in the early XXth century (Athawabit, 1999). Page 15 of 26 - Fargues

16 jobs from non-nationals to nationals were prepared, which particularly targeted the private sector which employs more that 90% of the foreign workers residing in Saudi Arabia 20. In application to a decree of 1995, companies with more than 20 employees were obliged to hire nationals. A law enacted in 1997 sentenced irregular migrants to prison. At the end of 1997, the GCC estimated that 400,000 irregular migrants had left Saudi Arabia and that 300,000 others had their status regularized. The whole conception of labour in Gulf societies was to be affected by the events of 1990/1. During the years of the oil boom, labour was considered a means for transforming oil rent into welfare and capital. Work is assured by non-nationals but the capital it produces is kept by nationals, through the sponsorship system (kafâla) and various legal provisions. Labour imports are responding to a strategy of capital accumulation. Revealing the vulnerability of economies built on imported labour, the crisis has conduced to a political reappraisal of labour: starting from then, labour should transform oil rent into wages, to the benefit of nationals, and thus serve the social contract and the political link. This new conception, according to which immigrants and nationals become competitors for employment, opens the door to tensions which did not existed beforehand, or were smothered. Few of these tensions could be expressed in the receiving countries themselves. The October 1999 uprising of 3,000 Egyptian workers in Kheitan, outskirts of Kuwait City, remains an exception. The same is not true for sending countries, where public criticism and protest against the discrimination of which migrant workers are victims in the Gulf have become common. It is significant that the Arab regional preparatory conference for the World Conference convened in Cairo (July 2001) under the slogan of Together against the last Apartheid regimes, has called upon Arab states to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of Migrant workers and Members of their Families of 1990, and to abolish the sponsorship system enforced in the Gulf. Local conflicts and international migration In an open world, every conflict is susceptible to bear an international migration dimension, simply because crossing borders can offer a way for escaping danger at home. Among the many conflicting situations that are found in MENA, from civil strikes to international tensions, let us briefly review three cases Lebanon, Algeria, and Libya for the few general things that can be learnt from them. The 15 years Lebanese civil war ( ) has produced massive outflows of population. In periods of heavy fighting, it is thought that hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have sought refuge in neighbouring countries (Syria and Cyprus) or overseas. Some of them were returning during truces, and a 20 Foreign workers offer to private companies in the Gulf a manpower much more flexible and less costly than nationals. Page 16 of 26 - Fargues