Approximately half of the 59 million people living in the six member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are immigrants. Some remain for a few years, while others stick there for their whole careers. The majority enters the country based on the assumption that they will have to leave eventually. Despite their numbers, migrants have restricted rights in the Gulf states' destination countries: they have temporary residence and limited involvement in society. The prospect of granting citizenship to foreigners has long agitated the Gulf states. For the vast majority of foreign employees, life in the Gulf consists of a succession of short-term work permits; by stop being productive, you stop being a resident. Nevertheless, this situation is gradually and slowly changing; the need for diversification of the economy has forced some of the Gulf states to break this citizenship taboo. 
Migrants make up a significant portion of the population of the area, accounting for one-third to more than three-quarters of the total. Many of these migrant workers are unskilled labourers in industries such as construction and hospitality, as well as domestic workers. Even though migrant workers make major contributions to the development of their destination countries in the Gulf, they experience discrimination, and exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous employers, as well as major barriers to justice and redress, while access to citizenship for them is out of the question. Migrants account for 88 per cent of the UAE's resident population and up to 95 per cent of its workforce in Dubai in 2017. The majority of expatriates came from Asia, particularly India, Νepal, Pakistan. However, approximately 70 per cent of them work in low-wage jobs. For example, even though the UAE boasts one of the highest GDP per capita rates in the world, low-income migrant workers in the UAE face harsh working conditions and have their rights infringed.[1]
However, while citizenship is intended to transcend the importance of race, religion, class and gender, in the Arab Gulf, citizenship serves to strengthen these categories. Gulf governments have continued to define different de facto tiers of citizenship, determining who is entitled to which levels of economic benefits based on ancestry, who is eligible to vote, whether women can pass citizenship on to their children, and, in some cases, even stripping citizenship from dissidents deemed disloyal. Within the present framework, the legal concept of citizenship offers a small pool of individuals with restricted access to political rights. Nationality rules in the six nations are intended to guarantee that only a certain kind of resident may claim citizenship. Stringent qualifying requirements and restrictive interpretations of who qualifies for nationality limit the pool to individuals who may claim ethnic affiliation to the country via their family (jus sanguinis). Citizenship is nearly generally inherited from one's father's nationality across the Gulf nations, and in most circumstances, female nationals are unable to pass citizenship to their children. There are also excessive conditions that must be completed for citizenship procedures, rendering most prospective candidates ineligible.[2]
The UAE's workforce is strongly fragmented along national, ethnic, and racial lines, and nationals have several sorts of citizenship. In reality, barely half of all persons born in the country enjoy full citizenship rights. The other half is made up of second-class citizens who do not have access to the same advantages as full citizens: The first group is "full citizen Emiratis," who can trace their ancestry back to the “original” families that made up the nation at the time of its founding and who own the ancestry certificate, known as khulasat al-qaid.[3] The second group is people who have gained citizenship by marriage, which generally pertains to foreign women married to Emiratis, while those who have obtained citizenship via naturalisation fall into the third group. Nevertheless, there are also locals who have a passport but do not have the ancestry certificate, as well as bidouns who live in the UAE but do not have a passport or the khulasat al-qaid. Passport holders who are not considered ‘full citizens’ under the UAE citizenship law may be granted some or all the benefits given by the emirate in which they live, although this is not guaranteed. The story of Emirati "exclusive citizenship” is critical not only for retaining loyal residents but also for legitimising the state as the supreme defender of the national population.[4]
To summarise, a fundamental concept underpins all limiting practices: citizenship is a privilege bestowed upon a select few; This is a result of existing concerns among Gulf states that it will alter their national identity. Despite the clear need to increase their domestic labour forces, the GCC governments have been particularly hesitant to grant naturalised citizenship to their Arab neighbours. Given the advantages linked, and the desire not to dilute these benefits much by naturalising the foreign workers who make up the bulk of the region's population, this has also an economic basis. According to Longva, citizenship in Arab Gulf states includes access to social rights; social rights are strictly defined as preferential access to economic advantages and services supplied by the ruler to the population. For example, native Emiratis benefit from everything from lower mobile phone subscriptions to interest-free property loans. Furthermore, when they marry, some get rewards of up to 70,000 dirhams (approximately 17,000 euros).[5]
However, this situation has clearly started to change. For instance, the UAE declared in January that some foreigners, such as investors and scientists, might be considered for citizenship. In the same pattern, Saudi Arabia announced the naturalisation of an unspecified number of foreigners. Besides, many Gulf governments now provide long-term residency permits that do not require a job. A new programme in the UAE enables expats to retire in the nation rather than return home. Despite the first impression, the UAE will only naturalise 1000 individuals per year, while long-term visas are linked to wealth criteria, which excludes most employees.[6]
The citizenship offer is the most current expression of a policy implemented for expats seeking a long-term stay in the UAE. The Golden Visa programme, for example, offers a 10-year renewable residence to investors, entrepreneurs, chief executives, scientists, and excellent students who satisfy certain qualifications. Following its debut in 2019, the programme originally proved beneficial in providing more stability to people looking to develop long-term jobs in the UAE, but the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed its inherent weaknesses and limitations. As mobility limitations tightened and economic circumstances deteriorated, the absence of a social security net for foreigners led many employees who might have benefited from the programme to flee the country.[7]
The new legislation regarding citizenship is part of a mind-boggling reform package undertaken by the UAE during the last year. Unmarried couples can now live together lawfully. Muslims may use alcohol. The capital, Abu Dhabi, agreed to allow civil weddings for non-Muslims in November. On December 7, the UAE stated that the public sector will go from a Sunday-to-Thursday work week to a Monday-to-Friday work week, putting it in line with the majority of the rest of the globe. Furthermore, another element that showed a change of direction was in late 2019, when the UAE announced its intention to withdraw from Yemen. Due to a domestic economic slump, the UAE has finally chosen to withdraw from an obviously stalemated struggle against a determined opponent in Yemen.[8]
In the same pattern, Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030," a vision for a post-oil economy, calls for major societal reforms in order to make the Kingdom more desirable to visitors and foreign corporations. The Kingdom recognised potential appeal in the country's wide terrain and proximity to the Red Sea as it sought to mimic Dubai and become an international centre for commerce and tourism. As a result, it has set aside $810 billion to expand the tourist industry in the future years. The industry is predicted to produce three million employment, with expatriates accounting for two-thirds of the workforce. As a result, the Saudi government announced new plans to offer foreigners permanent residence status and access to economic benefits, such as the opportunity to start a company and invest in and buy property, with the aim of expanding the number of foreigners who live and work in the Kingdom from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. These new developments spurred members of the Shura Council, the consultative body selected by the monarch, to write a motion calling for a similar treatment to be extended to the offspring of Saudi women who marry non-Saudis.[9]
Despite decades of legislative attempts to diversify their economies, Gulf Arab countries have remained stubbornly reliant on earnings from oil and natural gas. A national economy that is entirely dependent on one source of revenue is fragile, particularly if that income is derived from nonrenewable resources. Thus, an economy's long-term prosperity is dependent on the proper implementation of economic diversification. One important factor behind the failure of diversification is that previous policy initiatives did not fully account for the ruling social compact; natural resource rents are passed on to residents in three ways: access to rich public benefits and services, access to high-paying public sector employment, and access to exclusive government contracts and licences. The transmission of economic rents via these channels has resulted in market distortions, undermining attempts to construct a competitive private sector capable of delivering sustainable economic development in a post-hydrocarbon future. These channels, however, are not irrelevant to the political context and serve a purpose: they enable residents to obtain their legal portion of their country's hydrocarbon riches. Hence, this social contract makes it difficult to renegotiate as oil revenues decrease. Future policy initiatives should reform these wealth-sharing channels to make them more transparent, economically efficient, socially fair, and mindful of the budgetary restrictions that Gulf governments face.[10]
Despite breaking a taboo by offering citizenship to certain high-skilled immigrants, Gulf rulers have not altered a social contract that regards citizenship as a gift granted to deserving people. They have recently broadened the pool of eligible subjects in order to recruit and retain skilled foreigners, as part of a larger effort to diversify oil-dependent economies. The route to citizenship will remain obstructed for the vast majority of poor immigrants and many locals. However, with the dwindling of oil earnings, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been forced to consider diversifying their economies by making their conservative and hierarchical regimes appealing to global investors - an awkward balance that threatens the stability of current social contracts. A post-oil Gulf will not necessarily herald the end of the state, but societal shifts that undermine the advantages on which the social compact is based may jolt inhabitants into an unpleasant reality as the nation prepares for future changes.[11]
In sum, in the near future, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia will need to focus on promoting trade, their economy and investments. Given the end of the oil era is nearby, it leaves the Gulf states with little alternative but to support the creation of a productive sector. This suggests that their foreign policies may stop being as assertive as it has been in the past. As it begins its post-oil period and lays the strategic foundations for the next years, the UAE appears to be focusing more on diplomatic solutions and soft power to consolidate its economic interests and trade partnerships. A more cautious shift can be seen in the Saudi foreign policy; a more careful pursuit of its interests, and restoration of Saudi diplomacy. The Vision 2030 initiative, which was implemented over the last decade, was intended to provide a roadmap for the country to address the challenges of sustaining economic prosperity in a changing and more competitive world, confronting the effects of climate change, and providing for a growing population. These interests will also serve as the cornerstones of its foreign policy.[12]
All links accessed 05/01/2022.
[1] Philippe Fargues, “Immigration without Inclusion: Non-Nationals in Nation-Building in the Gulf States,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 20, no. 3-4 (2011): 274 see also Business and Human Rights Resource Center, “Allegations of Labour Abuse Against Gulf Migrant Workers,” https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/big-issues/gulf-business-human-rights/allegations-of-labour-abuse-against-gulf-migrant-workers/.
[2] Jane Kinninmont, Citizenship in the Gulf in The Gulf States and the Arab Uprisings, Chatham House, 48 see also Zahra R. Babar, “The “Enemy Within”,” Middle East Journal 71, no. 4 (2017): 530, https://www.jstor.org/stable/90016494.
[3] The khulasat al-qaid is a government-issued document proving that they had ancestors in the UAE before to 1925.
[4] Kristian Alexander, Leonardo Jacopo, and Maria Mazzucco, “Breaking the citizenship taboo in the UAE,” Middle East Institute, April 7, 2021, https://www.mei.edu/publications/breaking-citizenship-taboo-uae.
[5] Kinninmont, Citizenship in the Gulf in The Gulf States and the Arab Uprisings, 51-52 see also Anh Nga Longva, Neither Autocracy Nor Democracy: Citizens, Expatriates and the Socio-Political System in Kuwait in Monarchies and Nations: Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 117-121 see also The Economist, “The Gulf states offer citizenship to a select group of foreigners,” December 11, 2021, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/12/09/the-gulf-states-offer-citizenship-to-a-select-group-of-foreigners.
[6] Kinninmont, Citizenship in the Gulf, 48.
[7] Alexander, Jacopo, and Mazzucco, “Breaking the citizenship taboo in the UAE.”
[8] Ibid see also Imad K. Harb, “Why the United Arab Emirates Is Abandoning Saudi Arabia in Yemen,” Foreign Policy, August 1, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/01/why-the-united-arab-emirates-is-abandoning-saudi-arabia-in-yemen/.
[9] Mira al-Hussein, and Eman al-Hussein, “The Social Contract and Post-Oil Dilemma in Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 5, 2021, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/85110.
[10] Sarah Muhanna Al Naimi, “Economic Diversification Trends in the Gulf: the Case of Saudi Arabia,” Circular Economy and Sustainability (2021):1, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-021-00106-0 see also Nader Kabbani and Nejla Ben Mimoune, “Economic Diversification in the Gulf: Time to Redouble Efforts,” Brookings Doha Center, Policy Briefing, January 2021, 1-3, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Economic-diversification-in-the-Gulf.pdf.
[11] The Economist, “The Gulf states offer citizenship to a select group of foreigners,” see also Mira al-Hussein, and Eman al-Hussein, “The Social Contract and Post-Oil Dilemma in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”
[12] Martin Hvidt, “Reaching for the Stars: How and Why do the Gulf States Aim to Transform Their Economies to ‘Knowledge-Based Economies’?” Blogs LSE, August 19, 2021, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2021/08/19/reaching-for-the-stars-how-and-why-do-the-gulf-states-aim-to-transform-their-economies-to-knowledge-based-economies/ see also Gerald M. Feierstein, and Yoel Guzansky, “Saudi Arabia Returns,” Middle East Institute, August 24, 2021, https://www.mei.edu/publications/saudi-arabia-returns.
