The populations of the Gulf countries
This transdisciplinary and international issue of our academic review intends to join a both conceptual and methodological approach as well as an informative and a reflexive one. It aims to a better knowledge of this part of the world that is moving from an oil rent economy to a global productive economy and now experiences, at various levels and rhythms, demographic and social changes, conducting to inescapable reforms.
The countries and regions along the half-closed sea, named Persian Gulf in the European tradition (KhalidjeFârs in Persian), claimed as Arabic Gulf (Al Khaleej al Arabi in Arabic) by seven seaside countries on the other shore, play a major part in the world energy supplying which gives them an economic and strategic importance, without any common measure with their weak demographic weight. If they are often spoken of in the medias, very few researches have been done about the most recent social evolution and the demo-geography of these countries. Indeed, reality - complex, changing quickly, varied at a local scale, often paradoxical - is here, no doubt, more than elsewhere, very different from the stereotypes carried by the medias. Because of the dynamics at work in these countries, it seems the right time to publish a thematic issue: many common ideas and the bonds between marriage, fertility and religion have to be questioned while international migration patterns are more and more intricate. Contemporary migrations are far to be limited to young unskilled male adults any more.
A prior issue is to wonder if the same problematic is relevant on each side of this narrow and shallow sea. Beyond a common reference to Islam, reference often quoted in a global view, religion is, with finer analyse, a matter of differences around the Gulf because of the various branches and juridical schools in Islam. In the same way, despite the Arabic / Persian linguistic limit that might show the opposition between a Semitic ethno-linguistic area and an Indo-European one, the Gulf shores look like a space of mixed peoples and languages. An ancient Persian -speaking (Shiite) settlement on the Arabic shore and Arabic-speaking (Sunnite) populations in the seaside provinces of Iran show the importance of exchanges between the two cultural areas. Considering that the Gulf is both and a contact zone and a gap, this from the remote Antiquity, and that beyond an Arab identity, stressed in Arab analysis, and the Persian identity appearing in the orientalist tradition. We will question the demographic and social realities of the Gulf. A first theme would consist in thinking about the involvements of the religious and linguistic diversity of the national populations as well as the consequences of the past and present exchanges between both sides.
Another prior question is to wonder if any sources, if not exactly the same, but equivalent, can be found on both sides of the Gulf. From this point of view there is a major difference between Iran, a strong State in which centralized logics have prevailed, and its neighbours, heirs from a social and political tribal organisation. In the first case, we find an old and strong statistical tradition, which enables us to write demographic analysis founded on censuses and surveys. In the second one, we just have recent censuses, for different years, from different origins, with some omissions and a varied and moving level of data aggregation. The censuses are more or less reliable according to the dates and the countries. It implies a critical analysis not only of the available data but also of the administrative divisions. Their limits have changed several times, Arabian terms, sometimes inherited from the Ottoman period, don’t have the same meaning from one country to another. A second theme would consist in setting up a strict methodology and a comprehensive survey of the sources, at the scale of the entire Gulf and of each country .
The Gulf is one of the three biggest receptive world areas of international labour migration. This heavy crowd of foreigners – difficult to be numbered – takes place in the GCC countries whereas in Iran and Iraq the migration balance shows a deficit. More and more newspaper articles, collective books and conferences have presented this migratory question, more often from the point of view of the sending countries than from the receiving ones. The main questions are well known: the replacement of the Arab workers by Asians, the rift between Nationals and Non-Nationals, the protection of the poorest people, mainly in the building industry and domestic services. New researches focusing on the growing family migration or on the changing migration policy together with the studies of researchers from the South, namely Filipinos and Indians, have helped to enrich the points of view. New waves of migrants (flows of North-Africans and Bangladeshi, coming of Chinese and South Americans) show how the manpower recruitment area is now enlarged to the whole world. So it is necessary to actualise and deepen the existing analysis. Do the Nationals form a homogeneous group? What about the Biduns (“those without nationality”)? What is the migratory project, what are the routes, strategies, stratifications and claims within any nationality of migrants? Is it relevant to refer to nationality? Is not the place of origin (Keralite, Hadrami…) or the religious community (Maronite, Sikh…) more important than the nationality among a Diaspora? What about female migrants? High-skilled expatriates? The second and even the third generation? The list of possible topics is long. Beyond studying a group of migrants or another one, a third theme would lie in analysing the building of a multicultural society of a new type.
The Gulf societies are urban ones where oil has enabled the setting of education and health systems. In the Arab countries of the Gulf, the residents, either national or foreign, live in big cities. Those develop very quickly, mainly along the coast, and their population often exceeding a million inhabitants, grows very fast. The development of these cities creates conurbations that stand along the Arab shore so that they seem to prepare the emergence of a new model of megalopolis. The daily life of these Babel cities, the juxtaposition and the mixing of eating and clothing habits lead to an acculturation process. Nevertheless in all the Gulf countries, schooling rates in primary and secondary schools – for both boys and girls – have boomed within 30 years while in the years 2000, higher education institutions have welcome more and more students. At the same time, the infant mortality rate has declined and life expectancy has increased. Urbanisation and education have had consequences not only on marriage and fertility, but also on family structures, the new generation becoming more individualistic. A fourth theme could analyse the factors of demographic change, its characteristics and its consequences on the societies.
Dr Brigitte Dumortier
Head of Department, Geography and Planning
University Paris Sorbonne, Abu Dhabi
Dr Dominique Creton
Migrinter
University of Poitiers (France)