All Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members share as a common feature a high dependency on a foreign workforce and a persistently high and, in most cases, growing proportion of non-nationals in the resident population. The GCC’s uniqueness, however, lies in the high level of immigration as well as in the persistence over time of a high proportion of non-citizens because of numerous factors, including the limited channels for naturalizing foreign nationals. As of 2022, foreign population ranged between an estimated 40% of the total population in Oman and 42% in Saudi Arabia, and 88% in Qatar.

At the same time, migration to these countries has common features with migration to other countries in the world regarding the causes, patterns and consequences. As elsewhere, family reunion boosted the number of non-working foreign nationals, while the emergence of a second generation born in the GCC to foreign nationals can be witnessed. Governments have only recently started to acknowledge this fact. Thus, the GCC countries are also subject to demographic, economic, social, political, and legal dynamics comparable to those found in other countries that experience(d) significant immigration.

Since 2010, the national populations of the GCC region have been growing at a rate of 2 to 3 % annually on average. Bahrain displayed the lowest rates: 1-2% annually since 2017. The Omani population’s growth rate, which stood above the regional average at around 3.5 to 4% in the mid-2010s, was significantly lower in 2024, at 2%.

Foreign, and total population growth rates were largely positive in the first half of the decade, but slowed down after 2016, before the Covid-19 crisis. Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia even witnessed a decrease in their foreign populations during the second half of the 2010s. In 2020, as the region was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, the numbers of expatriates went further down almost everywhere in the region, but inflows resumed significantly since the end of the crisis (above 7% since 2022 in Saudi Arabia, for instance). Restrictions of entries, fluctuations of oil prices and economic downturn combined with new visa and residency schemes, ambitious socio-economic reforms and labour nationalisation policies aiming to increase the participation of nationals in the workforce, while at the same time, attracting and retaining larger numbers of highly skilled foreign professionals and their families. How do foreign migrants and workers cope with the rapidly changing circumstances in the region? How does this context influence migration dynamics, the structure of migrant populations and their integration into local societies in the region? What future can be foreseen for migration to the Gulf states?

While the production of knowledge concerning the two other major destinations of global migration – North America and Europe – is enormous, knowledge production on GCC migration, while recently increasing, is still in a state of infancy in terms of availability of reliable and comparable data, and of general, comparative and case studies as well as policy papers. GLMM programme contributors’ aim is to help bridge this knowledge gap, to the benefit of academics and students, media persons, legal organisations, and policy makers, in the Gulf and elsewhere.