Spotlight on the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

The Arab countries of the Persian Gulf have been transformed by the discovery of huge oil reserves. In just a few decades, the region’s economies have expanded enormously – and so, too, have their populations, fueled in part by the arrival of millions of foreign-born workers.¹⁸ 

To maintain their economic growth and high standards of living, the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have leaned on a largely immigrant labor force. All together, the GCC countries have a total of more than 15 million foreign-born residents drawn heavily from such countries as India, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Moreover, these foreign-born workers are very numerous in comparison with the native-born population in all the GCC countries. In Qatar, for instance, more than 80% of the total population is estimated to be foreign born. Even in Saudi Arabia, which has the lowest percentage of foreign-born residents in the GCC, immigrants make up more than a quarter of the population (28%), about twice the level in the United States (13%).¹⁹ 

Although GCC countries consider most immigrants to be temporary workers on short-term visas, many have repeatedly renewed their visas and work contracts, making their presence less temporary than it may seem. At the same time, many of these workers have disincentives to stay permanently, including little hope of gaining citizenship either for themselves or for their children, as well as social barriers to integration and significant restrictions on their ability to practice religions other than Islam.²⁰ 

Most GCC countries either do not count foreign-born residents in their censuses or do not publicly release detailed data about their immigrant populations. A few countries, particularly Bahrain and Qatar, do periodically describe the number of non-nationals residing within their borders and provide some information on migrants’ regional origins (Europe, Asia, Americas, etc.). As a result, scholars have been able to use a combination of migrant population data (stocks) and migrant visa records (flows) from the region to generate some estimates. Still, detailed figures on migration to the GCC are nonexistent, and most estimates are very rough.

The religious distribution of immigrants in the region is also challenging to determine. It appears from the limited statistics available that Muslims from religiously diverse countries (such as India, which has a Hindu majority but a sizable Muslim minority) are more likely than non-Muslims to move to the Arabian Peninsula. Therefore, the religious affiliation estimates in this report for GCC countries are guided by the religious distribution of immigrants to Egypt, also a Muslim-majority country, but one for which much more reliable data on immigrants is available. (For an explanation of this use of “destination proxies,” see Appendix B: Methodology).

Using this data, it appears that Muslims are the majority (about seven-in-ten) of immigrants in Gulf Cooperation Council countries, coming primarily from India, Pakistan, Egypt, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Among non-Muslim immigrants, most are either Christian or Hindu. Christian immigrants to the GCC come mainly from India, the Philippines, North America and Europe. Hindu immigrants are primarily from India. A much smaller share of immigrants are Buddhist, Jewish, follow other religions or are religiously unaffiliated.

If the pace of immigration to the region continues, some GCC states, particularly those with small populations, may see dramatic changes in the religious composition of their societies, though all six GCC countries are expected to retain Muslim majorities for the foreseeable future. (For more details, see the Pew Forum’s report, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030.)

Footnotes: 

18 For more information on labor migration in the Persian Gulf, see Douglas S. Massey et al., Worlds in Motion, Oxford University Press, 1998. (return to text) 

19 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, International Migration, 2009 Wallchart, United Nations publication, Sales No. E.09.XIII.8, 2009. (return to text) 

20 For more information on religious restrictions in GCC and other countries, see the Pew Forum’s August 2011 report Rising Restrictions on Religion. (return to text)