MER Article Spain and the EC Nearly every day, off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, wealthy windsurfers unfold their multicolored sails and plunge into the waters. As often as the wind invites acrobatic risk taking on the crest of the waves, it turns the Straits into a graveyard for hundreds of Moroccan migrants. More than 200 Graciela Malgesini • 14 min read
MER Article Yemeni Workers Come Home With its moderate climate and terraced highlands, Yemen is agriculturally the most productive part of the Arabian Peninsula. Yet people, not crops, have been Yemen’s major export. Migrants from the former North and South Yemen are scattered throughout the world. During the last 20 years, the majorit Thomas Stevenson • 17 min read
MER Article Migrants, Workers and Refugees The outset of the Gulf crisis in August 1990 saw a dramatic exodus of more than a million Asian and Arab workers as well as some 460,000 Kuwaitis from Iraq and Kuwait. Perhaps a million Yemenis felt compelled to leave Saudi Arabia. During the civil war in Iraq that followed the ground war, a million Michael Humphrey • 13 min read
MER Article Owen, Migrant Workers in the Gulf Roger Owen, Migrant Workers in the Gulf (London: Minority Rights Group, Report No. 68, 1985). Today, as oil prices plunge, the six million foreign workers in the Gulf are feeling the crunch. Roger Owen's new survey of Gulf migrant workers is especially welcome, for the future of Gulf societies i James Paul • 2 min read
MER Article The Yemenis of the San Joaquin Musa (“Moses”) Saleh laughs now at his expectations as a new immigrant to the United States. “We were fooled,” he says, reflecting on the first morning when he prepared for his new job as an apricot picker in California. “We didn’t know what kind of work our Yemeni friends had been doing here…. I dr Ron Kelley • 15 min read
MER Article Works on North African Migration Mariarosa Dalla Costa, “Reproduction and Emigration,” Zerowork 3 (1984). Jean Guyot, Ruth Padrun, et al, Des Femmes Immigres Parlent (Paris: L’Harmattan-CETIM, 1977). Michel Oriol, “Sur la dynamique des relations communautaires chez les immigres d’origine Nord-Africaine,” Peuples Mediterraneens 18 David McMurray • 3 min read
Migrant Labor and the Politics of Development in Bahrain Bahrain was, after Iran and Iraq, the first country in the Gulf to have its petroleum resources developed by Western companies. It has a longer history of economic and infrastructural development than any other state in the peninsula. Bahrain’s petroleum reserves and producing capacity are also the Rob Franklin • 24 min read
MER Article Looking Across the Mediterranean "Femmes de la Mediterranée," Peuples Mediterraneens/Mediterranean Peoples 22-23 (January-June 1983). Rosemary Sayigh • 16 min read
MER Article Women and Labor Migration Women are now the heads of between 25 and 35 percent of all households in developing countries. [1] In the Middle East and North Africa, women head about 16 percent of all households. [2] One main reason for the increasing number of households headed by women is male migration to seek work outside t Fatma Khafagy • 13 min read
MER Article Yemeni Workers Abroad In Yemen one often hears the hypothesis that as men migrate abroad in search of work, women move into male economic and political roles, at least within the household. The assumption is that women take over production tasks and decisionmaking which have always been the responsibility of men. While t Cynthia Myntti • 16 min read
MER Article Egyptian Migration and Peasant Wives In the 1960s, Egypt supplied the labor markets of the Middle East with professionals and administrators seconded by the government. Carefully regulated and controlled, the export of labor was consistent both with Egypt’s policies in the area and with its own manpower needs. In the 1970s, government- Elizabeth Taylor • 23 min read
MER Article Algerian Migration Today Richard Lawless and Allan and Anne Findlay, Return Migration to the Maghreb: People and Policies, Arab Papers 10 (London: Arab Research Centre, 1982). Philippe Adair, “Retrospective de la Reforme Agraire en Algerie,” Revue Tiers-Monde 14 (1983). Jean Bisson, “L’industrie, la ville, la palmeraie au David McMurray • 4 min read
