Content area
Full Text
The purpose of this article is to understand how the struggles of states to assert their identity, autonomy or hegemony affect the international flow of labor. Against the backdrop of the Gulf Crisis in the summer of 1990, the cases of Yemen and Saudi Arabia demonstrate the circumstances under which weak states engaged in the transfer of labor resist political accommodation even at the expense of profitable economic transactions.
A central theme in the history of capitalist expansion is the development of an international division of labor. The evolution of worldwide markets for labor has included the forcible transport of people, as exemplified by various forms of slavery, as well as the migration of workers who travel on their own initiative in anticipation of a "more prosperous and secure life for themselves and their descendants."' Whether states import or export workers, the economic benefits derived from this type of transaction are very important. Remittances, for example, are often a major source of foreign exchange for nations exporting labor and a boost to their local economies. For importers, the benefits include relief from shortages of indigenous labor or skills. Nevertheless, states have interrupted the transfer of labor for political purposes even though there existed economic motives for them to do otherwise. The authors' purpose in this article is to analyze the political reasons states risk interruptions in the flow of labor by examining the specific case of the expulsion of Yemeni labor from Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s.
THE ECONOMICS OF LABOR MIGRATION: YEMEN AND SAUDI ARABIA
Much of the human migratory flow in the Middle East has been stimulated by economic considerations, the primary motivation being the opportunity to work and to earn better wages.2 For this reason, the oil-rich states in the Arabian Peninsula became leading sources of employment in the past 40 years.3 As the fastest growing economy in the peninsula, Saudi Arabia became the magnet for much of the migration of labor in the region. Indeed, the number of migrants there paralleled the economic expansion of the country: by the late 1970s, the economy of Saudi Arabia "was staffed almost exclusively by immigrants."4 This reliance on migrant labor continued into the 1980s, when an estimated three million workers, or seventy-five...