Introduction

The labour market is an arena fundamentally constructed by social, political and economic forces and therefore, the structure of a country’s labour market is determined by the national politico-economic framework, the workforce composition, the national development agendas and policies which are implemented to regulate and govern its national and global activity. It is within this arena where social, political and economic agendas are represented and during times of politico-economic instability, the governance of the labour market is often used as a mechanism to restore order amongst the ranks of society.

Against the backdrop of the rentier based political economies of the Arabian Gulf, over the last five decades, the region has been able to successfully advance by adopting an oil-led development model, which has enabled the region’s governments to heavily invest revenue into the development of world-leading infrastructure, whilst offering the national citizenry exceptional welfare provisions such as free healthcare, education and critically, guaranteed public sector employment. In the present day, the Arabian Gulf continues to be a strategically vital area of the globalised world, because the region is host to some of the most economically rich countries and holds nearly half of the globe’s confirmed and extractable oil and gas reserves.

However, despite the region’s oil-led development model generally succeeding, unexpectedly in 2011, socio-political unrest swept throughout the Arab World, whereby the national citizenry took to the streets in opposition to the longstanding authoritarian based rule, the deep-rooted and pervasive corruption amongst the ranks of the political elite and the continued unequal distribution of oil wealth. The greatest determinant underpinning the Arab Spring, however, was entrenched in daily welfare issues, whereby the national population were demanding greater employment opportunities within the national labour market, higher salaries and for the political regime to address the burgeoning unemployment rate, especially amongst the female and youth demographic groups. The Arab Spring was a mass movement therefore, due to the national citizenry’s longstanding socio-economic frustration. Critically, these issues underpinning the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011 were not new, or sudden.

Alongside the exceptional socio-economic prosperity and advancement the oil-led development model has facilitated over the last fifty years, the governments of the Arabian Gulf have had to contend with a burgeoning unemployment rate, especially amongst the female and youth population, the continued dependence on the migrant labour force and critically, an extremely segmented economic and social structure. Consequently, in the era of low oil prices, these inextricably linked issues are deemed crucial to address, because they constitute a demographic time bomb, but more so, will influence the future legitimacy of the ruling political elite and will significantly inform the post-rentier development agenda of the Arab States. Therefore, the labour market and its actors need to be regulated in a manner that reflects and is responsive to the requirements of the current national political economies.