ON THE UAE
We were in the United Arab Emirates for six days and in that time we visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi, 2 of the 7 emirates that make up the UAE.
Dubai is basically Vegas with a facelift. I never need to go back but I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I was sent there for business. While we were in Dubai we spent a full day at the world's biggest mall (a thrill) and we saw the world's tallest building (it’s tall). The mall was like nothing I’d ever seen. We literally had both lunch and dinner in the mall and we saw but a quarter of it. When we were leaving at 8:30PM there were THRONGS of people streaming into the mall. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say TENS of THOUSANDS of people were headed into the mall at 8:30PM. I felt at home, amongst my people. Cherry Creek is calling.
While in Abu Dhabi we saw my favorite mosque to date (The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque) which is preposterously gorgeous and dazzling. We also visited the presidential palace (Qasr Al Watan) which was ostentatious. Quintin was in heaven. Otherwise, we enjoyed lightning fast WiFi and takeout. That's all I have to say about the time we spent in the UAE as it pertains to the activities we did. HOWEVER, there are some reflections on our time in the Gulf I’d like to share.
On our first day in any new country, we inevitably find ourselves back in our room furiously Googling the millions of questions that pop up after a day out and about. Curiously, before we arrived in Oman, I had the foresight to look up a few demographics. I was shocked to learn Oman is 60% men and 40% women. In every country we’ve visited up until this point, the split has been within 1%. I thought for sure my source (Wikipedia, lol) was wrong, so I looked it up on other websites and sure enough….60% men, 40% women. What the hell?!
Allow me to fill you in.
The Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries recruit a significant number of international workers for several reasons:
To support general economic growth
For infrastructure development IE they need construction workers, engineers & architects to build all of these dazzling attractions the GCC countries are known for
Demographic imbalance IE economies that are too big for the native population to support meaning they need to import labor to support their booming economies
Remaining globally competitive. This is similar to the above; to remain globally relevant they need more workers to work in international hubs they want to bring to their cities. For example, if Dubai wants to be the hub for Deloitte in Asia they need to fill a Deloitte HQ office. To fill a Deloitte HQ office, they’ll need to bring consultants from all over the world to Dubai because they simply don’t have enough people.
And then finally, a relatively high standard of living.
Basically, the GCC countries strategically bring international workers into the country to fill labor gaps and remain competitive. This is both unskilled and skilled labor coming into the countries.
This has led to a situation where only 40% of the people who live in Oman are Omani. Of the 60% who are expatriates, 40% are Indian and almost all of them are men. Hence the skew in gender demographics.
In the UAE, only 11.5% of people who live in the UAE are Emerati. ELEVEN PERCENT. The expatriate population in the UAE is more varied than that of Oman, with India still leading as the largest expat community at 38%. Following closely, Pakistan constitutes 18%, and then Bangladesh and the Philippines occupy the third and fourth positions with 7% each. Iran, Egypt, Nepal, and Sri Lanka contribute significantly as well, each comprising around 4-3% of the expat population.
You’ve undoubtedly heard about human rights violations in GCC countries as it pertains to labor laws and workers rights (or the lack thereof) as it’s been in the news frequently. A spotlight was put on these abuses in the GCC countries when the World Cup was hosted in Qatar. When we were flying from Addis to Oman, there were a few businessmen on the flight, us, and then hundreds of young women all in bibs advertising the agency bringing them from Addis to the Gulf to work. They were literally walking advertisements – website to visit, phone number to call, and types of workers available.
Because of protests surrounding the World Cup and previous travel experiences, I wasn’t shocked when we saw these women, but it was eerie to see the scale of migration. If there were 10,000 people in the airport at least 6,000 of them were young, African women headed to the Gulf on work permits. Then, arriving and seeing just HOW many workers there are from abroad was surprising. I was not keyed into the scale.
While many of the workers in the GCC countries are “unskilled laborers” it’s worth mentioning that not all of the workers are “unskilled”. These countries have huge global economies compared to their populations. This means they are also actively recruiting “skilled” laborers to come to their countries to fill labor gaps. We met many a consultant stationed in Dubai.
What all these international workers meant for us, as tourists, was that every interaction was automatically in English…and not because we were foreigners who didn’t speak Arabic. No. Omani’s/Emirati’s and the international workforce (which again is the overwhelming majority of the population) communicate with each other in English too. In Dubai, English was so prevalent I second guessed myself and had to look up the official language of the UAE. It’s Arabic, but like nobody even fussed with Arabic anywhere we went.
A fun little tidbit is that in the UAE, the “UAE TOP 50” Spotify playlist literally perfectly mirrors the “GLOBAL TOP 50” Spotify playlist. In every country we visit I listen to the countries TOP 50 which is just the most streamed songs on Spotify, from the country put into a playlist that updates daily. Nowhere else did the GLOBAL TOP 50 and the COUNTRY TOP 50 mirror eachother. Crossover, sure, but like 3 to 10 songs at most. We arrived in Dubai the day after Thanksgiving, and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was already #1.
I touched on this in my ON ZANZIBAR post, but the more places we go, the more I realize just how many people are moving around in search for better opportunities and for just how long this migration has been going on (forever).
People constantly ask us “where are you from?!?!” “where are you visiting us from?!?!” and I used to simply respond “the United States of America” and let it be. Now, I always ask “and what about you?! where are you from?” in return and so SO often people are not from the country we’re in. We met far more Zimbabweans in South Africa than South Africans; we had a Turkish tour guide in Japan; a Ukrainian tour guide in Turkey; my nail tech in Thailand was Malaysian, my nail tech in Bolivia, Peruvian. With few exceptions, everybody we interacted with in Oman was Indian; when you ask people where they’re from in the Balkans, they don’t even say a country, they just tell you what they are. I’m writing this from Guatemala where 20% of the country's whole ass GDP is remittances, sent overwhelmingly from the USA. Twenty percent.
At this point on our trip we’ve visited every continent (except Antarctica) and it’s been fascinating, eye opening and also a bit sad to learn about various migration patterns across the world. Nowhere was this more VISIBLE than the UAE.
