Capital, Labour & the State in the Gulf

To date, issues of international mobility of capital, people and information continue to be a central part of debates within a large array of academic disciplines. One often and widely made observation is that there is a fundamental asymmetry between the international mobility of capital and labour in favour of capital. In this context, many scholars contend that the international mobility of capital and/or its promotion by states stands in sharp contrast to the restrictions on the international mobility of labour. It has been argued that, contrary to the free mobility of capital with almost unregulated international capital markets since the early 1970s, policies related to the international mobility of labour have become more restrictive and that the national labour markets are strictly nationally regulated. By taking the Gulf States as an empirical case the study aims to bring in a region which, despite its importance for the global political economy, has been largely absent in the field. A closer look at the historical development of these states, their statesociety relations, how they are situated within the global political economy and how they deal with the international mobility of capital and labour would not only deliver empirical insights, but would also provide a contribution to the theoretical efforts to overcome the prevailing Eurocentric perspective within the broader academic field.