THE ROLE OF THE IMMIGRANT WORKERS IN THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES AND THE DIFFICULTIES THEY FACE

Over the past thirty years, Dubai, the popular city of the United Arab Emirates, has become well known success story with its remarkable degree of development and extraordinary projects. The reasons of this rapid development and interesting success in the Emirates have become a popular discussion subject in academia recently. It is a well-known truth that one of the most important reason of the development of the country is the contribution of migrant workers. However, the situation of migrant workers who compose almost the %90 of the population of the UAE have become a serious social issue and government has begun to work on it. Migrant workers who came from different backgrounds frequently have faced serious problems such as extremely long working hours, poor living conditions, unpaid salaries and lack of job safety. International Human Rights Organization and International Labour Organization have been watching and criticizing the working conditions in many Gulf countries and asking urgent solutions from these countries’ governments. This study not only analyzes the problems of the migrant workers but also explores the new government policies to solve them. Field work and semi structured interviews are used as the methodology of this study. This work demonstrates that government in Dubai has attempted to solve migrant worker’s problems by applying new policies recently but there is still a long way to go