1st Istanbul International Geography Congress Proceedings Book

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DOI :10.26650/PB/PS12.2019.002.034   IUP :10.26650/PB/PS12.2019.002.034    Full Text (PDF)

Impacts of labour migration on the demographic structure and radical changes in the labour force structure in Saudi Arabia

Emre Doğandor, Mustafa Murat Yüceşahin

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Middle East was involved in what is now referred to as globalization with the internationalization of financial capital and production. The conversion of raw materials obtained from the periphery into manufactured products and the transformation of Iran’s oil revenue into financial industrialization brought significant gains to countries with oil capital. Thus, Middle Eastern countries have long been categorized into oil and non-oil producers. The rise of the oil-based economy in the Middle Eastern and North African regions has brought intensive labor migration in a short time, and capital rich countries with labor shortages have become centers of attraction. For example, the ratio of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia’s total labor force increased from 43% in 1975 to 65% a decade later. This study aims to explain the sociodemographic and labor market transformations and associated restructuring in Saudi Arabia, a country where conditions strongly affect regional population and economic dynamics. In this study, the demographic data of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Saudi Arabian population data are used to examine the demographic structure and the transformation of the country’s labor force population.


Keywords: International labor migration, Population structure, Middle East, Saudi Arabia.

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