Migrants vs. locals: A growing culture clash in Gulf states

Around two years ago a Subway fast food restaurant in the United Arab Emirates inadvertently caused a national scandal with a job advertisement. The ad called on Emiratis to work for Subway and, yes, make sandwiches.

Emiratis considered the job offer an "insult," "a mockery," and "an attack on locals" and UAE prosecutors announced an investigation into what they called the "contentious content." 

Yet the December 2022 advertisement was actually placed by a large Dubai-based company, the Kamal Osman Jamjoom Group, which was only trying to comply with new UAE rules about employing a certain percentage of Emiratis.

The goal of the new "Emiratization" rules, first introduced in 2022, is that by the end of 2026, the workforce of companies with 50 staff or more should be 10% Emirati.

"But because this was a low-paying service job, which is typically the type of job not done by nationals, and because Emiratis who are out of a job usually have, at the very least, some sort of higher education degree, there was a huge backlash," says a university researcher who lives in the UAE but who wanted to remain anonymous because it can be dangerous to criticize the government there. "The backlash was against the company itself, not against the government, but it was also an indirect criticism of the new policies."

Saudi Arabia has similar "Saudization" rules and has toughened these over the past two years so that, for example, a firm with 100 employees should now have at least 30% Saudis on staff. 

The Subway job scandal was just one example of how these kinds of new labor force plans in the Gulf states are causing friction, the researcher told DW. 

 

A new social contract in the Gulf?

As experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace pointed out in a commentary these kinds of economic policies "are beginning to undermine pre-existing social contracts," in the Gulf states.

In the past, the state — funded by oil income — had always been the main provider of jobs, housing and other benefits. Basically the social contract said the state looked after its people while the people accepted an authoritarian model of governance. However given lower oil prices, the world's move away from hydrocarbons and a burgeoning youth demographic (and high youth unemployment), that social contract has become difficult for the Middle East's oil-producing states to maintain.

In response, Gulf state governments are increasingly promoting non-oil, non-state-funded business, encouraging young citizens to become entrepreneurs and trimming public sector budgets.

"There is growing unease as governments try to push citizens from public-sector jobs to more precarious private-sector employment and to cut oil-funded welfare benefits," Frederic Schneider, a senior non-resident fellow at the Qatar-based Middle East Council on Global Affairs, or ME Council, confirms.

For example, in January the Saudi government introduced a "golden handshake" scheme, which encourages Saudis out of the public sector and into the private, by offering them incentives.

All these new economic projects "have also been accompanied by a certain discourse that almost portrays the government jobs — the ones their parents and grandparents were promised as part of the social contract — as the easy, or even lazy, choice," the UAE-based researcher told DW.

Foreigners now 'labor market rivals'

At the same time, Gulf states are also trying to make themselves more attractive to the foreign workers needed for non-oil sectors, for example, by changing rules on foreigners' property ownership and long-term residency as well as loosening some religious and social restrictions.

The UAE began this process in the mid-2000s while Saudi Arabia only started on it recently, instituting a skilled workers' visa scheme from mid-2025 and allowing foreigners to own property from 2026 onwards.

The Saudis also issued a 2021 ultimatum that said foreign companies wouldn't be eligible for government contracts unless they had headquarters in Saudi Arabia.

All these top-down projects of economic transformation are causing new kinds of social tensions because they are very clearly giving "preference to certain types of foreigners," the UAE-based researcher noted. And because Emiratis and Saudis are being pushed into, or want to, join the private sector, new migrants are increasingly seen as labor market rivals.

There are also new social and cultural frictions as a result, the researcher added. Conservative locals have been upset by measures being taken to make foreigners more welcome. For example debates about changing the traditional weekend from Friday and Saturday to the more international Saturday and Sunday, as well as increased focus on non-Islamic holidays like Christmas, and the increase in prostitution and alcohol consumption, allegedly as a result of foreigners.

"In a sense, the shift that took place in the UAE in the mid-2000s came from representing these practices, these new lifestyles and so on, as a sort of necessary evil," the sociology researcher said. For example, the idea was that some alcohol sales — traditionally not allowed in Islamic countries — had to be permitted so foreigners would want to live in the UAE.

"In Saudi Arabia, where that shift is just starting, these prohibited things are now being promoted as essential, in order to put Saudi Arabia on the map and to make Riyadh a global city attractive to foreign tourists and investors," the researcher explained.

Gaza conflict worsens tensions

In the UAE, those social tensions are further exacerbated by the conflict in Gaza, the ME Council's Schneider argues. "In the UAE, the influx of Israeli businesses, including from the security sector, and tourists through normalization, means the country is hosting businesses and individuals that are immediately involved in the ongoing genocide in Gaza."

Earlier this week, the International Association of Genocide Scholars said that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, although Israel itself continues to deny this.

Speaking to Gulf state locals, Schneider says he's also noticed a growing disenchantment with the West in general, whether due to perceptions of hypocrisy and complicity around the Gaza conflict or because former allies like the US look less reliable.

"Foreign businesses are increasingly seen as taking away business from locals," he notes. "For example, the massive amounts that have been spent in Saudi Arabia on Western consultancies for Neom and other transformation projects are eyed with discontent from ministries and government agencies but also increasingly from domestic consultancies that have sprung up and want to be involved."

Edited by: Andreas Illmer