As of 2020. The migrant stock figure is the UN DESA 2020 estimate; Gulf migrant populations move with oil revenues and nationalisation policy, and country-level figures are revised frequently.
Under the kafala or sponsorship system, developed across the Gulf states after the oil boom of the 1970s, a migrant worker's legal residence is tied to a named employer, who has historically controlled the worker's ability to change jobs and, in several states, to leave the country. The International Labour Organization, human rights organisations and the UN special rapporteurs on trafficking and on migrants' rights have documented the resulting practices - passport confiscation, contract substitution, withheld wages, debt bondage from recruitment fees, restrictions on movement and confinement of domestic workers in private homes - as producing conditions that in many cases meet the international definition of forced labour, while Gulf governments have described the system as a lawful residence framework and have pointed to reforms. Migrant deaths, particularly among South Asian construction workers in Qatar in the decade before the 2022 World Cup, became a focus of international scrutiny; a Guardian investigation counted more than 6,500 deaths of migrants from five South Asian countries in Qatar between 2010 and 2020 from all causes, while Qatar's government said the figure conflated all deaths in a large population with work-related deaths. Qatar entered a technical cooperation programme with the ILO in 2017 and abolished exit permits and the no-objection certificate requirement and introduced a non-discriminatory minimum wage; Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE have made partial reforms; the ILO and rights organisations report that enforcement remains uneven and that domestic workers are often excluded.
Gulf states bound migrant workers' legal residence to individual employers, restricting their ability to change jobs or leave the country
UN DESA migrant stock estimates, as summarised by the Migration Policy Institute, put about 30 million foreign nationals in the GCC states in 2020 - roughly 11 per cent of all international migrants worldwide and more than half the region's total population, ranging from about 35 per cent of the population in Saudi Arabia to 88 per cent in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Not all are covered by kafala in the same form, and Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have partially reformed it.
No defensible range. Deaths among migrant workers in Gulf states are recorded in national statistics and by sending-country embassies but are not systematically attributed to work or living conditions; a Guardian investigation counted more than 6,500 deaths from all causes among migrants from five South Asian countries in Qatar alone between 2010 and 2020, a figure Qatar disputes as a measure of work-related mortality.
The International Labour Organization, UN special rapporteurs and human rights organisations documented forced labour indicators, the detention and deportation of workers who leave employers without permission, and the loss of legal status that follows.
Qatar, Bangladesh