Crude Politics: Colonialism, Oil, and Labor in the Arabian Sea

In the oilfields of the Arabic-speaking Persian Gulf, labor relations are often characterized as problematic and workers are disenfranchised. Laborers are almost exclusively foreigners from South Asia, Southeast Asia, or other parts of the Middle East. Current news headlines often focus on the poor state of manual laborers, who are precariously positioned due to strict labor laws and the practices of oil companies. Today, almost no citizens of Gulf countries work as laborers in the oilfields. In this paper, I explore the historic development of the contemporary labor system. I find that in the mid twentieth century residents of the Gulf worked alongside laborers from other Arab countries, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. This history of workers in the Gulf has been largely forgotten, and, as a result, we lost insight into the development of labor hierarchies in the region.

Most often, the poor treatment of workers is attributed to the persistence of tribal relations into the present. Furthermore, the continuation of tribal forms is often considered a sign of the Gulf’s less than complete incorporation into the world capitalist system. In contrast, I argue that an historic examination of labor actions on the oilfields illuminates a very a different story, one in which oil companies and British colonial administrators actively shaped labor policies. In order to understand how contemporary capitalist institutions created social systems that seem anachronistic, I explore work stoppages and collective actions in 1960s Abu Dhabi. I then examine how these strikes spurred the British colonial authorities and oil company managers to cultivate a narrative in which Gulf Arab, or khalījī, workers were unsuited to labor in the oilfields. I find that in British accounts, the trope of the “primitive” nature of the worker, exemplified in tribal relations, was used as an argument that Gulf Arab workers were unsuited to laboring in the oilfields. This colonial argument and the development of accompanying labor and citizenship laws contributed to the contemporary poor treatment of workers. I argue that a reification of tribal relations allowed for oil companies to invalidate worker requests and, ultimately, restructure the workforce so that it is made up of migrants who are precariously positioned.